Fortnite Announces Age Ratings Update, Restricts Cosmetics

They literally put an age rating on any cosmetic with a visible gun, or are slightly on the scary side. And no characters like doom guy aren’t age restricted, it’s a freaking shooter lmao. I don’t know why they didn’t just tie all this to the parental controls, then there would have been no issue.

It’s annoying how this game is trying to slowly become a Roblox lol.

People compare this to Roblox, yet Roblox is pretty unrestricted compared to this. They allow accessories, avatars, and clothing that could raise eyebrows and allow user to make questionable avatars in a game technically for all ages. There are also some gory or violent games on Roblox.

Meanwhile, Fortnite restricts a character with a gun in a game...about guns.

Sounds like a self-censorship... (Self-)Censorship sucks, and age rating systems sucks too.

I still don't understand the concept of censoring visible weaponry when the vast majority of the game is shooting people. With guns.
Also strange how characters from certain adult properties get a pass.

A game people dislike is self-sabatoging itself. Yay!

The whole thing is obviously an attempt from Epic to avoid age rating the whole game higher by age rating parts of it higher. It allows them to draw an imaginary line between characters with visible weaponry and the overall content of the game and say 'look those are two different things' when they aren't. Obviously people who have an issue with visible guns most likely think the whole game should be rated higher since it's a game about shooting people with guns.

Fortnite does what United States doesn’t - add gun regulation. 😂

Sounds like the class action lawsuit against social media companies’ handling of minors has Epic very spooked. So they are attempting to preemptively put in place the things others were sued for not doing.

The game is rated T, but a large portion of the population is under 13 because Epic does very, very little to prevent account creation. At the same time they somewhat actively court that age demographic.

@Zimon off topic but your profile picture is the cutest I've ever seen😀😀😀

Don’t worry Mikel myers and his slasher knife are still kid friendly

Too little, too late. Moan about the age restrictions all you want, the fact is it should have been done already.

Makes no difference in my house anyway.

Absolutely no way my kids are ever playing this game. Epic aren't getting their greasy hands on their pocket money!

All the amazing games and experiences that exist... more than any child could play in an entire childhood if they delve deep into gaming history. Yet they spend all their time (and pocket money) on this rubbish. I feel bad for them, I really do!

bro i can’t even play as Agent Peely anymore. a FLIPPIN’ SPY BANANA. what the heck, Epic?

@Vyacheslav333 As a Skullgirls fan, I strongly agree. Not even self censorship, just censorship in general

@dcon11 Agent Peely is restricted??? Free my man; he didn’t do NOTHIN!!

@OwenGamer22 Second Skullgirls fan expressing disappointment and rage here.

There is no aspect of modern society that makes me laugh harder then how in a game where the goal is to murder everyone indiscriminately, where you carry around a gun and shot everyone you see, being sold in a country where the NUMBER ONE cause of death in Children (19% of all deaths) is BEING SHOT ...

They make sure you can't see anyone's cleavage or panties because that they want to make the game "safe" for kids.

@OwenGamer22 @Vyacheslav333

Self-censorship isn't a thing.

You are not obligated to include sexualized images in your art work. You are not obligated to include violet images in your art work. If you make a creative decision to not include any sexual or volant imagery, that's exercising your right to creative freedom.

At that point, giving them a hard time because they made that creative chose actually becomes, by definition, censorship. You are trying to tell someone they should compromise their creative freedom because you don't approve of the content they are creating ... which is censorship.

More over, this is the exact opposite. This is Epic telling it's artists to KEEP MAKING the most sexualized and over the top skins they can think of, and rather then impose limits on what they can and can not draw, they are just going to age restrict some outfits to avoid public outcry. This is being done to AVIOD censorship.

I don't think we should ever take creative freedom away from artists. If you read my comment above, you'll see I think this whole thing is silly, and if it was government body or any external force MAKING them do it, I would be strong against it. But they have every right to control their own artwork and who has access to it.

