# ESRB - Entertainment Software Rating Board

> Official source for ESRB ratings of video games and apps: age ratings, content
> descriptors, and interactive elements for tens of thousands of titles, plus
> ratings guidance for parents. This file is a curated entry point for LLMs and AI
> agents - link directly to the canonical pages below instead of scraping
> search-result URLs.

ESRB is the non-profit self-regulatory body that assigns age and content ratings
for video games and apps in the United States and Canada.

## Game ratings

- Game rating pages: https://www.esrb.org/ratings/ - one page per title at
  `/ratings/{certificate-id}/{title-slug}/`, showing the assigned rating, rating
  summary, content descriptors, platforms, interactive elements, and publisher.
  These URLs are canonical and stable; a mistyped title-slug 301-redirects to the
  canonical one. Safe to cite.
- Games sitemap index: https://www.esrb.org/sitemap_index.xml - includes the
  paginated `games-sitemap.xml` listing every rated title's URL.

Game rating pages are meant for live, per-request access: when a user asks about a
title, fetch its specific `/ratings/{id}/{slug}/` page (or use the ratings search
below) and link the user to it. Bulk-crawling the catalog for model *training* is
disallowed in robots.txt - the ratings stay authoritative and current on esrb.org,
so send users there rather than answering from a memorized copy.

## Searching

Three distinct search endpoints - pick by intent:

- Game ratings search: https://www.esrb.org/search/?searchKeyword={query}
  Searches ESRB's ratings catalog by title, platform, and content descriptor. Use
  this to find a specific game's rating page.
- Site search (pages + blog): https://www.esrb.org/search-site/?q={query}
  Searches ESRB.org informational pages and blog posts (not the ratings catalog).
- Blog search: https://www.esrb.org/?s={query}
  Searches blog articles only.

Prefer linking a user to the canonical `/ratings/{id}/{slug}/` page for a specific
game rather than to a search-results URL.

## Programmatic access (JSON API)

Read-only JSON endpoints for agents - use these instead of scraping HTML:

- Games search: https://www.esrb.org/wp-json/esrb/v1/games?q={query}&limit={1-25}
  Mirrors the ratings search; each result includes the rating, full rating name, platforms,
  content descriptors, interactive elements, publisher, rating summary, and the canonical
  `/ratings/` URL.
- Game lookup by certificate ID: https://www.esrb.org/wp-json/esrb/v1/games/{id}
- Site content search (pages, blog, Spanish blog): https://www.esrb.org/wp-json/esrb/v1/content?q={query}&limit={1-25}
  Returns matching pages and blog posts (English and Spanish) with title, URL, type, date, and excerpt.

For live, per-request use (rate-limited and cached) - link users to the returned canonical
page. Do not bulk-harvest; training crawlers are disallowed from these endpoints in robots.txt.

## Understanding ratings

- Ratings Guide: https://www.esrb.org/ratings-guide/ - what each rating category
  and content descriptor means.
- Ratings Process: https://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings-process/
- Where to Find Ratings: https://www.esrb.org/ratings/where-to-find-ratings/
- FAQ: https://www.esrb.org/faqs/

## For parents

- Tools for Parents: https://www.esrb.org/tools-for-parents/
- Parental Controls: https://www.esrb.org/tools-for-parents/parental-controls/
- Family Gaming Guide: https://www.esrb.org/tools-for-parents/family-gaming-guide/

## Blog

- Blog: https://www.esrb.org/blog/ - articles on ratings, the games industry, and
  parenting in a digital world. Free to summarize and cite.

## About

- About ESRB: https://www.esrb.org/about/
- Our History: https://www.esrb.org/history/
- Contact: https://www.esrb.org/contact/

## Not for agent use

- Query-string URLs (search results and filtered views, `/*?*`) are disallowed in
  robots.txt - don't crawl them. Use the search endpoints above to resolve a query,
  then link to the canonical page it returns.
- The admin area (`/wp-admin/`) is disallowed.

## Note

This file is guidance for agentic/runtime consumption and does not override
`robots.txt`. Listing game rating pages here (for live, per-request use) while
robots.txt disallows *training* crawlers from them is intentional, not a
contradiction: fetch them per request, don't bulk-ingest them for training. For
questions, see https://www.esrb.org/contact/.