Dark patterns were always a thing, they just weren’t as recognized.

They’re not interested in reform. This is the system working as intended.

PEGI is an industry trade association like the ESRB and MPAA (for movies). The MPAA realized a while ago that if you have a ratings system setup by the biggest companies in the industry, you accomplish two things:

• Get government regulators off your back
• Give independent creators a higher rating to keep them niche

In the MPAA’s case, they do give indy films higher ratings, and no, it’s not just because indy films have more risque content. That was accounted for by comparing to a popular independent rating system.

The ESRB was started when some members of Congress (Lieberman and Kohl, both Democrats) glanced over at video games and acted like they were ready to pass legislation. That legislation would likely never have survived a First Amendment challenge, but the industry would rather not go through that. Besides, it presents an opportunity to do the second bullet point while looking good to their core customers by doing the first. All the various CEOs call each other up and the ESRB is formed almost literally by the end of the day.

And now we have PEGI doing the same thing.

dark patterns

“Well if the game is too dark, then we would notice in the video and besides small children being afraid of the dark, you can just turn up the screen brightness”

-Some old as fuck asshole who doesn’t really know much about the tech world anymore, assuming they ever did.

Things changed when greedy capitalists realized that they could get literal children addicted to gambling on devices that have their parents’ credit card saved.

They already requested to re-review it and got shut down. All my homies hate PEGI and their bs.

There’s no gambling in the game. Not with real money, nor with fake money. They labeled it 18+ for “looking like” gambling.

Using the same logic, solitaire should be 18+.

I’ve played RPGs, aimed at kids and young adults, with full-on casinos in them that didn’t get this rating. Belatro has no microtransactions, there’s no real money involved after purchasing the game itself. I would say it’s less harmful than learning actual poker or blackjack in a kid’s JRPG, since Belatro is not a real game that a person could ever play in real life.

I don’t think that explains the dichotomy in ratings between, say, Balatro and FIFA, one of which let’s you gamble with real currency and the other is a pixelated deck builder.

There’s no money involved though, it’s a closed single-player game without a betting mechanic that happens to use playing cards and poker hands for scoring. Meanwhile others have mentioned FIFA and stuff with loot boxes/packs, which are borderline slot machine mechanics that eat money.

the game has gambling whatsoever. it only has poker aesthetic. it uses the term “ante” to mean “level”, it uses traditional poker hands, and it uses chips to define points. otherwise it’s just a non gambling card game. it would be like putting this rating on go-fish, or solitaire because they use the same cards that poker does.

the association with gambling is entirely superficial. what has everyone up in arms is that there are many games with micro transactions that are especially a roll at the slot machine and intentionally designed using gambling psychology that people lose thousands of dollars at every day. those games don’t have their gambling mechanics considered at all by ratings boards. it shows that pegi doesn’t put much work into their ratings. one game that looks like gambling but isn’t gets and 18+. the many games that have real predatory gambling tactics but hide them are free to do so with impunity.

Old pokemon games too

You always spin the wheel. It’s the rules.

No, I made it in Inkscape because I was pissed

Genshin impact PEGI 12

EA football game with loot boxes PEGI 3

Lesson, next game pay more to the regulators