Left 4 Dead 2 Banned In Australia

An anonymous reader writes "According to Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification, Left 4 Dead 2's content exceeds that allowable for an MA15+ rating. Any such game is rated as Refused Classification, effectively banning it. From the report: 'The game contains realistic, frenetic, and unrelenting violence which is inflicted upon "the Infected" who are living humans infected with a rabies-like virus that causes them to act violently. The player can choose from a variety of weapons including pistols, shotguns, machine guns, and sniper rifles. However, it is the use of the "melee" weapons such as the crowbar, axe, chainsaw and Samurai sword which inflict the most damage. These close-in attacks cause copious amounts of blood spray and splatter, decapitations and limb dismemberment as well as locational damage where contact is made to the enemy which may reveal skeletal bits and gore.'"

Comments

Not suitable for 15 yr old boys?

[rve]

Don't they have an 18+ rating for games in Australia?

Polls consistently show that the vast majority of gamers are adults.

Re:Not suitable for 15 yr old boys?

[Merls the Sneaky]

No we do not.

Re:Not suitable for 15 yr old boys?

[grapeape]

Nope, their rating system goes from G, PG, M, MA15+ (which is a mishmash of what we have as T and M in the ESRB though nearly all end up on the MA15+ side) and then RC games classified as RC are automatically banned from sale and display.

Re:Not suitable for 15 yr old boys?

[adamkennedy]

R18+ is not applicable to video games, which has been an ongoing complaint of the industry for a LONG time now.

So in the sense this isn't "banned" as such, it's just that the censors are given the game and told to work out the category.

Normally, anything so bad that it doesn't fit into the R18+ classification (which usually means stuff like "realistic depictions of rape" and varying gradients of behaviour heading towards but falling short of "child pornography") are the only things that end up beyond the available ratings and in the "Refused Classification" area.

The problem is just that they WOULD quite happily give it R18+, but they aren't allowed to. Which leaves violent games like this thrown in with rape video and similar stuff, where they don't belong.

Everyone knows it's fucking ridiculous, and as the game-playing public ages I imagine it will get fixed eventually. It just results in stupid edge cases in the short term.

Re:Not suitable for 15 yr old boys?

[imrehg]

Don't they have an 18+ rating for games in Australia?

Polls consistently show that the vast majority of gamers are adults.

in connection with this... Just because a kid "shouldn't" play the game, nobody is allowed to? Ratings are for the parents, if i was a parent and wanted to get a 18+ classified game to my kid, who give the right to the government to stop me? No-one. They cannot buy the game themselves, but that's all. So, again, because some board of someones thinks that it is not suitable for children, who the hack are they to tell what is available for sale. Oh, right, the law.... And because it's about "just some game and stuff", people won't go out to protest (though now they would have time, since cannot get the game). But it is just another nanny-state bullshit...

Re:Not suitable for 15 yr old boys?

[Techman83]

Unfortunately no we don't, M15+ is the highest. We need to have a unanimous vote by the Attorney Generals to get something like an R18+ for video games and Michael Atkinson voted no to the change (everyone else voted yes).

"He doubts whether any safeguards could be put in place to deter young people, who after all (are) the most computer literate and savvy in our society, from being able to access material."

news.com.au

Until he is replaced or retires, there will not be any change to the classification system.

Re:Heh

[ScytheBlade1]

They sell boxed copies as well. A search on gamestop.com shows this.

And as that search shows, they also sell copies for the 360, which is definitely not steam. Plus, something tells me that most game companies don't like pissing off an entire national gov't. Just a thought though.

Re:And...

[norpy]

By this logic it should be just as illegal to direct a film like 28 days later in Australia

By the way, you should be modded down for the "but its harmful to children" argument you just used. The average age of an australian gamer has been shown to be over 30
We are not asking for games like this to be available to children, only that we can have a suitable rating for adults that wish to play games with adult content not intended for sale or consumption by chidren.

Re:Cranky - look at this one over here!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Crikey", doofus.

Re:Heh

[regular_gonzalez]

They would have to block the sales of the game, or face legal penalties. There is a workaround, however, that is used in every sizeable gaming community where Game A is not available in Region B for whatever reason -- a friend who *is* in Region A can buy the game as a gift, and then gift it to the person in Region B (whereupon B paypals money to A). Inconvenient? Definitely. But not insurmountable, if you're a regular on a gaming forum like Shacknews.

Re:Heh

[Nocterro]

Illegal to sell or import. Unlike the USA, our "rating" system is an undisguised censorship system.

The message is clear

[Opportunist]

Aussies, if you want to see blood and gore spluttering from some zombie's guts, it's time to go to your parlament!

How you read that, well, that's up to you...