ESRB And PEGI Announce They Will Continue To Assign Ratings Remotely Amid Coronavirus Situation

Last week, we reported that the Japanese games ratings board CERO will be temporarily shutting down in light of the ongoing Coronavirus situation.

Recently, its American counterpart the ESRB and European counterpart PEGI has announced that they will still be continuing their operations during this difficult time, except they will be working remotely. You can check out their official statements below:

ESRB

Thanks to a good deal of advance planning, since March 16 ESRB has been operating remotely due to the COVID-19 outbreak. We have seen no delay in assigning ratings. We will continue to assign ratings remotely for as long as required.

PEGI

In short: yes, we are currently working remotely with minimal impact on our operations. When this situation started to unfold across Europe a couple of weeks ago, we quickly found a way to continue our daily operations by working remotely. Given that PEGI (in Brussels) works with two independent administrators that are located in The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and they deal with publishers all over the world that we do not have to meet in person, cooperating remotely has always been part of our daily routine. But now it happens from homes instead of different offices.

We informed the companies using the PEGI system that, until local authorities announce a change to the current measures, we will be working like this. But until now, the impact of the pandemic and the resulting measures has been minimal.

With this in mind, it seems that games in the US and Europe will still be receiving ratings as usual despite the ongoing Coronavirus situation worldwide. This is good news for US and European developers, as several Japanese developers will be having their releases pushed back due to not being able to receive ratings from CERO.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.