ESRB hands Batman: Arkham Knight an "M for Mature" rating

Batman: Arkham Knight been handed an "M for Mature" rating from the ESRB, and it's the first M rating to be handed to a Rocksteady Batman series.

Speaking with IGN, Rocksteady founder and the game's director Sefton Hill said he and his team were surpirsed. said the team was surprised.

"From our point of view, we never wrote it or made it with a rating in mind," he said. "We never did that in the previous two games."

The other titles in the series earned a "T" for Teen rating, but the M rating for Arkham Knight may have more to do with the game being darker in context, instead of any "gratuitous blood or swearing."

"As the end of the trilogy, we have every villain in Gotham working together to destroy Batman," Hill said. "It's unavoidable that some bad stuff is going to happen. But that doesn't mean we changed our approach. We're not including gratuitous blood or swearing.

"We want to deliver a true end with no compromises, and it takes us to some dark places."

During the early development phase Warner Bros. did a ratings analysis on the game and found a few "issues," but Sefton promises nothing has been changed, and that keeping the game "mass market" in order to garner a Teen rating isn't an option.

"I'm not blind to the fact that the rating means some fans will miss out," he said. "I don't want to be oblivious to that fact. It would have been wrong to water down the game and deliver a story we didn't believe in to keep the game "mass market" or enable it for more people.

"We love the story and we don't want to jepoardize that."

Batman: Arkham Knight is slated for a June release on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.