Creston:
Actually you will end up noticing it.
For instance, if the regulation said that a game must NEVER contain hidden code, art or textures or anything else, even stuff that can't be activated without a 3rd party mod (like hot coffee) anything that would potentially change a rating; then what would happen?
Well game companies would end up producing less games in fear of fines (especially after the first couple fines hit). Risks and thus the costs of producing games would go up, so there would be less availible game production dollars in the market place. They would tend to produce games that were similar to other games, even more than they do now, because they would not want to take a chance on something new with the decreased supply of usable game production dollars. They also would try to reuse as much code as possible from other games, code that had been "vetted" as b00bie free or whatever.
And the release time would have to be extended (although with most games this wouldn't be a bad thing) so they could go over the code with a fine tooth comb to make sure no one hid anything in it or any content was outside of the rating. So that would somewhat stifle the incentive to make new game engines, which might have an effect on seeing new graphical features.

And even that might not be enough. Some TV shows or movies end up removing some graphic bloody frames to maintain a rating. For instance if there's a sequence where a guy's leg got shot off or amputated. Often they have say 2 seconds (approx 60 frames) of the actual leg. Then the MPAA might tell them they have to remove 45 frames to maintain the PG 13 rating.
Its relativly easy to do so on a movie.
But what if a game was released where the animation of dying was considered too explicit after a 2nd review by the ESRB? Then the game company could get fined.

For a prime example of this, just take a look at oblivion, in this very story. Its not ONLY about the b00bies, it also says that they decided after a second look that the game contained more detailed blood/gore than they want for a T rating.

If this were regulated, bethesda could have gotten fined for that (even without the b00by factor).

Additional regulation is almost never a good idea. It always has unintended consequences. The times when its nessasary is for things like enviroment or safety issues because those are something that the free market does a poor job at.

This comment was edited on May 3, 22:49.