The new role-playing game “Starfield” (PC, Xbox) from Bethesda has now received a first age assessment in Australia. The game will be rated 18+. This restrictive recommendation is not due to the fact that the SF role-playing game is so liberal, but because of a lot of violence and even more drugs.
Where does the assessment come from? The “Australian Classification Board” issued an age assessment for Starfield. This assessment was made on March 15, 2023 (via classification).
The age recommendation of the Australian rating is “R – 18+”, the second strictest rating that the board can give. Anyone getting Starfield should be able to present an ID that proves their age. Only “X” is stricter than “R”.
Too many drugs in Starfield lead to “18+” rating
Why does it get this high rating? The rating is mainly due to the “High Impact” assessment for drug abuse.
The label for the game also mentions “Interactive Drug Use” – players can willingly choose to consume drugs.
“High Impact” on the “18+” rating of Starfield is also influenced by the factor “violence”.
The authority assesses a medium influence of the role-playing game on the factors “language” (i.e., how many swear words are used) and themes.
What about nudity and sex? They have only a minor influence on the rating: For “nudity”, Starfield receives a green sticker for “little influence” – there is no sex in the game at all.
What does our rating board say? It has not yet rated Starfield.
Already with The Elder Scrolls Online, the PEGI rated “18+”
Does Bethesda know about these issues? Yes, indeed. Already with “The Elder Scrolls Online” there was a debate about the age assessment of the game in 2015. At that time, the age recommendation was raised to 18 after an update.
A new legal system in an update of the game had led to a new assessment of the age recommendation. At that time, the German community manager Kai Schober stated that this was the first time a game had been reassessed after a patch.
As the site PCGamesN mentions, it’s relatively normal for fans of Bethesda’s role-playing games that drug use occurs in the role-playing games: But in Fallout 4, the use of Jet or Psycho was only considered by the Australian authority as having “moderate impact”, while Skyrim lacks the assessment completely, although everyone knows how the Khajiit there are about Skooma.
This is how Khajiit justify their drug addiction in The Elder Scrolls Online
