Australia’s crazy anti-violent video game restrictions strike again! Valve submitted Left 4 Dead 2 (aren’t we boycotting that game?) to whatever board is in charge of rating video games down there, and the board replied with this: yeah, this game is too violent for anyone under the age of 18.
Of course, since Valve is, you know, interested in making money, it really can’t have a game out there that’s only playable by the over-18 crowd. To that effect Valve has re-submitted the game with some tweaks here and there in an effort to get passed the censor.
But there’s more! It seems that Valve anticipated this scenario, and has developed a special, Australia-only version of the game. You have to imagine that this version is way toned down, and may not be an accurate representation of the “real” game. So if Valve can’t get the censor to approve the slightly tweaked version of the game, then it’ll activate Plan B: selling the Australian version.
My guess is that, should the Australian version end up being released, then you’ll see plenty of Australians buy that version (in order to support Valve), but then download the cracked American version. That’s probably what I would do, to be honest.
No no no no. We dont have an R18+ rating in Australia. We only go as high as M15 for video games. So basically, the classification board thinks that no-one over 15 plays violent video games, and that some video games are too violent to 15 year olds so they must be banned or censored. Makes sense, huh?
is freedom not really important to people in Australia? granted i dont know much about politics in that particular country but i dont know if i’d be happy with the ‘freedom-lite’ package where i cant even get a proper gore game or film =\
I don’t necessarily agree with our video game censorship laws in OZ however it may be part of the reason we don’t have school massacres and the like.
I do love gory games/movies and whatever and as most of us know, anyone anywhere can get a hold of whatever versions they like from overseas.
The government has to cover their arse!
i believe you are wrong. The reason we don’t have school yard massacres is because guns are not freely available in Australia like they are in the US. That is the major contributing factor.
If the US government banned L4D2 in the US, it is not going to stop school yard massacres there.
Just my opinion.
Games do not cause massacres. Freely available guns and mental illnesses do.
Australia has had some of the worst mass murders in the western world in the past. Guess what: they were all before violent video games were avaiable and they stopped when guns were all but banned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_mass_murders
I did say PART of the reason, not the entire reason. I’m sure it is a contributing factor. I don’t claim to be an expert either and you can’t believe everything you read!
Common sense tells me that since there isn’t a gun shop on every second corner, that is the reason..
Yes absolutely, I agree but once again this is not the only reason. Another of many reasons I’m sure!
After you played L4D, did you feel like going to massacre your school mates?
Its easy: buy an CD-Key from a Country with no censorship, enter it into steam and voila u have the Uncut version. I prefer a small polish shop – sending uncunt Steamkeys in 20 Minutes and u can pay by Paypal. Very Easy and very uncut. At l4d u need to grab an bucket and place it under the display … or u got blood on the floor. Germany has a censorship for games too … :/
As an Australian I can say we have some crazy classification system on games.
If it’s not suitable for a mature audience 15+ rating. In other words it fits the criteria of an 18+ game it simply isn’t allowed to be sold. NFI how this came about since you can get 18+ movies. Like a previous commenter said, it’s probably our backward government (not population) believing no one over 18 plays video games.
“Look at the gameplay of Killing Floor. You can actually walk up to a common “clot” zombie (amongst others), and take its head clean off with ;
Chainsaw
Axe
Katana
Knife
Something else
These rulings are stupid. I actually feel like composing a short video of me being able to beat hispanics to death with a baseball bat in GTA4, smash an old ladies face into my knee in Prototype, chainsawing off zombies heads in Killing Floor, killing the little sisters in Bioshock, and brutaly killing people in Madworld etc etc. It just makes no sense that these can get let through, yet L4D2 cant?”