Same game, different age: Platform ratings versus board ratings of video games on Steam in Germany

Creative Commons License

Erden A.

SSRN, ss.1-35, 2026 (Hakemsiz Dergi)

Özet

Since November 2024, Steam has shown German customers only games with a valid age rating, mostly rated by Valve from developers' content surveys rather than by the German self-regulatory body, the Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK). Germany thus allows a same-game comparison of platform and board ratings under the same law and age bands. We linked German rating data for the full Steam catalogue (180,201 games) to the USK's title database. For 909 games with a traceable board decision, the two ratings matched for 47.5%, whereas the USK and Pan European Game Information ratings of these games agreed far more closely (quadratically weighted kappa 0.88, against 0.61 for Valve and the USK). When the ratings differed, Valve's was higher in 80.9% of cases (69.5% among 477 games not displaying an available USK label). Divergence was largest where Valve's survey recorded a more severe violence term than the board and for online interactivity, which alone yielded a Valve rating of 12; both processes linked the same descriptor terms to different age bands. In-game purchases were associated with higher Valve ratings mainly for USK decisions before 2023, which could not be attributed to the USK's inclusion of usage risks from 2023.