Worldwide publisher Atari has thrown support behind the PEGI system as the best game rating system available for Europe and UK.

The case for the video games industry embracing PEGI (Pan-European Game Information) as the only effective age rating system gathered further momentum today following Atari’s announcement that 90 per cent of its output will be released online in a few years’ time. Atari CEO David Gardiner and President Phil Harrison stated in an interview with MCV, the trade newspaper, that the company increasingly favours online titles over the traditional retail model lending further weight to PEGI’s cause.

Following Atari’s recent deal with Namco Bandai and speaking in MCV, Gardner said: “We’re taking the first steps here. In five years, Namco Bandai will probably own the majority of it, it will no longer be our responsibility and Atari will be just an online company – within five years we’ll have 90 per cent online products.”

ELSPA (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) is actively lobbying Government [in the UK] to embrace PEGI as the single games ratings system and believes that the implementation of a single games age ratings system in the UK is the only system with the power to protect children online and offline.

Paul Jackson, Director General at ELSPA, said: “Atari’s decision to shift retail emphasis to online further emphasises why the British video game industry specifically favours the PEGI age ratings system. Only PEGI fully assesses all games content. It is designed specifically for interactive software. It understands games and their potential for infinite variations. That’s why it is backed by the British games industry.”

Personally I think PEGI is the best system in use around the world. It’s not stifling like USK in Germany or flat out censorship like the OFLC in Australia which doesn’t even have an adult rating.