Content rating & maturity

HELIX is an adults-allowed platform with higher creative freedom than most, which only works with a clear maturity model. Every universal item and every world carries a content rating, declared by its creator and enforced platform-wide for discovery.

The ratings

Declaring a rating (publish-time attestation)

A creator must attest to the rating when publishing — it isn't inferred. The items publish pipeline rejects a publish that doesn't carry the attestation, and records when + what was declared (attestation version ugc-maturity-self-rating-v1). Any value other than the four ratings is a 400.

How it gates

• Discovery — listings are filtered to the viewer's maturity cap: their account setting (default everyone; anonymous visitors are everyone). A maxContentMaturity query parameter can only narrow that cap, never widen it.
• The platform ceiling is mature. No age verification exists on the platform yet, so no viewer's cap can reach adult: adult-rated content is listed to nobody except its own creator. The ceiling rises when real age verification ships.
• Worlds inherit a floor — when a world is published, its rating must be at least the highest rating declared by the Vault assets it uses. A lower declaration is raised, and the assets that caused it are reported. Undeclared (unrated) assets never raise the floor.

In the SDK

Ratings are platform-enforced — worlds don't compute them. An item's contentRating and contentRatingStatus are part of its schema; discovery filtering happens on the server, not in world code.

Reference

• Item schema → Inventory
• Economy → LIX & Economy