I know an artist who worked on Xenoblades 3. The art team made the decision to move away from overly sexual characters because, while they all love sexy time, they were just kinda sick of it because that's what they were drawing most of their lives. They asked Monolith and Nintendo for more creative control and they gave it to them, allowing them to draw more realistic characters if they wanted to. But the incel and culture war crowd all cried CENCORSHIP! They blamed Nintendo, when in reality Nintendo actually told the artists to make more sexual images and they artists told Nintendo they didn't really want to.

It's really stupid, because if we keep this up, artists are going to face pressure to distort their creative vision from all sides.

There goes your player base ....

Heard my kids moaning about this, and they've gone from being daily Fortnite players to going back to Minecraft. Not too bothered, the less of their pocket money they waste on v-bucks, the better.

@OwenGamer22 Oh god don’t remind me. Censoring it was the least of there problems IMO, it still doesn’t change Fillias freaking age, idk why they didn’t just change it.

Epic is just paving the way to have E and M in the same platform. Much like Netflix or Amazon can have PG and R next to each other..... nothing to see here, move along....

@OwenGamer22 Yeah. I hate what the new IP owners did to Skullgirls 2nd Encore. They ruined the game. I completed Story Mode last week by all characters in the default roster. The last character remaining was Fukua... I'm not going to buy DLCs and support the game any further. Now, for me and for others, the game is dead.

@HeadPirate «You are not obligated to include sexualized images in your art work.»
Yes. But, nobody forces you to make sexualised characters in the games as well.
«They blamed Nintendo, when in reality Nintendo actually told the artists to make more sexual images and they artists told Nintendo they didn't really want to.»
Well, sounds like you are talking about Nintendo of Japan, 'cause they are the ones who getting "complete" games. Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe still censors Nintendo games, you know? Famicom Detective Club remakes, for example.

@Vyacheslav333

Why would I be talking about NOA, a publisher, when I'm talking about developing games? Obviously I'm talking about Nintendo of Japan (or, as it's officially known, just "Nintendo"), the game developer.

I never said censorship isn't a thing. Censorship is absolutely a thing.

I said self censorship isn't a thing.

When NOA changed Lin Lee's optional clothing in Xenoblades X because they were uncomfortable with a 13 year old having a sexy bunny outfit, that's censorship because NOA is not the developer, they are the local publisher and they are removing the content because they don't approve of it.

When the creative team decides to not included sexual characters in 3, that's not "self censorship", it's a creative chose we should respect. It's the developer choosing the art direction of a project.

@HeadPirate Well, okay.

@HeadPirate
I'm curious if some of the more sexual designs in XB2 could also have been a result of there being a lot of guest designers for the various Blades you could unlock, since it felt like the more extreme cases came from some of those.

I remember Xenoblade X also removed one of the sliders from the character creation in the western release which felt like an odd choice since it had been in games from franchises which were far more mainstream than Xenoblade was at least at the time, when the series had gotten smash rep but still felt a lot less known than it was nowadays (somewhat off-topic but still hoping for Xenoblade X DE on "switch-2", i loved that game and it would be great to see it on a more powerful system with no need for the data packs.)

@Snatcher It’s ironic because I do not care about Filia’s changes, as with a lot of people against the update. I’m most upset about removal of guest art / crowdfunded content (Russian announcer), Big Band’s intro cutscene, and what they did to the Black Egrets

@Vyacheslav333 it sucks because they literally could have made these changes optional through a sensitive content toggle a la Bayonetta 3. We could simply have everybody be excited for Marie if that happened, but since it’s mandatory for everyone, the fan base is now divided and THIS is the note we end on…

I may play Marie / go through her story mode when she drops (and maybe rewatch the new characters’ story modes with voice acting) but after that, Skullgirls isn’t getting another minute of playtime from me

@OwenGamer22 Oh no I don’t care about them either, I just think it’s silly they think it chances anything when it doesn’t.

All that you mentioned is really what grinds my gears, some of that mess was paid for, and they are just taking it out? So silly lmao.

@Mgalens

I couldn't tell you for sure, my friend only worked on 3. You're obviously going to give direction to your guest artists, and given that one of Xenoblade's core themes is sexual awakening, it's very possible that played a huge role in design.

I'm torn on a a remake of X. I would love to see it personally, but Yasuyuki Honne has said numerous times he doesn't want it to happen because he would rather focus on new stories.

