Because to be honest, the only reason they exist is because of the physical retail market.
That's it. No one's forced to use them for online distribution, so effectively... if stores like Walmart stopped selling games and online retailers entirely replaced them, we could theoretically drop the system completely.
Yes some people might complain... but what they gonna do? An online service could theoretically just not have them for games and movies altogether and rely on other means of filtering, and the likes of the ESRB would be absolutely powerless to do sod all about it. Or the makers could give it away/sell it on their website, since you pretty much can't enforce these ratings on things given away on private or company websites.
So yeah, in today's era of digital distribution and the internet, could the whole idea of age ratings die off?
Most of the time, when you buy games digital, you have to confirm your age. Because the rating still applies. That's how it is on Steam anyway, on consoles the system probably checks your account to see your age. So yeah, I don't see ratings going anywhere.
I don't think they will. I mean, it's in the best interest of game companies to provide this information to parents. And I dunno the specific laws, but the ratings are taken very seriously in some countries, with entire games getting banned from being sold and whatnot... I don't think the vast majority of the game industry could really get away with not having their games rated, unless something super drastic were to happen to the way games are released and sold in general.
Being someone that studies this, I honestly don't think that they'll drop age ratings. They're quite important because they help label games and help organise them into different groups. Obviously this is different to target audiences, but it's important to have age ratings because of legal issues. Another point is that game companies could be labelled irresponsible and unsafe if they're knowingly allowing children to play games that aren't made for them, and have a higher age rating than what is suitable for them. Young children can be quite impressionable, and a lot of things they see when they're younger help influence what kind of people they have in the future. If you allow a 10 year old child to play GTA, then it's likely that they could pick something up from the gameplay. I mean, there's a chance that they won't be affected at all, but it's likely that they can be. I mean, I was roleplaying The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion when I was 10, so who knows what other people can pick up from games.
I also don't think that hard copies of games are going to dissapear any time soon because of different groups of people. Some people don't have the download speed to support heavy downloads for games like Shadows of Mordor, and unless they find some miraculous way to make games smaller whilst maintaining the same graphical intensity, games are only going to get bigger and bigger. I mean, hopefully there's going to be faster download speed and better HDDs as we get into the future. But only time will tell
They're certainly not going anywhere in Australia. We have a whole Government funded body assigned to watch/play/read various forms of media and determine what ages they're appropriate for (including digital games, though I believe iOS and Play Store have avoided it for a while due to some loophole, but Steam definitely gets it), even restricting some media from sale unless you show ID.
But yeah, I think Nospar hit the nail on the head with it being there to guide people's purchases, which is what I feel they're best suited for.
The only problem with the age rating is that parents don't pay attention/don't care about them. I can't tell you how much it pisses me off to see a parent at GameStop with their child who looks like they're probably nine or ten holding a copy of Medal of Duty and the person says, "This game is rated M for *enter reasons here*" and the parent doesn't give a crap. Then there was a time where I went to GameStop and a different parent was COMPLAINING that the game was "too violent" and that "it cusses too much" and the person said, "You were told this before buying the game, it's a requirement," and she had the nerve to say it was THEIR fault. I held my tongue, but that was so stupid.
The system was made because parents complained about violence and things like that. It won't go away just like that.
