Highlights

• LEARNING FROM THE ESRB: PEGI handles game ratings more calmly but still faces unique challenges in Europe.
• GERMANY'S UNIQUE SYSTEM: USK gave a surprising 16 rating to Yesterday Origins, softer than PEGI's 18.
• PEGI'S EVOLVING STANCE: Recent re-ratings by PEGI show a changing approach to older games like Metal Gear Solid.

The tale of the ESRB’s formation is a pretty famous one, as bloody efforts like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap scared parents and politicians into making the government set up a ratings board. Its equivalent across the pond, Pan-European Game Information or PEGI, was much less dramatic. The Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE) simply created it as a general European ratings board to smooth out game distribution.

Not every European country uses PEGI, but they represent most of the EU nations, the UK, Turkey (unofficially), and Israel (officially, despite not being in Europe). Though, like any other ratings board, it has its own foibles. They may not be as extreme as others, but these games surprisingly received PEGI’s 18 rating.

Updated on February 19, 2024 by David Heath: Like it, loathe it, or don't care about it, the ESRB at least has the advantage of being the only ratings board in North America. Once it rates a game, those ratings (largely) stay consistent. PEGI spent much of its run co-existing alongside separate boards like Germany's USK and Britain's BBFC, causing headaches when the two rated games differently.

Some of the issues from this list have since been resolved, with PEGI fully taking over video game ratings in the UK from the BBFC. However, it still has its clashes and issues, particularly when it re-rates classic games from back in the day. So, this article has been updated with a few more surprising examples when PEGI gave a game an 18 rating.

9 Yesterday Origins

Violence-Shy Germany Finds a PEGI 18+ Game Suitable for 16-Year-Olds

One of the European countries that doesn’t use PEGI is Germany, which stuck to its Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) system. The USK and Germany in general are notorious for their strict censorship of violence in games. Their version of Half-Life got rid of the blood and replaced the Marines with robots until the uncut version was approved in 2017. They also censored the Nazis and Nazi imagery from games, effectively removing them from Wolfenstein 2 until 2018, where they would now be considered on artistic merit case by case.

So, when they came across Yesterday Origins, the prequel-sequel that revealed why Yesterday's protagonist became immortal and what he did after the first game, they gave it a 16 rating. Which is actually milder than PEGI’s 18 rating. The German version didn’t cut out the game's violence, torture, or bad language either. The USK just found it suitable enough for 16-year-olds while PEGI didn't. Maybe German tastes have changed, or the USK's method of playing the games themselves gave them a different opinion from PEGI.

8 Metal Gear Solid

32 Bit Violence is Worse than 128 Bit Violence

Before PEGI was formed, games were subject to separate ratings boards across Europe. For example, Metal Gear Solid received a 15+ from the UK’s ELSPA, and a 16+ from the USK, France’s SELL, and Spain’s aDeSe. It was a fairly violent game, though it didn’t exactly coat entire walls in claret like Resident Evil. The Gamecube remake, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, came out in PEGI's early days, which gave it a 16+ rating despite the graphical updates making the violence more explicit.

Yet when the original PS1 game was re-released for PS3 and PC, PEGI gave it an 18+ rating. Somehow, the older, cardboard box-looking graphics and milder action scenes were more disagreeable for a late 2000s digital release than on a late 1990s CD. At least it gave younger generations a reason to get into collecting retro games, since they'll have less trouble picking up those old 15-16+ rated games.

7 Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence

Extra Content, Extra Mature

When people say Metal Gear Solid 3 is the pinnacle of the Metal Gear series, they're specifically talking about Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. It was essentially the same game, only it had a big improvement with its moveable camera. The original release's top-down-only camera was showing its age by 2005, so the new, Splinter Cell-inspired rotational, ground-level view made it easier to scope out the environment and catch guards unaware.

But was it also the reason PEGI re-rated the game from its original 16+ rating to 18+? The European version of Snake Eater already had the Boss Battle mode, Demo Theater (including the extra racy EVA scenes), and Snake Vs Monkey missions. The Secret Theater gag scenes weren't any more mature than the regular in-game ones either. The best guess is that the new camera also gave players a better view of the violence, from bullet-blasting to throat-cutting, thus making the game less friendly for 16-17yr olds in PEGI's eyes.

6 Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1

It's All for Adults Now

Things got somewhat more consistent for the Metal Gear series after MGS3. Metal Gear Solid 4, 5, and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance all consistently got 18+ from PEGI for understandable reasons (e.g. using Blade Mode to slice and dice living people, etc.). Only its PSP entry, Peace Walker, got some weirdness when the BBFC gave it a 15+ and PEGI stuck to its 18+ rating. Series creator Hideo Kojima wanted it to be a teen-friendly MGS game, but while it met that criteria for Japan and the US, it didn't work for Europe.

