20 years of PEGI – a testament to its value

We wrote earlier this year that 2023 is a big one for PEGI (Pan-European Game Information), a video game rating system that aims to educate, advise and empower players, parents and guardians on age-appropriate content in video games. On September 27 PEGI held an event where it welcomed participants from the European institutions and representatives of national authorities, NGOs and the video games industry in Brussels to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

In the course of 20 years, more than 2,600 companies signed up to the PEGI Code of Conduct and nearly 40,000 age rating licenses were issued for video games that are distributed in 40 countries across Europe. SGA decided to help the flow of the Serbian part of these numbers by localizing the official PEGI website into Serbian.

To celebrate two decades of PEGI, an important milestone in the European video games ecosystem, we have talked to Dirk Bosmans, PEGI Director General.

SGA: Congratulations on your 20 years of existence! How far would you say PEGI has come in the last two decades in achieving its mission?

Dirk: You could argue that PEGI itself was the achievement of a mission: there was a clear request in 2002 by European institutions to set up a harmonised system for the age classification of video games through self-regulation. The sector responded very quickly and in 2003 PEGI was rolled out across Europe.

Our mission since then is to help parents make informed decisions when buying video games for children. Although our awareness figures are good and they continue to increase, it is a work that is never done. We will have to continue to raise awareness about the importance of PEGI and make sure that parents can find the information that they need.

SGA: Why is it important for a video game to have a PEGI age rating? How does having it benefit the game’s developers? 

Dirk: Parents, especially those not familiar with video games themselves, have a lot of questions when their children take up playing games as a hobby. Without proper information, such questions can easily turn into concerns or incorrect assumptions. By providing parents with information about a game’s content before the child starts playing, they can be comfortable with video games being their hobby. Developers can benefit from PEGI because it immediately provides a solution for an entire continent (with the exception of Germany, where the USK had already been founded and legally enforced before PEGI started). At the same time, the video games industry can present itself as a responsible sector, which decreases the urgency for more regulation.

SGA: What has PEGI done to celebrate its anniversary?

Dirk: PEGI has the enthusiastic support of the European institutions, but it is important to keep them informed about our work. We felt that our 20-year anniversary was a good moment to emphasise the value of PEGI and to show them how we have remained a stable force in a rapidly and constantly changing environment. At the same time, it is actually business as usual: we have a neverending stream of games to classify and a constant influx of new parents that need to be educated about video games and PEGI. For that we use our app and our website, which is now available in 25 languages, including Serbian.

SGA: How many games have used PEGI so far? 

Dirk: Our administrators have issued more than 35,000 age rating licenses in the span of twenty years. And you can add tens of thousands of mobile games and other apps as well with a PEGI rating. Every game released for the platforms of Epic, Google, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony is required to have a PEGI rating in order to be released in Europe, so we can provide broad coverage across the market with our age labels. This means that if a game is made in Serbia for these platforms, it will certainly have a PEGI rating as well. If a Serbian-made game is released on a disc, it will almost certainly also have a PEGI rating, because the sales of physical products are regulated in many European countries, which means they must have a PEGI rating.

SGA: What would be your message to Serbian game developers who are yet to use your system?

Dirk: Don’t hesitate to ask questions and sign up to become a member of PEGI. The industry will be better equipped for the future if it speaks with one voice, and PEGI is one of the channels that can magnify that voice.

From a practical perspective: try to establish as early as possible in the development process what your game’s target audience is. If you want to make sure that younger children can play your game, then you’ll have to make sure the game is appropriate for them, which may mean that you have to avoid certain content. If you value the liberty to include in your game whatever you want, that is fine too, but just be aware that this can mean that your game is not appropriate for everyone, or it is for adults only. Making that choice is essential for minor protection, and by doing that early in the process, you prevent unexpected surprises further down the line.

SGA: What are PEGI’s goals for the future, and even the next 20 years?

Dirk: To make sure that parents can still count on the information that PEGI provides, even though the games industry will be changing a lot in the next 20 years. This means we will have to maintain a dialogue with and between all the stakeholders: we have to listen carefully to the video games industry, to governments and public authorities, but also to consumers. If we do that, our solutions will be a benefit to all.

SGA: Thank you for your answers! We wish you the best of luck in the 20 years to come!