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New Aliens Vs. Predator Game Doesn't Make It Past AU Ratings Board
An anonymous reader writes "Australia refused to give Rebellion's new Aliens Vs. Predator game a rating, effectively banning it in the country. Rebellion says it won't be submitting an edited version for another round of classifications, however. (As Valve did with Left 4 Dead 2.) They said, 'We will not be releasing a sanitized or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices.'"
Quick explanation: Pretty much most of Australia would be happy to have an 'R' rating for computer games.
This guy (Michael Atkinson), however would not. He has the power to veto it and continues to do so.
Due to his geographical location, there's bugger all the majority of Australia can do about it from a voting perspective.
I don't blame game publishers for not releasing stuff here. Effectively we're all just waiting for 'Nanny' Atkinson to become senile and finally leave his post as South Australia's attorney general.
The thing that really worries me is how come they have this veto power for things like this in the first place....
As an aussie.... /agreed!
And anyway, its not gonna stop jack shit. Everyone will just buy the game off eBay.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
What are people supposed to do? No politician is going to get elected on the platform of allowing an R18+ category or doing away with censorship.
I suspect these guys hope you are wrong about that.
Whatever do you mean?
Do you mean that this is something the Australian public wants? That nothing is being done?
Or perhaps you are one of those nuts that believes that if we are not violent nothing will be done. I'd like to remind you that all those guns did not stop an extremely invasive surveillance law being put into place by the previous US government.
Because you are an ignorant troll, you do not actually know what is happening. Right now the R18 rating is being held up by one man, the South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson. All the other state Attorney Generals voted yes on R18 for games. Australian law in this case requires a complete consensus, not a majority (this prevents the State AG's from removing or changing existing classifications as well). There are already campaigns to remove Michael Atkinson from his seat of Croydon in the 2010 elections such as the Gamers4Croydon organisation.
Please mod the parent troll, if possible ignorant as well.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You are now mixing kids with adults and this game is not made for kids, it's for adults so your argument goes out of the window right now. Besides, how are the games as you listed wrong? I had tons of fun playing DOOM and Mortal Kombat. Not kids games, but i did play them as a kid, so did you propably but that doesn't mean that every violent game should be banned.
I love violent games. That doesn't mean that i go postal and kill everyone for real. It's entertaining to have some alien go up on a human, smack brains on the wall and go for next victim. It's fun. It's not real. It's a GAME.
Sure, i wouldn't want my kids to see that stuff, when they are kids but there are age ratings for a games for a reason. Why the hell Australia doesn't allow some games for anyone, not even over 18 years old?
Why some games are completely banned? Who are they protecting?
IIRC the Xbox enforces DVD region codes.
Afaict every console that can play DVDs enforces DVD region codes for them. This does not imply that they use the DVD region coding system for games.
I've just done some googling and it seems the xbox and xbox 360 use the same PAL/NTSC/NTSC-J region system that most other consoles use.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register