So I recently caved in and snagged a copy of Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - Game of The Year Edition (which I totally recommend by the way), but I have to share my PlayStation 4 with a four year old and a six year old three days every week and if they see a new game they of course want to play it, and while I'm very lenient on what I let them play, I had to draw the line with Shadow of Mordor -- it's just too dark for a kid that age. And so I have to hide the case and block it with the parental controls on the PS4 which so far is working well. However this does come with a few drawbacks and is only a temporary fix...

The first problem is that the game still shows up on screen with it's name, it just hides the picture and keeps them from opening it (which they couldn't do without the disc anyway and as I've established already, I wouldn't give them the disc to that game). They can't read right now so that's good enough, but the six year old starts Kindergarten this year and soon he'll be able to read at least some words, plus I'm starting to work with him on learning to read as well. Once this happens I'll not be able to hide the games that I don't want him playing (such as SoM and Sniper Elite 4 when it comes out next year) using the parental controls.

The other problem is that you have to hide games based on overall esrb rating rather than blocking games individually, so this also locks them out of games that I do let them play (yes they've played some of my M rated games. I'm terrible, I know ) such as Arkham Knight and Guantlet: Slayer Edition. This presents a problem as they've already asked to play Arkham Knight since I hid them.

So clearly I need a better solution if one exists. Now I can uninstall and fully install Shadow of Mordor every time they come over and leave, but this takes a while since there are essentially three or four games in SoM to install along with a ton of other DLC that was packed into the GoTY edition so it's preferable that I not do that. The only other solution I can think of is to select "limit number of items on the screen" and then start up enough games to push SoM off of the screen. Fun times. Lol Now before anyone says it, I CAN tell them they just can't play it, and I've done this before but I hate doing that to the oldest one as he's such a sweet kid and never asks for anything really so on the rare occasion that he does I usually comply. Besides I don't want them telling their dad that Uncle has a game for adults. xD And if you've ever been around kids much then you know they WILL do that.


So how about you? Ever have a game that you needed to hide? How did you handle it? And shame on you.

Well yeah I've had a game I have had to hide lol. The game I had to hide was Halo 3 for the xbox 360. My friend got it for me after I gave him the money to get it since it's a M rated game(his parents didn't care about the age rating on games) and I was 10 or 11 at the time and my mother wouldn't buy it because the guy at gamestop explained that rated M  means the game contains nudity and strong language and blood and gore. I hide the game in another game case for  sega super stars tennis and every time she saw me playing I told her it came with the system arcade games but eventually she caught on and took it back to the store I was really mad because the game contained no nudity and the blood and gore was mild to none at all. ( But on the up side when I turned 15 I brought the game again).

I used to own a CD of Max Payne. I inherited it from my dad and I loved every gritty second of it. Just one problem, my mom did not approve. This was especially a problem because I spent most of the time at my mom's. Hiding the disc in the PC wasn't sufficient, so I developed other hiding places.

First it was in a toy box next to my bed. Then my mom went through it looking for something and just missed it. After that scare I hid it inside on of the many books on a huge shelf in my room. It worked until we got rid of most of the books, then I hid the game in a great place. In fact it was so great I forgot about it and never found the disc again- we moved the next year.

I picked up the game on Steam again two years later. By then my mom really didn't care about what games I played anymore.

Divine Aurora : Lol That's hilarious. You'd expect a guy working at a game store like that would know what he was talking about. Also nice try on hiding what you were playing. Out of curiosity, what did you do with the Sega Superstars Tennis disc? Keep it in the system when not playing Halo 3?


Mister X : I feel your pain, man. I was playing one time and hid one of my games and forgot about it. By the time I remembered, it was gone. Never saw it again. It came in a pretty tightly sealed plastic case so I hid it in a small (but deep) hole in my front yard (I was a kid, give me a break). To this day I remember exactly where I buried it and I can't help but wonder if it's still there and could be found with a shovel. Lol How cool would it be if I got the owner's permission to dig there and I found it still working?

I had a ton of fun playing Final Fantasy X on PS2 and I loved the story and the characters and all the elements, including music.

