You clearly don't get it... it's not a good thing.
If a kid bought a game rated M digitally with no rating physically, I can't be sued. It's enforced at a store level. It's not a law.
By signing up to have ratings you are also subjected to fines, a lot of these fines are expensive and can easily put a developer/publisher out of business.
Increasing the price wouldn't be consumer friendly and would be asking us to sit on more stock that is now more expensive if it doesn't sell.
I agree with Doug and Josh on this, this is most definitely NOT a good thing for them or any other small publisher.
Having real UPC codes actually registered to LRG (like every other dev out there actually does) and ESRB on the cover... that makes these releases as official as any other retail game.
So you're one of THOSE PEOPLE. 'Nuff said. Not even going to try and debate this point, OCD people are people I try and avoid debating with, cause it's a waste of my time to make a worthwhile relevant point, which I'll never be able to convince you otherwise.
The ESRB was FORMED by the industry itself rather than the government coming in and policing game content. It's a good thing overall, though I think they could do better with their rates considering the size of the game market considering they are a non-profit. I guess, though, with more serious fees and even more serious fines, it makes it important to make sure people are legitimate in how they declare the content of their games.
What is THIS? This sounds like a PSA for the ESRB.
When they start deviating from their edict and becoming a policing arm and for profit entity over an organization that up to this point was to HELP the industry, now starts to become a liability TO the industry, those two things don't go hand in hand.
I've supported LRG for a long time now and while I don't always agree with how Doug and Josh do things, I respect them because of what they're doing (and not necessary how it's done sometimes).
Even though there's plenty of pretenders popping up around the world doing this (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) they did it first and do a pretty good job of it.
We've already seen the first casualty of this new policy go into effect with Ruiner from SRG, I was really looking forward to it then *poof* cancelled just like that because it was cost prohibitive to publish. And I suspect more games will be denied this treatment to get published physically because of short sided-ness from this group who REPRESENTS the industry.
From my position as a consumer, this stinks too, because now we have less choices because of the rampant interference from a industry formed group who's acting as a govt. watch dog now, they've become as corrupt as the thing they were formed to protect us from.
Hopefully LRG will be able to team with companies not restricted by this requirement so they can still stand by their original mission to release physical copies of digital games that will disappear forever if not given this treatment, and it'll be a massive shame if this mission doesn't get to play out as it should because of bureaucracy and greed that are now showing their ugly heads.
/gets off soapbox
