Content Ratings

How the gate works

You pick a rating in the Studio's settings row when you publish. The platform enforces it at every machine's door:

E    opens for everyone, even logged-out visitors
13+  opens for everyone except players who declared they're under 13
16+  opens ONLY for players who declared 16 or older
18+  opens ONLY for a self-declared 18+ birth date WITH a verified
     email — and so does the whole Casino

Players who never declared an age can play E and 13+ (the platform is for everyone), but 16+ and 18+ stay shut for them. The rating is a door, not a suggestion — and you, the maker, choose which door your game stands behind. Choose honestly: putting mature content behind an E is the one thing this platform moderates hardest, because it puts that content in front of kids.

E — Everyone

Anyone might play this, including young kids, including visitors who aren't logged in. So an E game has:

• No blood or gore. Cartoon zaps, explosions and "GOT ME!" endings in the 1970s arcade style are fine — Tank and Gun Fight are E — but nothing graphic, nothing lingering, no wounds.
• No swearing. Not even the mild ones, not in scripts, titles, or on-screen text.
• No gambling themes. No slot reels, cards for stakes, betting, or casino dressing — even with pretend coins. (That's what the Casino floor and its 18+ door are for.)
• No horror. Mild spooky (a ghost in a maze) is fine; dread, jump scares and gore are not.
• Nothing romantic or suggestive. Zero. This never belongs at E.
• No drugs, alcohol or smoking. Not shown, not named, not implied. There is no "tasteful" version of this at E.

Test: would this be fine on a public arcade cabinet at a family pizza place? Then it's E.

13+ — Teen

Everything E allows, plus:

• Cartoon or arcade violence with more punch — shooters, fighting games, destruction — as long as it isn't gory or cruel.
• Mild language. A "damn" or "hell" in flavor text; still no strong profanity.
• Spooky and tense themes. Horror atmosphere, monsters, jump-scare lite — Shark Jaws energy.
• Crude humor that stays playground-grade.

Realism is the dial — real rating boards judge how violence LOOKS, not just what the verbs are. Blocky, abstract, bloodless arcade mayhem reads young: Death Race's monochrome stick figures and Shark Jaws' hungry shark are 13+ here, the way they'd rate mild on any modern system. The same acts drawn realistically — recognizable people, wounds, suffering shown — jump to 16+.

Still not allowed at 13+: gore, strong profanity, gambling themes, sexual or suggestive content, drugs shown positively.

16+ — Mature

Everything 13+ allows, plus:

• Blood and stylized gore. Violence with consequences shown. "Stylized" means the game's own abstract language — red pixels, a splash, a body that stays — not anatomy: if a wound is detailed enough to study, it's graphic, and graphic is 18+.
• Strong language. Profanity in text and themes.
• Alcohol and smoking may appear — a saloon, a detective's cigarette — as setting, not as a reward or a goal.
• Dark and intense themes. Real horror, war, crime stories, bleak endings. No museum game sits here yet; think a war story where hits draw red and the dead stay on the field.

Still not allowed at 16+: sexual content, gambling themes (that's 18+ territory), drug use shown at all, and anything on the always-banned list below.

18+ — Adult

The top door: only accounts with a self-declared 18+ birth date and a verified email get in — that's the whole check; the platform collects no identity, so "adult" here means declared, not proven. Everything 16+ allows, plus:

• Gambling themes. Any game dressed as gambling belongs here — and actual coin-betting machines belong on the Casino floor, which is always 18+ and takes machines only through the Studio's casino loop. The Casino itself is the museum's standing 18+ example.
• Graphic violence and gore — the detailed, lingering kind 16+'s "stylized" line excludes.
• Mature themes handled like an adult — substance use, heavy subject matter.

Even at 18+, this is not an anything-goes rating. The always-banned list below applies to every rating, and explicit sexual content is not allowed anywhere on RedlineStudio, at any rating.

Banned at EVERY rating

No rating makes these okay — they get removed and can end the account (Terms §5 is the full list):

• Anything that sexualizes minors — reported to authorities, always.
• Explicit sexual content, at any rating.
• Hate speech, harassment, or content targeting a real person.
• Anyone's personal information — including your own.
• Scams, phishing, fake login screens, or games that trick players into giving up passwords.
• Real-money gambling, or anything implying coins are worth money.
• Other people's protected characters, names and logos. A famous mascot with the colors swapped is still their mascot — ratings don't launder copyright, and this is why the museum's remakes use original art and names (Terms §4).
• Anything illegal.

See a misrated game? Got re-rated and disagree?

Report a misrated game with the ⚑ Report button on its page — say which rating it should carry and why. Appeal a re-rating of your own game through the contact form (or the email in Terms §13) — appeals get an answer within 14 days.

How to not get in trouble (the whole trick)

• When in doubt, rate UP. A tame game at 16+ hurts nobody; a rough game at E is a moderation action waiting to happen.
• Rate the worst moment, not the average. One gory death screen makes the game 16+, even if the other 20 minutes are checkers.
• Titles, descriptions and arcade screens count. They show on the public Games list where every age can read them — so they must be E-safe no matter the game's rating.
• Comments and chat around your game are moderated separately — your rating covers your game's content, not what players say at the machine.
• Moderators can re-rate or unlist a misrated game without warning. Honest mistakes get fixed; deliberate misrating (adult content marked E) is treated as a serious violation, not a prank.

Where this shows up: the Studio asks you to confirm you've read this page once, before your first publish. After that, it trusts you — and holds you to it.