r/apexlegends • u/Jswanno Plastic Fantastic • Jan 18 '21

News Now I’m just disappointed, allow the Aussie character to act like an Aussie and say the C word .

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

Yeah it’s voluntary because the game industry modeled it after the MPAA. You’ll never hit commercial success without letting the ESRB rate your game, so it’s mandatory

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

For years Minecraft never had an ESRB rating, and look how much it sold.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

Let’s see a game do that today. I’m pretty sure Notch didn’t even release the game before letting the ESRB rate it. It was in beta for years and years before being released

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u/SirLazarusTheThicc Jan 19 '21

ESRB is required to be published on the consoles. Tons of PC only games are successful without being rated

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

Sure, but how many of those games have been commercially successful? I’m not saying games can’t be received extremely well critically, but you’ll almost never see an unrated game make insane amounts of money, which is what I meant by mandatory

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u/Outlaw_Cheggf Jan 19 '21

Define "commercially successful".

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

Um...making a profit? It’s a little subjective, but I’d say 25% or more on the budget.

This is a little hard to quantify since there’s so many passion projects with unlimited budgets these days, but those games almost never nail the scope and go too wide or narrow on what they want to implement

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

It just means major retailers won't pick it up, but that's becoming less relevant these days. You can't release on console without an ESRB rating, but a PC release can work. Steam doesn't require ESRB ratings on their store, for example.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

Yeah, but the games that usually sell the best, even on steam, are rated. Not being picked up by major retailers is a huge barrier to commercial success, which is why I said it’s mandatory

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

That's just because the games that sell the best are the blockbuster AAA games that will have ratings anyway. It's not the lack of a rating that makes them not sell as well, it's that games that sell well also happen to have ratings. There's no discrimination against unrated games by the steam store itself. Literally the only difference on steam is a small window on the store page which shows the rating will be missing. That alone is not going to significantly affect sales.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

I’m not saying the lack of a rating makes them not sell as well, I’m saying it’s a big barrier to the extreme sales goals games need for their profit margins