Ramsdale: UK age ratings may have to change

Managing director of EA UK Keith Ramsdale has accepted that the current domestic age ratings system – shared between the British Board of Film Classification and PEGI – may change forever as result of the Government Byron Review.

The head of the Review, Dr. Tanya Byron,

previously told MCV

that she was concerned by the ambiguity of having statutory and non-statutory” ratings on games – and hinted that she may recommend a change.

Ramsdale agreed that if the Review found parents were confused by the two models running in parallel, the Government could drop one of the current ratings bodies altogether.

Ramsdale told

Spong

:

As for the two systems – PEGI and BBFC – yeah, it could well be that the findings of the Byron Review says that there is consumer confusion.

It may suggest that either is fine, or that you can have only one or whatever. But I think that what we are probably going to have to do as an industry is to look at how we get the message out there – whatever we end up with as an age-rating system, [it is important] that it is real, that it is about content. That’s the main job to be done.”