Forum Discussion

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
8 years ago

Why can't a 9yo play a game with 7yo rating???

I bought Plants vs Zombies 2: Garden Warfare for my 9 year old nephew for Christmas. I've taken great care in making sure I bought a game with rating of 7 years or lower as his PS4 account is ofc ...
Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
8 years ago
I don't understand how...well that word is swearing, but okay I will not use that word anymore then.

No you're right, it doesn't say you need to make a false account, I must have been mixing up "solutions" I've read, but it does say you need to set your child account as an adult and then manually add certain restrictions to the account as a workaround.
That is a very convoluted way to make a child be able to play a child game and does not seem completely safe in the first place, but anyways such modifications to the parental control system is not possible on the PS4.
You can't specifically allow or disallow joining multiplayer games, you can specify if communicating with others should be allowed or not, which preferably should not be allowed as gamers will often be using quite a vulgar language, especially towards small kids who may not be as good at the game as the older more experienced ones are.
We tried allowing that anyways tho in order to see if that made it possible for him to play the game, but it still didn't work.

You can only change the parental control level on a scale of 1-9 which would have had to be set at 7 in order to allow PEGI rating of 16 (ESRB rating of 15).
I'm not sure if that would even work, as the game has a PEGI rating of 7 anyways, but we didn't try that as that would be an unacceptable setting to leave my brother's 9 year old son's account on, especially considering he mostly play together with his 7 year old brother.

My nephew can't even launch the game on his account, it just says something about him being too young, I don't remember the exact message, but it seems it may restrict him due the DoB he registered when making the account, not the parental control function.
dwooten77's avatar
dwooten77
8 years ago
Take the restriction off while he plays. It’s good that you’re conscious of game ratings and all, but this is just the first bridge of many you will encounter with just about every game. I personally don’t have restrictions set for my son because I monitor his gameplay with however much time I give him. Now if you or the parents just want him to play and leave him to it, then I don’t know what to tell you.
  • pandareno1999's avatar
    pandareno1999
    Hero+
    8 years ago

    I'd recommend leaving the voice chat disabled.  It's very rare, at least on PS4, to hear inappropriate language or bad behavior on the chat, but it does happen.  Plus most youngsters don't seem to have any idea that they are constantly yelling into their mics and annoying all the other players.

    By the way, your child should be able to access all forms of solo play against AI with no changes to the account.  Only multiplayer modes with other human players are disabled for child accounts as far as I know.  Like @dwooten77, I have my daughter's account set to let her play freely.  She has no opportunity to play unsupervised.

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      8 years ago
      If you have only 1 kid I understand it may be possible to monitor their PS4 activity, however with 3 youngster at 2, 7 and 9 years old it's a lot harder.
      Especially as both parents are working busy full time jobs with the father's job requiring him to work while he is at home as well.

      You are not supposed to have to constantly monitor your children while they use their gaming console, that is what the parental control function is for.

      The kids are well behaved and they are not allowed unlimited playtime on the PS4, but the time they are given should not have to be monitored.
      While the kids are playing on it the parents get time to focus on stuff like putting the smallest one to bed, cleaning up after dinner, doing chores that need to be done around the house, answer som work emails etc. etc.

      The matter is still that the game has an age rating of 7, but you have to be 15 or 16 years old to play it without removing important safety functions preventing your child from accessing harmful content.
      • pandareno1999's avatar
        pandareno1999
        Hero+
        8 years ago

        You don't have to defend yourself, I was just explaining why it wasn't a problem for me.  I'm very sorry you took my comment to be a judgement of your parenting.

        Regarding your main point, this is a forum for players helping other players.  All I can offer you, beyond what was posted by the EA employee above, is my sympathy.  As I mentioned, every game mode in the game can be played against AI's at various difficulty levels, with no age restrictions.  It seems that your three options are to do that, pursue @EA_Darko's suggested avenue, or seek a refund for the game.  Cheers!

About Plants vs. Zombies™ Franchise Discussion

Zombies trying to enter your house? Keep them in check and discuss the best gardening techniques on the community forum.27,653 PostsLatest Activity: 4 hours ago