In a reaction to the recent story of Oblivion being re-rated, John Romero speaks out against modders. If you haven't heard, last week the ESRB changed their rating of Oblivion from Teen to Mature. They sited that the reason was that the game contained more blood and gore than they realized and that nude character mods had become available. Now, Bethesda (developers) said they checked the box on the form to the ESRB for the highest content of blood and gore. That leaves the mod being a crucial part of the new rating.

This makes for bad new for us, the modders. This means that our mods can affect the ratings of a game. This also means that developers will start to keep modders out of their code so as not to hurt sales.

John Romero stated:

"What's the point of this all this? That modders are now screwing up the industry they're supposed to be helping. In 1993 we opened up all our data to the industrious and ambitious folks out there who want to see what it's like to be able to make their favorite game a little more like what they'd want.....and get a taste of being a semi-game designer in the process. The most awesome example of what this philosophy has brought is CounterStrike."