Parental Controls
Parental controls hide games above an age from the members of a permission group, or from a single user. You set them in the group and user dialogs under Administration.
Two settings make up a rule:
- Age limit: members only see games rated for this age or younger, from
0to21, with no limit as the default. - Hide unrated games: also hides every game that no known rating covers, even with no age limit set. Without it, an unrated game stays visible whatever the limit, because there's nothing to judge it by.
Who a rule applies to
- Groups carry a limit and a hide-unrated switch for every member. A user with no group follows the server's default group, its age settings included.
- Users can replace either setting of their group. A user's own value wins, and an unset value inherits the group's, so you can give one member a stricter or looser limit than the rest of the group.
- Admins are never limited, whatever their group says, because they bypass permission groups entirely.
Where it applies
An age rule hides a game the same way as a hidden ROM, so it stays out of everything a member can reach: the gallery, search, collections (smart and virtual ones included), server stats, recommendations, the Jukebox, feeds for feed clients, netplay rooms, device installs and sync, and every per-ROM route such as downloads, manuals and screenshots. A direct request for one answers as if the game didn't exist, usually with a 404.
How a game's age is worked out
Each game stores one minimum age, the strictest age any of its ratings sets, which is recomputed whenever that metadata changes. Ratings are read from:
| Source | What RomM reads |
|---|---|
| IGDB | Every age rating, from any board |
| ScreenScraper | Every classification, from any board |
| LaunchBox | The ESRB rating |
| Steam | The required age, when the store sets one |
| Manual metadata (Edit dialog) | The game's own age rating list, which replaces all of the above |
As on the game page, the manual list overrides the providers entirely, so you can loosen a rating as well as tighten it. Manual entries take the form BOARD:RATING, such as ESRB:T or PEGI:12.
A game counts as unrated when it has no ratings at all, or only ones that can't be read (an unknown board, or an unrecognised value).
Rating boards
Boards that rate with letters map to the youngest age each rating admits:
| Board | Ratings |
|---|---|
| ESRB | EC 3, E 6, KA (Kids to Adults) 6, E10 10, T 13, M 17, AO 18 |
| CERO | A 0, B 12, C 15, D 17, Z 18 |
| ACB (also OFLC) | G 0, PG 8, M 15, MA15 15, R18 18, X18 18, RC 18 |
| BBFC | U 0, PG 8, 12 12, 12A 12, 15 15, 18 18, R18 18 |
Boards that rate with numbers use the number as the age, with L or ALL meaning any age: PEGI, USK, GRAC, ClassInd (also DJCTQ), ScreenScraper's own SS classification, ELSPA and JV.
ESRB's E maps to 6 rather than to "everyone" because it's treated as the pre-1998 Kids to Adults floor, so a 3-year limit hides E games but shows EC ones.
Existing libraries
The upgrade to 5.4 computes the minimum age for every game already in the database, so limits work straight away. A game picks up new ratings on its next metadata refresh, and its age follows.
API
The permission group schemas (PermissionGroupSchema, PermissionGroupCreate and PermissionGroupUpdate) and the user permission schemas (UserPermissionsSchema and UserPermissionsUpdate) carry two fields:
| Field | On a group | On a user |
|---|---|---|
age_limit |
0 to 21, or null for no limit |
0 to 21, or null to inherit the group's |
hide_unrated_roms |
true or false |
true, false, or null to inherit the group's |
The update payloads (PUT /api/permissions/groups/{id} and PUT /api/permissions/users/{user_id}) apply both fields only when set_age_settings is true, and then write them exactly as given, so an update that leaves set_age_settings out never touches its age rule. Both routes require users.write and an admin caller.