I decided to go with Final Fantasy X-2 to see what it was like and I'm glad I picked it up second-hand. The game was much more... fluffy? The story, if you don't know, was that Yuna is still a summoner but she's much more like a pop music idol and the two characters she shares major screen time with make the game feel like it was meant for girls or little kids. It was a completely different game that had almost nothing to do with Final Fantasy X except names of characters and the overworld map.

Safe to say, I'm playing it, my wife is wandering around, and they're in the hot springs scene where the three girls are flirting and splashing with each other. It was embarrassing that I was playing a game with that going on so I literally turned the screen off for two minutes until the scene was over. I played in secret the rest of the game. I finished it but I was highly disappointed with what was delivered.

I had to hide it. I felt like a moron.

Eirinn : Nope I would take and put the sega super stars tennis disc behind the introduction booklet inside the game case.

But about the gamestop sales person lol it wouldn't be the first time a gamestop employee did me dirty, the first time I gave the final fantasy series a try with final fantasy 13 , the game stop sales person didn't put in discs 2 and 3 when it said on the cover 3 disc game I was so mad when I went to trade it back in and they wouldn't take it without the other two disc and he told me well sorry that happened..

Yup, lol.

My friend lend me GTA IV years back when I was like 7, lol. I wasn't allowed to play GTA at the time so what I did was hide the case in a box where no one ever looked, and put the disc in to another case.

imamonster : I'd give you grief (jokingly) for that but I did something similar. I played a game with a bunch of highly inappropriate content in it when my parents weren't looking. Paused it anytime someone was near. It was a rental so the case wasn't an issue, and my parents didn't check the cases before I rented them so...

Nope. Sadly in a weird way my brother played games I liked, or got me interested such as gta games that was rated age of 18. He didn't say much about it since he enjoyed playing the game a lot. I didn't ask questions one time about the game and then he said its rated 18 though. I must had said I don't care I want to try the game because it looks really fun. So its like the opposite with me back then. I have a nephew now so if that, was to happen I would definitely hide games he shouldn't see until he is a lot more older to play them.

Yep, but it has absolutely nothing to do with esrb rating or anything inappropriate/embarrassing. (In fact, the game's rating was "E" for everyone soo... yea)

It was merely my dad being crazy and overreacting about me staying focused in school. He bought "Sonic Mega Collection plus" for the ps2 for me. But he kept it in his room saying I'm not allowed to play it  until school is over...

The thing is... It was already like the last month of school and at that time, there were no finals. And I had no homework assignments or anything left to do so it was as if the school year was already over... The only thing we did in school at this point was prepared for a graduation to middle school. (but that requires no studying or any work) So why couldn't I play the game already? lol.

I clearly explained this to my dad but he thought I was just making excuses which made him even more angry and crazy. So whenever my dad left to work, I'd play the game and keep an eye out the window. If I see my dad's car parking in front of the house outside... I immediately shut off the game and put the case back to where it was in his room. So then it looked like I didn't play the game at all lol.

What's even more stupid was that he only made this "temporary rule" for one game so it made no sense to me at all. (That means I can just play any other game) Huh nothing new about my dad.

Yes, I did it once, even tried to turn off the thing that shows others what games you are playing on Steam, though it was a really fun and amazingly well written story game so I'm not really sure why I did it lol.

Wow... Good luck with coming up with a solution for keeping your games hidden! XD

As for me... Hm... Nope! I never had to hide any games. It was pointless to hide what I was doing from the people around me because they pretty much always knew what I was up to anyways (and some even asked to play with me after seeing some of the games lol ). Besides, the games I had were along the lines of Super Mario and Secret of Mana...

I really can't think of anything in those games that was so terrible or embarrassing that I couldn't show the games to anyone else. lol

Yuna1000 : He found it today. Yeah...he grabbed the controller while I was in the other room (before I activated the parental controls) and found the "game with the guy with blue eyes" (how he described the game's thumbnail). I quickly activated the controls, scrolled back through and insisted that I had no new games. xD It's true, I've had that game for a month or so now! No new games here! Haha He obviously knew there was something wrong when all of the lock icons started showing up and the blue eyed guy was gone, but he didn't say too much. Maybe in a few years I'll let him see it, but not now. No way.

