Summary
The tale of the ESRB’s formation is a pretty famous one, as bloody efforts likeMortal KombatandNight Trapscared 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, butthese games surprisingly received PEGI’s 18 rating.
Updated on June 25, 2025 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.
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 ofHalf-Lifegot rid of the blood and replaced the Marines with robots untilthe uncut version was approved in 2017. They also censored the Nazis and Nazi imagery from games, effectively removing them fromWolfenstein 2until 2018, where they would now be considered on artistic merit case by case.
So, when they came acrossYesterday Origins, the prequel-sequel that revealed whyYesterday’sprotagonist 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.
Before PEGI was formed, games were subject to separate ratings boards across Europe. For example,Metal Gear Solidreceived 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 likeResident 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.
When people sayMetal Gear Solid 3is the pinnacle of theMetal Gearseries, they’re specifically talking aboutMetal 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 ofSnake Eateralready 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.
Things got somewhat more consistent for theMetal Gearseries afterMGS3.Metal Gear Solid 4, 5, andMetal Gear Rising: Revengeanceall 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-friendlyMGSgame, 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 onMetal Gearas a whole. On top of re-ratingMGS1andMGS3,Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1gave them a reason to re-rateMetal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Both it and itsSubstanceupgrade were rated 16+ back in the early 2000s. Now, it has an 18+ whether fans bought theMaster Collectionas a whole or gotMGS2separately. Maybe Vamp’s bloodthirsty antics gave them second thoughts 20+ years later.
In the past, the likes of the ESRB were on the watch for realistic depictions of violence, like the digitized actors inMortal KombatandNight Trap. They looked more like “real people,” so their violence was surely worse than a polygonal Lara Croft blasting away at mercenaries and monsters inTomb Raider. The game was bloodier than anything inNight 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 givingTomb Raider 1a 15+ and 16+ rating respectively.
The same applied to its sequels,Tomb Raider 2and3. But their recent re-releases inTomb Raider 1-2-3 Remasteredgot 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 tameNight Traphas since been rated down to a 12+ via its 25th Anniversary Release. As eyebrow-raising asTR’s new ratings can be, they may have a point with other games.
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 theNinja Gaidenreboot andSoulCaliburrespectively. They also gaveAssassin’s Creed: Revelationsa 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.
The most infamous case of the BBFC/PEGI taste divide was Bioware’s first entry in their seminal sci-fi action RPG series.Mass Effectwas violent, occasionally bloody, had some bad language, and bits of light nudity forShepard’s softcore romancingof 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 buyMass 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.
The trouble only continued with the horror puzzle-platformerLimbo.The graphics were much simplerthanMass Effectwith 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 swingingLimboup 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.
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 everyPokemongame fromRed/BluetoDiamond/Pearlwent from a 3+ rating to 12+. Because of this crackdown, subsequent EuropeanPokemonreleases got rid of their gambling games just to stay child-friendly in the region.Sega Casino,Golden Nugget Casino DS, andTexas Hold ‘Em Pokerhad no chance and got a full 18+. By contrast, Germany gaveSega Casinotheir version of a G-rating. After years of being considered prudish, it seems the Germans got the last laugh with this rating.