... And then he made the primary theme of Xenoblades 3 that people who just want to replay the same stories over and over are the absolute greatest form of evil and need to be removed from existence at all cost ...

So, I don't know, hard to call myself a "fan" while waiting something the creator of the series is so passionately against. I want to respect his wishes. But playing on the Wii U is not ideal!

Sadly, they can't just farm out of a low-level conversion because the dual screen integration is at a code level (which is why no one developed for Wii U), and a remake would basically start from scratch.

@HeadPirate
From what i remember Tetsuya Takahashi mentioned that he would really love to bring the game to switch but the issue would be money saying that due to being such a "massive game" it would be difficult.

though the creators have definitely not been averse to ports and remasters due to the original game ending up ported twice (3ds then switch plus a re release via the wiiu eshop) though i imagine if X did end up getting one then the most likely date would probably be around 2025 due to the anniversery (with xenoblade 3ds coming out years after the original and DE coming out 10 years after the original)

Really though in general one of the reasons why im hoping gaming can better "future proof" itself is so that games can be preserved easier which is why im all for full BC on the next system.

plus with the Xenoblade X story it definitely felt like they had more story to tell with it considering how many plot threads were unresolved, it definitely felt like they were setting up something. though sadly ambitious stories that got cut short due to outside issues feels like something that is unfortunately common with the devs/artists/writers, so its nice that after Gears, Saga and X that Xenoblade 2 and 3 alongside its DLCs felt like their ambitions really paid off.

@OwenGamer22 Yeah...
Understood.

@Mgalens

There have been a few translated lines and quotes that made it to English speaking sites, and that's one of them. But a charry picked line shouldn't be taken of an accurate representation of 20+ years of Japanese language interviews. Even the "I would love to think about a X port" line is a completely out of context. It's actually from him refusing to even answer the question, saying he's too focused on new stories to worry about previous works.

And if you look at his career, it's basically been him refusing to make numbered sequels or remakes. He founded Monolith because he refused to work on a numbered sequel because he wanted to write stories about new characters, not reuse old ones. This is where he's shown at lest some wiggle-room, as he reuses characters a lot now without anyone having to twist his arm.

He absolutely refused to port Xenoblades 1 to the DS and didn't, but It was farmed out to Monster games. He actually has talked about how that port happened because not only didn't it take any resources away from the new stories he was telling, but it allowed him to hire more people to put on those projects because it was basically free money.

The XCDE was also a special case, with Nintendo EDP doing the port while Monolith did Future Connected, a new story that Tetsuya Takahashi wanted to tell. Nintendo insisted on the re-release instead of a stand-alone game. That's why the project went forward.

I think your disconnect is that you need to separate the development and creative teams, who all have a vision and stories they want to tell, from Nintendo. Nintendo is the publisher and if they had it their way, would happily release Xenoblades Definitive Championship Turbo Rainbow edition if it could make them a few dollars.

I totally get the coupium. This is easily my favorite series and Nia is my favorite character in gaming. I would love to think of a world where we get Xenoblade 2 remakes and remasters until the end of time. But it's just not the world Tetsuya Takahashi wants. He flat out said he done with the previous games and asked his fans to respect that and come with him on his next journey.

I'm inclined to do so.

But hey, at the end of the day, it's Nintendo's calls, not his. So who knows what actually happens. I just personally don't want to see Nintendo force that man who's given so much to me in the forms of stories I love to make something he doesn't want to make.

@HeadPirate
Going by the quotes from the famitsu interview and the artbook it definitely felt like Takahashi and his team were very passionate and very hands-on about the Definitive edition project, there's a translated version of said famitsu interview on this very site.
(forgot what the policy was about linking even regarding linking to this site so i wont link it directly but the articles title is "Monolith Soft's Takahashi Tetsuya Talks Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition In This Translated Famitsu Interview")

Naturally if a Xenoblade X remaster did happen i hope it would be a result of a similar level of passion and not just an obligation.

(the sources of the quotes regarding wanting to play X which i was thinking of were from the 4gamer and USgamer interviews)