Adults? Nah, I wouldn't play anything I'd be ashamed of with them now that I'm not a kid and I don't mess around with any inappropriate stuff, but I do play violent games some, and that's about all I'd hide from the kids.

Tip: to continue enjoying your gaming freedom, don't have children. ._. xP

Eirinn : lol! Aww! XD Well, I don't want to make you worry, but you do understand that the more you try to hide something from a kid, the more curious he/she will become, right? lol You can't lie to them either... =P (Kids are sometimes pretty astute, especially when you least want/expect them to be. ) If you do, they might even end up thinking that there's something unspeakably horrible about what you're trying to hide (why else would you be in denial with that look on your face? D= ) and in their imaginations, it might actually be worse than something like violence ( D= *gasp!* maybe he's watching that!, you know... Barney and Teletubbies XD j/k ). Sorry, couldn't help it. rofl

Anyways, I usually find it best to be as honest as possible with the kids I watch over because then they won't think that I suddenly "don't trust them" or something. Hiding something from them without really saying anything might sometimes even begin to make them wonder what it is that they did wrong (when in reality, they didn't do anything wrong at all) to cause me to "stop trusting them." (I mean, why else would I be keeping something obviously fun away from them? Did they just do something to lose a privilege? Or at least that's how some of them would interpret it, unless I gave them a reasonable/an acceptable explanation).

Yuna1000 : Yeah I normally don't hide things but this one game I decided to because the little guy is so sweet and all and I don't want to have another Sniper Elite III all over again with him wanting to play it and me saying he can't. I may have to now though. He doesn't understand "That's too violent" or "that's too dark" because his dad lets him play Mortal Kombat X, and it doesn't get much darker or more violent than that. ._. In fact that's more or less what he said about Sniper Elite III when I said it was too realistic for him.

Also it bears mentioning that my parents don't like me to tell him he can't play a game I have because they're scared he'll tell his dad that I have bad games or that he'll think I'm doing something bad. Honestly were it not for that I'd just let him know. Besides that my parents already don't like Shadow of Mordor, Sniper Elite III, or anything "violent" (I tried telling them games and movies have always been this violent, but they don't take it. Lol).

And nah, I would never lie to him, but I don't exactly volunteer anything I'd rather he not know. You're right about that for sure.

The only time I ever had to hide a game was a very long time ago, my family was having a huge holiday party at are house where I grew up at, and I was playing Carmageddon on the family PC, and there were a lot of younger kids there, well if you hit a certain button you can go into "Nice and Fluffy" mode where the pedestrians are gone, and there is no blood. When they walked out the room, I would turn it back on. I was always allowed to play whatever video game I wanted so I never had to hide a game from my parents, and really when my brother was around I was playing violent games, but we were taught that the games were not real, it was all make believe etc.

Yeah but mostly just digital, I've been hiding GTA from my dad and stuff

It's no big deal though it's just GTA and I'm not even a terrible person when I play GTA

Eirinn : If he's playing Mortal Kombat, I think Lord of the Rings just may be a downgrade for the little guy...

I usually hide most, if not all, my Steam games. Because of things like violence, or it not being something my parents will approve of for one reason or another. Other times they don't care though, so at least there's that. lol

A user of this : Truth. Lol And I guess it's kind of like "They say that word where you live, but we don't say it here" when the littlest exclaims "What the [insert four letter word beginning with F]?!?". You know, can't help what they're exposed to over there but at least keeping it appropriate here. I have no doubt that he could handle it well enough, but I'm trying to be careful. I'd prefer he play games that are more on the happy end of the emotion spectrum as much as possible (though he plays violent games here too), or at least limit the other kind.

Besides, my parents aren't crazy about ME playing that game even. xD So I kind of know how you feel about your Steam collection. I won't play that or Sniper Elite III around them. Last time I played SEIII in front of dad he went away talking about how it showed people's brains flying out...a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Haha