Game Politics: Re-Rating a Game

I have to say something about this.

You're a developer. You make a game. It's rated Teen. Some unknown person on the net makes a mod for your game. The game is re-rated Mature. Suddenly, certain unnamed large retailers will be reticent to carry your title because of the M rating, regardless of how it got that rating.

So what if someone mods the game so it shows hideous nasty gory evilness that should never have even entered anyone's mind ever? Should it be universally taken off shelves or given the Adults Only rating (which would have similar effects)?

The rating given should only apply to the game as published. The GTA hot coffee issue was a little less clear, since the questionable content did exist on the original published media. Personally, I don't think it required a re-rating, since players had to explicitly hack the game to display it. But re-rating Oblivion for content entirely from a mod... that's just wrong.

But the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) agrees with me, at least in the Oblivion case. I guess the British have a better sense of where consumer responsibility begins and ends than the Americans do.