People don't seem to get how ESRB ratings work. About the only thing that's a guaranteed M rating is exposed female nipples or overt sexual content of some sort. Killing children, it's kind of a toss up depending on who they get to watch the video. By the way, the ESRB rates games by having people sit down and watch a video of clips from the game with the most "extreme" content then make their ratings based on that. It's got little to do with context, and it's hardly consistent. Generally it's considered worse to leave controversial content inaccessible in the game files than it is to have it openly accessible. Take for example the sex minigames in God of War and GTA San Andreas. The Sex minigame in God of War was openly accessible and the game was given an M rating, the sex minigame in GTA SA was only accessible through outside modification of the game, and when this was uncovered it resulted in the rating being shifted to AO. Also, sexual content is generally much more controversial than violence thanks to the US's bass ackwards puritanical legacy. Oblivion had regular displays of nude mangled corpses but because the corpses were male, and had their genitalia gruesomely removed from their bodies leaving a gaping gore filled hole the game was given only a Teen rating, until it was discovered that modding the game to remove the female characters' bras revealed badly deformed nipples underneath (due to the fact that they used the same skin texture for males and females). Suddenly the game's rating was bumped up to an M.Basically what I'm saying is the ESRB is full of shit, much like my country's moral compass.
Also, I don't think killable children will be that big of a deal. At least in the US It's a small indie game so it's not really worth the sensationalist media's time. But with how screwed up the ESRB there's no way to be certain.
