The “harm”? Litigation $$$ paid to parents of 10 year olds playing Cyberpunk, all it is, really. ESRB covering their butts because they know the rating system is, and always has been, as useless as the parental advisory stickers on CD cases. Parents don’t know it exists, retailers don’t care as long as they get their money, and devs/publishers only care about it as something to point to in order to avoid censorship while they blatantly market games like Cyberpunk to 10 year olds knowing that parents will buy it for them if the kid nags them enough or the kids themselves will buy it from some teenager working at GameStop who’s getting paid too little to care, or they’ll just lie about their age on Steam and use their parents’ credit card to buy it. This is just about the worst way to cover their butts, though.
The “harm”? Litigation $$$ paid to parents of 10 year olds playing Cyberpunk, all it is, really. ESRB covering their butts because they know the rating system is, and always has been, as useless as the parental advisory stickers on CD cases. Parents don’t know it exists, retailers don’t care as long as they get their money, and devs/publishers only care about it as something to point to in order to avoid censorship while they blatantly market games like Cyberpunk to 10 year olds knowing that parents will buy it for them if the kid nags them enough or the kids themselves will buy it from some teenager working at GameStop who’s getting paid too little to care, or they’ll just lie about their age on Steam and use their parents’ credit card to buy it. This is just about the worst way to cover their butts, though.