Ramsdale: Were not giving up on PEGI

EA’s UK VP and general manager Keith Ramsdale has revealed his disappointment over the Byron Review’s scaling back of PEGI’s powers – and vowed to convince the Government of the body’s importance.

With the Review published and backed by PM Gordon Brown, the Government now moves into a period of public consultation on how the recommendations should be put into practice – and is set to invite publishers to put forward their views.

Ramsdale told The Guardian:

EA believes PEGI is the most suitable system for rating video games. EA and the wider industry have and will engage with the appropriate Government departments to ensure the right decisions are made in the best interest of the British public.”

He added:

As an Industry we have been unanimously clear that there should be a single system and that system should be PEGI. PEGI is an efficient system to help people make appropriate content choices for players of all ages.

A Nielsen study showed PEGI has 94 per cent awareness with the UK game-playing public and it follows a tougher regime than the BBFC.

In 2007 PEGI gave 47 titles an 18 rating but BBFC downgraded 21 of those to 15 or less. We believe that UK consumers will be far better served with this system and this route would offer the most practical, efficient and compliant system.”

Byron has recommended that the BBFC increases its powers to have its classifications on the front of all games, rating ‘12′, ‘15′ and ‘18′ games internally.

Despite proposing that PEGI’s ratings appear on the back of all boxes, she has effectively asked to reduce the body’s responsibilities – with it only rating 3+ and 7+ titles.