Assassin's Creed Mirage Is Not Adults Only, Ubisoft Confirms No Real Gambling

You'd think a game series about stabbing would already be rated Adults only

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the AO symbol before, and for some reason it looks rather pleasant. Not like that stern looking M for mature.

Fun to say out loud too. Makes you sound like a New Yorker. Ay-oh, watch it, I’m walkin’ here!

This weird hysteria in the US over 'adults only' really confuses me. Loads of video games are rated 18+ in the UK and Europe. I see loads of bbfc/pegi '18' rated games.

there will be a minigame with actuall real life money involved and the possible prizes will be NFT's...

they already added NFT's in 1 of their games.

AO Let' go AO Let's go

@Fyz306903 PEGI 18 is seen as the equivalent to M even tho it’s the highest rating here and is historically given to games that get a T, M and AO rating alike.

Sony and Xbox don’t publish AO games.
Reminds me of seeing Forspoken rated M for gaming. Have a screenshot to prove it too lol.

Would’t surprise me with them.
They said about NFT and, more generally revenue methods:

“ we are testing ground with some games that... we will see, if they really answer a player's need, [and then they] will happen on the market. But we are still in the research mode, ”

Basically bumbling around tying not to look like greedy arsehats

@Jaz007
Yes, and that should really change. Then we won’t get all this censorship, or at least the option of a full version alongside.

I think there's little chance it's a mistake. Rating pending is common, so if it wasn't rated yet they'd use that. If it ends up releasing with a different rating, that'll probably be because they edited the game and resubmitted to try to get a lower rating, not because this AO rating was mistakenly put up.

I definitely think this a mix up or something. I can't imagine what it would be for if it was actually in the game. Especially since this is supposed to be a return to the roots so to speak. Last I checked we didn't gamble real money in classic AC. 😄

Though I'm sure there will be dlc costumes and whatnot like usual with AC these days.

Jesus if it is real gambling. Or perhaps some greed driven market scheme or something with them still grasping at the failed NFTs,.... It's cringe, but par for the course for major studios these days and apparently the entire craft as a whole.

Here's looking at you Sony, ND, Rockstar, Microsoft, Nintendo,...... Well damn..... Listing them out is pointless because it's literally the entire gaming ecosystem.

Greed driven iterative nonsense, monetization of everything beyond initial purchase price, and regurgitate or copy the same content over and over; finding new ways to hype people into paying for it again...

@Fyz306903
That's because for many countries classifications their 18+ is us American's rated M. Here in America the AO rating is typically reserved for pornographic content, as in pretty much every AO game is just porn. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo will not release AO rated games on their consoles as a result.

So predictable. The sign was there when we saw the game is not being sold at the usual full £59.99 RRP.

every gacha/lootbox mechanic should be labeled as “real gambling”. perhaps the ESRB finally caught up on that

If it does have any real world gambling it will be a definite no from me

@PegasusActual93 Americans aren't really adults till age 21 are they

Never understood the AO in North America rating when "Mature" already exists. Makes no sense.

@Would_you_kindly
Rated M means Mature, not Adult. Our M rating is recommended 17 and up but you can still access at a younger age under certain conditions. Similar to how R rated movies here are recommended 17 and up but can still be seen at the theatre with an adult present. Whereas with AO games and NC17 movies you cannot purchase unless you are 18 period.

They can go swivel, I was half done with them after Odyssey, totally done now.
Even if it turns out to be untrue and is some subscription thing instead with that and Infinity, it just seems they're always out to con and grift people.

@Fyz306903 That's the equilvalent to our "M" rating. AO is a step above that normally reserved only for porn games lol

Adults Only will kill sales, its a rating very few want. I'm willing to bet its a mistake, i can't see the monetisation being worse then Valhalla's.

@Fyz306903 We had AO games release on the 3DO. That said, I think it's important to remind those outside and even to many inside (anti-American movement) of America that we are not you.

Thats weird and funny at the same time.butt kids and whoever will find a way to play it regardless off if its adults only.haha.anyways i always enjoy the assassins creed games.word up son

Ubisoft wouldn't allow this game to be AO rated since you can't publish AO games on console due to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all refusing to publish AO content.

Oh but FIFA and other games with gacha systems are just fine. If you pay real money for fake money and then gamble that it’s just fine for kids. Makes no sense at all.

@Smiffy01 You deserve infinite likes for the amazing Ramones reference.

@thefourfoldroot1 Not really, I think not having hard porn on consoles is a good thing.

Ehmm ‘Mirage is set in Baghdad, so it wouldn’t be unusual for there to be some kind of in-universe minigames, potentially inspired by historical wagers or gambling games.’

I don’t think the place or time matters in any way in this case.
AC Syndicate was set in the late 18hundreds. Pretty sure they had some historical wagers & gambling back then.

Anyways no chance this remains. No platform holder apart from steam allows AO games. Also given they allowed for pre-orders to go live they must be confident the game will come to market so they just edit or remove whatever got flagged by the ESRB.

@RainbowGazelle @Fyz306903 What's the confusion? AO is for porn and even more extreme sets of gore. Stuff that is illegal for a kid to witness or be exposed to at the very least and reserved for Adult Sex Shops.

