Through the Looking Glass: ESRB Rates Oblivion Mature

"NEW YORK – The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has changed the rating assigned to the game The Elder Scrolls® IV: Oblivion™ from T (Teen 13+) to M (Mature 17+). The content causing the ESRB to change the rating involves more detailed depictions of blood and gore than were considered in the original rating, as well as tpresence of a locked-out art file or “skin” that, if accessed through a thirdparty modification to the PC version of the game, allows the user to play with topless versions of female characters."

“Parents across the country depend on ESRB ratings every day to make sensible choices about the games they bring home for their families,” said ESRB president Patricia Vance. “Rating changes are extraordinarily rare, but if ever one does occur, ESRB recognizes that parents must be made aware of the change as quickly as possible so they are certain to have the most current and accurate information.”

"The game will retain its current content descriptors for Violence, Blood and Gore, Sexual Themes, Language, and Use of Alcohol, and the PC version will carry an additional content descriptor for Nudity until it can be re-mastered and released with the topless skin removed."

So Oblivion have been changed from Teen to Mature by ESRB, apperantly because of the "hidden nudity" in the game. The topless mod that revealed this "hidden nudity", have been circulating on the internet since around the time Oblivion was released. Originally the mod description contained this:

"Please note, this is a realistic nudity mod, not a pornographic one. The file included removes the bra welded to the skin of females of all races, showing things as most people know they are in the real world after removing upper body clothing. It will not show every female in the game as topless. I do this because I hate government/society/whatever forcing companies to 'protect our innocent population from seeing those evil dirty things 50% of them posess personally anyways' not because I'm trying to turn it into a porn game."

Bethesda themself responded to the rating change:

"There is no nudity in Oblivion without a third party modification. In the PC version of the game only – this doesn’t apply to the Xbox 360 version – some modders have used a third party tool to hack into and modify an art archive file to make it possible to create a mesh for a partially nude (topless) female that they add into the game. Bethesda didn’t create a game with nudity and does not intend that nudity appear in Oblivion. There is no nude female character in a section of the game that can be “unlocked.” Bethesda can not control tampering with Oblivion by third parties. Bethesda is taking steps to ensure that modders can not continue to hack into Oblivion’s art archives to create partially nude figures."

These are the four races of Oblivion that contains nipples (and Dremora, but that didn't really look close to human). So, how hard would it be to find these textures you ask?

The textures (the "nude skins") is located inside "Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa"
You'll need a program that extract bsa files to be able to get hold of the textures. Bethesda haven't released any program/tool that allows extracting from these files.
Download the user made TES4BSA command-line program
Once downloaded, you'll need to place the program and "Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa" at the same place (no proper documentation given, and command-line experience is required) and then open up the windows command-line (cmd) to enter:
tes4bsa unpack "Oblivion - Textures - compressed.bsa"
After awhile, all the 18 044 textures (1,92gb) should be extracted
Scroll through the folders and find the file "textures\characters\imperial\female\upperbodyfemale.dds"
The DirectDraw Surface (.dds) file format is used to store textures, and no conventional program is able to open up these files, so you'll need to download a DDS plug-in for Photoshop (and get ahold of Photoshop for that matter to...)
After getting hold of both Photoshop (wort $649) and the plug-in, you're able to finally visiualize this cartoonish and smeered nipples on decapitated human like textures

Another way to view these textures is by going through a similiar process, which is basicly modding away the underwear model from the game and creating a Topless Mod. You'll still need file extractors that isn't available from Bethesda, and the anatomy detail is at the same level as a nude Barbie (the dolls that very young children plays around with, should they be rated Mature?).

So basicly, by "hacking" the game in ways Bethesda didn't intend to, you can see cartoonish and pixelated nipples inside the game. As far as I know, this kind of nudity is PG-13 and would be allowded for teens to view in other media.

Would this really ruin the mind of young people if they got a peek of a nipple ingame? Am I turning teenagers into the scum of society by making this post? Why, why does the game need to be re-rated to Mature for something like this, and why would it be needed for both the PC and Xbox 360 version, when modding the game is only available on the PC?