It seems the Korean rating board have decided that Blue Archive is a bit too spicy for its current age rating. Nexon was told to make changes to the game or raise the age rating. They have decided that given the backlash from the Aris situation that raising the age rate would give their players the best experience. The team has also decided to create a separate version of the game with the lower age rating that will contain “Adjusted” assets in case players would prefer to play that way.
Here is the full statement from Nexon:
Greetings, Sensei!
Did you enjoy the Valentine’s Day Event with Wakamo?
Looking at the community today, many Senseis have recently joined us here at Blue Archive.
This recent growth has been a great opportunity to reaffirm our development, business, and operation teams’ desires to not lose the game’s guiding vision.
Also, I hope you’ll enjoy the new event story, “The Clumsy Sister and the Magician of the Old Library.” You’ll get to meet the new students, Ui and Hinata.
And you’ll have a chance to earn Trinity Academy materials by completing the Event Tasks!
Today I would like to address something outside of our game updates.
This September, we received a guideline from the Korean Game Rating and Administration Committee to either adjust the game’s art and resources or raise the game’s age rating.
The quickest and easiest response would have been to make those adjustments.
However, thinking of the Aris scene’s adjustment last time and as a PD, I was worried about negatively affecting our Senseis’ game experience with repeated changes if and when similar issues happen to arise in the future.
And so, we on the development team have decided to raise the game’s age rating so that Senseis can enjoy our original content, and then we’ll create another app version of the game containing the adjusted resources.
The version with the adjusted resources will undergo a thorough review so we don’t damage the characters’ visual personalities. We will always notify you of any changes made in the adjusted version.
To note, these separate game versions will not affect your accounts in any way.
Please feel free to select the version appropriate for your age and enjoy the game without concern.
When a game is in live operations, conditions outside of the actual game can sometimes cause unexpected issues and changes, but we will respond thoroughly to any such issues so that you may continue enjoying Blue Archive with as little disturbance to your gameplay experience as possible.
There are many other events we have been preparing outside of the game itself that I will announce the next time we speak.
I hope we meet again soon, Sensei!
Yongha Kim