Then again, it seems PEGI has changed their minds on Metal Gear as a whole. On top of re-rating MGS1 and MGS3, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 gave them a reason to re-rate Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Both it and its Substance upgrade were rated 16+ back in the early 2000s. Now, it has an 18+ whether fans bought the Master Collection as a whole or got MGS2 separately. Maybe Vamp's bloodthirsty antics gave them second thoughts 20+ years later.

5 Tomb Raider 1-2-3 Remastered

The Times, They Are A-Changing

In the past, the likes of the ESRB were on the watch for realistic depictions of violence, like the digitized actors in Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. They looked more like "real people," so their violence was surely worse than a polygonal Lara Croft blasting away at mercenaries and monsters in Tomb Raider. The game was bloodier than anything in Night Trap, but as long as Lara kept her clothes on, everything was considered T for Teen Friendly. The same applied to Europe, with ELSPA and the USK giving Tomb Raider 1 a 15+ and 16+ rating respectively.

The same applied to its sequels, Tomb Raider 2 and 3. But their recent re-releases in Tomb Raider 1-2-3 Remastered got 18+/M ratings across the board from the ESRB, PEGI, USK, and other boards, despite essentially being the same old games with a visual upgrade. Maybe the boards have gotten more vigilant, as the notorious but comparatively tame Night Trap has since been rated down to a 12+ via its 25th Anniversary Release. As eyebrow-raising as TR's new ratings can be, they may have a point with other games.

4 Assassin’s Creed Revelations

Britain, Germany, and Australia Find a PEGI 18+ Game Suitable for Teens

That wouldn’t be the first nor last snafu. Alongside ELSPA, the UK’s British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rated games from 1986 right up to 2013, when they officially passed video game classifications lower than an R18 rating (used for pornographic material) to PEGI. Given the BBFC were the same people that banned nunchucks and the word "ninja" from British media up to 1999, that sounds like a good thing.

But they chilled out at the start of the 21st century. They allowed both ninjas and nunchucks just in time for the Ninja Gaiden reboot and SoulCalibur respectively. They also gave Assassin’s Creed: Revelations a 15+ rating for its violence, gore, and mild sexual themes in 2011. Germany and Australia, usually strict about those features, gave it their own 16 and 15+ ratings. But when PEGI re-rated the game, they gave it an 18, more on par with the ESRB's M-rating and Japan’s CERO Z-rating.

3 Mass Effect

Game Is Considered Suitable for Pre-Teens and Adults Only At the Same Time

The most infamous case of the BBFC/PEGI taste divide was Bioware’s first entry in their seminal sci-fi action RPG series. Mass Effect was violent, occasionally bloody, had some bad language, and bits of light nudity for Shepard's softcore romancing of their crew. The BBFC felt this was tame enough for a 12, basically the UK’s equivalent of a T-rating. New Zealand’s OFLC and Brazil’s ClassInd felt the same with their R13 and 14 ratings respectively.

PEGI disagreed, giving it a full 18 rating. However, this gave British game stores a problem as they would end up with both the old BBFC-rated games and the new PEGI-rated ones in stock at the same time. If a 12yr old wanted to buy Mass Effect, they'd have to decide whether to follow the BBFC rating or the PEGI one. At best, they'd have a customer annoyed they can't buy a game suitable for them, and at worst, their employer would suffer a massive fine for selling mature content to minors.

2 Limbo

Game Yo-Yos Between 16+ and 18+ Depending on Platform

The trouble only continued with the horror puzzle-platformer Limbo. The graphics were much simpler than Mass Effect with its black and white shades. Yet the hazards, monsters, and subsequent interactions with both could be quite brutal. The BBFC gave it a 12 on its PC release, which was more in line with the ESRB’s T-rating. But then the BBFC upped it to 18 for the PS3 and Xbox 360. PEGI also gave it an 18+ when they re-rated the ports.

Then, when the game was re-released for the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, they toned it back down to a 16. While PEGI was swinging Limbo up and down like a yo-yo, other territories were much more consistent. Australia, New Zealand, and Japan gave it their equivalent of the M-rating right from the start, while North America remained the lightest, sticking with the T-rating across all platforms.

1 Sega Casino and Other Gambling Games

PEGI Makes Casino Games Go Bust

One of the ways people can learn about another culture’s taboos is to see what upsets their ratings boards. Japan’s CERO will deem any game with bare nipples on breasts pornographic unless rectified. The ESRB is notoriously more fearful of sex and nudity than blood and gore. PEGI, representing (most of) an entire continent, revealed its own bugbear when they cracked down on gambling minigames.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Super Mario 64 DS, and every Pokemon game from Red/Blue to Diamond/Pearl went from a 3+ rating to 12+. Because of this crackdown, subsequent European Pokemon releases got rid of their gambling games just to stay child-friendly in the region. Sega Casino, Golden Nugget Casino DS, and Texas Hold ‘Em Poker had no chance and got a full 18+. By contrast, Germany gave Sega Casino their version of a G-rating. After years of being considered prudish, it seems the Germans got the last laugh with this rating.