M means we see stuff that's reserved for PEGI18 even earlier at 17 (or younger with adult permission). It's pretty much like an R-rated movie here. A game being rated AO means dead on arrival in sales because of restricted access. Yeah, admittedly we're backwards in finding gore & violence more accepting to see than nudity.

Can we make all sports game that have real gambling also trated Ao?

@Fyz306903 when a game gets Ao rating in the US, big retail chains like Walmart and Target refuse to carry them, and those account for a huge count of physical game sales.

Needless to say, publishers have fought and lobbied their own self regulated rating groups to make sure no game that should be labeled Ao ever gets that rating.

i never seen an AO rating in my life , unless it’s a PC only game

Only a child would buy these things, but they don't have money so no problem.
I do love these things tho,, because it only bothers people with no self control.

@WadeIsInsane It's just because you already have the M rating. We only go up to 18 because that's enough. At 18, you're an adult. There's no need for another rating above that.

EDIT: Upon re-reading your comment, I didn't realise M was a suggestion, and that people younger can see/play stuff with adult permission. I guess the AO rating makes more sense now. The PEGI ratings are legally binding here.

I'm glad that the ESRB is being more strict with greedy practices in gaming.
I just wish they gave the NBA 2K games AO ratings because the microtransactions there are pretty much gambling, unless they stopped being so greedy with the casinos-in-all-but-name.

@WallyWest With real money or simulated money? 😆

@PegasusActual93 not exactly correct..grand theft auto,evil within,doom and doom eternal etc...there are loads of games that is deemed to be adult only content hence the 18+ certificate..sony and microsoft have never really battered an eyelid to content unless bowing down to peer pressure which dosnt happen (thank god) often..nintendo on the other hand.....

@Jaz007
Not that I’m talking about hard porn, but it’s already on everything with a web browser thus already in PS4. We are talking about games for adults though.

@Northern_munkey
All of the games you just mentioned were rated M here in the states. Not AO. AO rated games under the American ESRB are never released on consoles because the big 3 have all refused to release any software with an AO rating on their platforms as almost every AO rated game was rated as such because of pornographic content. None of the content in Doom, Grand Theft Auto or Evil Within would ever get a greater than M rating in the states or a R rating if they were movies. I don't get your argument. It seems everything here is confused as the AO rating only applies to North American territories. European and Asian territories 18+ classifications are equivalent to America's rated M.

To be fair, you're gambling on whether Assassin's Creed games are any good these days.

Real gambling?

So lootboxes, absurdly priced MTX, and NFT's confirmed. 🙄

@thefourfoldroot1 For me they can censor all this ***** if it means we get rid of gambling in games.

@PegasusActual93 I cant understand the issues with nudity if its with kid like looking characters i can understand. But sometimes you quite brutal stuff in games but thats ok murdering someone ok nudity oh no.

@Flaming_Kaiser
The way it works between rated M and rated AO in terms of what kind of sexual content you can show is basically softcore or hardcore. The sex scenes in GTA or Cyberpunk are not explicit enough to where it is straight up pornographic. Therefore both games still received M ratings. Sexual content in an AO game is straight up graphic pornography. Like 99 percent of AO games were rated because of pornography. Only three games were rated AO for violent content for example, those being Thrill Kill, Manhunt 2 and Hatred. Of those three games; Thrill Kill was never officially released, Hatred is PC only and Manhunt 2 was only slightly modified to receive an M rating so that it could be released on consoles in the states due to my previously mentioned policy amongst all the console manufacturers. And yeah I have never understood the tolerance for violence but not nudity, especially if the nudity is not in a sexual depiction but the west has always been weird when it comes to nudity. Though even that seems to be changing with some of these mainstream movies and tv shows coming out in America now.

@Flaming_Kaiser
I wasn’t talking about Sony “censoring”, or rather not allowing, gambling. I totally agree that’s as it should be. But if Sony started allowing adult rated games we wouldn’t get content censorship on consoles compared to PC any more. I mean we still would at puritanical Sony as they already don’t allow things which the regulators find perfectly acceptable to put on the Nintendo Switch, but that’s a problem for a different day.

@PegasusActual93 I played the original Manhunt and loved but part 2 was a massive dissapointment i really hated the slightly modified violence. The worst one was Twisted Metal Black were Europe just got all the endings cut what a crime was that.

@thefourfoldroot1 Sony should be clear what they will or will not accept. I can understand childlike characters used as sexual objects a big issue but the but the but of Trish is nonsense.

@Flaming_Kaiser
Yes, they should, but they know it would be a PR nightmare, which is why those setting the policy have deliberately refused to give even devs and publishers the rules. They are extra happy that this makes every dev self censor out of caution given the money it costs to go through every approval process with Sony.

@Flaming_Kaiser
Every ending? Why? Here in the states the developers cut one of the missions because it had the misfortune of resembling 9/11 a little too closely and they didn't want to cause offense. But that's it.

They are now owned by that Chinese company, hence the real gambling 😆

@PegasusActual93 You just got the names who made the game and nothing else they didnt even try to edit them.

