Mature Content Blocked From Wii U eShop During The Day In EU
Are you a European Wii U owner who wants to download Assassin’s Creed 3? Well, I hope you have an energy drink, or you just are a natural night owl because apparently Nintendo is restricting 18-rated content to only certain times of the day. This isn’t limited to just the download of mature games, but trailers and other promotional material as well.
The time-frame that a person can access mature content is a short 4 hour window from 11pm to 3am. When contacted by a NeoGAF user, Nintendo said that they have “always aimed to offer gameplay experiences suited to all age groups, observing carefully all the relevant regulations regarding content access that are present in the various European countries.” In other words, it seems like Nintendo doesn’t want to run afoul of any European laws and is covering all their bases. That still sucks for the people who have 8 to 5 jobs in the morning, who can’t exactly stay up all night to download a game or watch a trailer.
Luckily for Americans, the policy is not in effect in North America. We are still able to go ahead and watch and download all the M-rated stuff we want to. With that being said, this restriction of mature content in Europe doesn’t help Nintendo’s image of being a “kiddy” company, one that it’s been fighting since the early 90’s when Midway Games was essentially forced by Nintendo to change the blood to “sweat” and replace many of the Fatalities of Mortal Kombat.
