Friday 29 July 2016

PEGIXIT?


Well, what a crazy few weeks that was!  The UK decided to exit from Europe and the Prime Minister decided to exit full stop.  What is going on?

Here at the GRA, however, life and business carried on pretty much as usual though we did receive questions about our role and whether, as a result of Brexit, PEGI would become defunct.

The answer to that is we believe nothing will change.  You see, PEGI is nothing to do with the machinations of the EU. To quote directly from the PEGI spokesperson:

PEGI s.a., as an independent, not-for-profit organisation, is not part of the institutions of the European Union and as such, any outcome of the referendum would not have an immediate impact on our labels being present on game products sold in the United Kingdom. In fact, PEGI already reaches beyond the borders of the European Union, since PEGI labels have appeared (from the very beginning) on games in Norway and Switzerland and are quite prominent these days on the Turkish market as well.

The video game publishers industry, as founder of the system, is obviously quite happy with PEGI as a pan-European solution and the PEGI system is officially recognised by many governments of the 38 countries where it is active. In some countries, it has become part of the legislative framework, and the United Kingdom is such an example: PEGI became the legally enforcable rating system for video games in 2012, when the Digital Economy Act was introduced. For this reason, a potential exit from the EU would not have a direct impact on PEGI.


So as you can see, we’re firmly intending to ‘remain’ and PEGI ratings will continue to grace the covers of UK video games for the foreseeable future.