@thefourfoldroot1 What PR nightmare we dont want kids to be looked at as sex objects? And i have to agree a lot of games are cringe. A game like Hatred where you kill tons of innocent people thats a PR nightmare. If you are clear towards developers they can set up a plan what to make and how. Sexualise child like characters is nasty and i think Sony has to approve every game already.

I mean, could there just be heavy shaggin?

@Flaming_Kaiser
Children? Don’t know what sick stuff is going on in your mind, but that stuff doesn’t exist as a licensed legal product, obviously. Why are you even bringing children into the conversation? That’s a little disturbing dude.

@RainbowGazelle Yep, legally here an M-rated game can not be sold to anyone who is under 17 and the customer needs to produce a license with their age as proof to purchase. Back then I would usually use my school id when I was in 11th or 12th grade and they took it just fine. If they're not 17, they can't sell it, but if they have a parent or someone old enough right there then it's okay. That's the strictest it'll get since you'll never see someone card a kid for wanting a T-rated game (13+) unless they're just being rude.

The rating system is not perfect and it was way more rampant in the media in the 90's/00's. AO was more to satisfy parents who didn't want their kids to be exposed or have the potential to have their hands on explicit content without their knowledge. So AO is banned from stores and I only ever heard about the AO rating in gaming manuals where they detail the ratings. It's funny though, Night Trap was one of the games that served as fuel to create the ESRB. It was rated as M because of teen girls potentially being murdered. The media portrayed it as if the player was committing the acts of murder on them when the most you can do in reality is just watch them die offscreen from failure. On its recent re-release 2 decades later it got a T rating for 13 and up.

@Flaming_Kaiser It's not just about the player seeing a nude body that's a problem, since anyone even kids can still see nudity in M rated games if their parents buy it for them. AO rated game is more like if that's the main prerogative of the game is for the player to simulate acts of sex via interaction like it's porn or commit extreme sets of gore and violence consistently and how realistic it plays out. The gore/violence is where the slippery slope happens here the most on AO/M games but even then only a handful of games ever crossed the AO rating.

@thefourfoldroot1 That’s what AO games are. Manhunt 2 is the only normal applicable exception, and Hatred was rated AO for controversy more than the violence itself. The rest are hard porn.

@Jaz007
By “hard porn” are you actually talking about drawings and cgi animations?
But again, ps4 has a web browser so it’s there already, no reason for a platform holder to hold back legal material apart from their own puritanical ideals or fear of bad PR 🤷‍♂️

@thefourfoldroot1 Porn on a web browser is not like porn on the PS store. And yes, I include hentai with that. And real people too. If you want to call not having hard Leon on your platform puritanical, go ahead, but I am with it. Gaming is better off without there.

@Jaz007
🤷‍♂️ You can like and dislike what you want. I merely commented that the platform holders should just stop self regulating and let anything legal on their system with the appropriate age restrictions. Why not? People can buy it or not buy it as they see fit. Not sure what the problem is with that to be honest.

This is in contrast to gambling which should be regulated for obvious reasons, as well as the detrimental impact it has on game mechanics.

@Amnesiac it's the same principle behind like pointy food... the A is like a pizza slice and the O is like the pizza whole, both are delightful things!

Also, I am now hungry!

Glad to see confirmation that lootboxes are out.

I'm still waiting for another Adult Only game rated for "Real Sex". It was amazing with Abby in TLOU Part II.

I figured it was just a mistake. Nice to get confirmation on it.

Cool.good to know.either way its cool to know about this.its gonna be a fun game regardless.word up son

If it was the storefront's mistake, then how come their own Livestream was AO? I think the "mistake" was the stores displaying the actual current rating instead of trusting Ubisoft that they'll definitely resubmit for a lower rating.

Anyone else watch the assassin's creed presentation and was flumoxed by the voice actress, who Danny Wallace was banging on about for mirage ,never heard of her ,seems like she's on 60 a day though

@thefourfoldroot1 hello, little disturbing dude. I'm dad.

@naruball
Well, that’s confusing. Not sure what I said that’s a little disturbing.

Pretty much what i expected. I wouldn't be shocked if we have a Valhalla type storefront but i never expected Ubi to go that hard or want a AO rating.

@tallythwack She has a massive career especially in nerd culture. 24, X-Men The Last Stand, The Expanse plus VG credits including Mass Effect. That's her natural voice and its pretty iconic, i know exactly who she is with voice alone and its a large part of her appeal.

@WallyWest yeah minor parts ,never heard of her

@WadeIsInsane I understand but as parent you need to check what they are playing. The funny thing is my mom gave me a Playboy when i was 16 and we had a good talk. Sex isnt that terrible if you have a normal conversation about it.

I played Manhunt that game was messed up i loved the game but the violence was so brutal and i would even say the violence numbed me. And this stuff should never be played by young kids.

Thats why i believe parents should really check what their kids are playing i know its not easy but its so important.

@thefourfoldroot1 Im sorry check some of these games on the Switch and tell me these dont look like kids in a few games. My sick mind what nonsense are you on about?

Loot boxes, real auction houses etc are a thing of the past thankfully. We actually won that war. It's silly for people to think it's still around.