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In 6 Months, Australia Bans More Than 240 Games
dotarray writes with this snippet from (apropos) Player Attack: In the 20 years from 1995 to January 2015, there were 77 games Refused Classification in Australia. After January though, more than 240 games have been effectively banned by the Classification Board — an average of 40 per month. Most of these games are mobile- or digital-only releases you're unlikely to have ever heard of, with names like League Of Guessing, 'w21wdf AB test,' Sniper 3D Assault Zombie, Measure Bra Size Prank, and Virtual Marijuana Smoking showing up in just the first few pages. What games are banned in your country?
Just imagine all those games get that free advertising. "Banned in Australia" could become the new measure of how cool a game is.
From TFA
While this current trial will only last 12 months initially ...
So the Oz government has signed up with a global, unified ratings system from the IARC. And all that is required from the game publishes is to submit answers to a bunch of questions to set a ratings level for their game. For free.
Sure, the OZ government has probably tailored how the answers to the question map into the desired Australian ratings system, but this sounds like a great step forward with consistency and transparency. Also from TFA
It's worth noting that the IARC has also submitted plenty of games which have been accepted by the Classification Board - we're still figuring out the exact number, but there are hundreds of digital/mobile only games classified R18+, MA15+, M, PG and G which have passed through the IARC process.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I agree, in US fewer and fewer games are banned (as a percent of all video games). This is because the number of avenues for games publishing is mushrooming, opening the door for many devs to publish games that wouldn't have gotten wide exposure before. At the same time, the costs of game development is dropping, creating a space for indie devs who aren't making the next AAA shooter.
This creates a vibrant scene where we're seeing games about topics that would have been unthinkable before, because they would have been considered unviable and not worth the investment. Games about censorship. Games about cancer. Games about all sorts of topics, including ones that would be banned under traditional media, either by a govt agency or through self-censorship.
It's the golden age of gaming!
nope, it means the game was refused classification and it is illegal to sell it or import. Even after they opened up the classification laws we still have a range of games that will never be legal to be sold here, anything that shows illegal drug use, violence on woman etc etc. The summary makes it sound like the bans have gotten worse, in actual fact the laws have become far more relaxed here in the last few years with the introduction of an R classification, just the proliferation of people trying to cash in on cheap gimmick apps to attract immature buyers has increased 100 fold.
The game Mino is banned in the U.S. because a district court ruled three years ago that The Tetris Company owns the exclusive right to make falling block video games using the seven one-sided tetrominoes. Tetris v. Xio . And I expect an eventual lawsuit against the Free Software Foundation over M-x tetris in GNU Emacs because Tetris co-founder Alexey Pajitnov believes that free software "should never have existed" because it "destroys the market".
cock fighting, bear baiting, and tackle football (NFL doesn't like it, anymore).
I read about this and I'm really glad I don't live in Australia right now. America still has SOME freedom left although it is rapidly dwindling.
Mortal Kombat was banned simultaneously in Australia, Germany, U.K. and several other countries on what became known as Mortal Monday, 1993.
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It has been banned for all but the very rich, thanks to a wave of new regulations. 90 percent, yes 90 percent of my industry is gone and we are paring back.
Capitalism used to be a fun game to play in America.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
If cock fighting video games were banned, Nintendo and its fans would be up in arms, and the mainstream news media would have run a story about a country where kids are forbidden to spend their POcKEt MONey on a video game that has been rated "Everyone (Comic Mischief, Mild Cartoon Violence)" by the U.S.-based ESRB.
A 30 second unskippable ad before a 45 second video, probably inserted by a "rights holder", raises an important point. Rhythm games are a minefield for patents, sync rights, and master rights. If Didgeridoo Hero were real, I wouldn't be surprised if it were banned in at least one major market for failure to secure the appropriate licenses.
fine, it's the silver age, like marvel/stan lee.
Yes, whatever happened to the country's old reputation as a freedom-loving "America done right"?
It started when bicycle helmets became mandatory across all Australian states in the early 90s. They've been hacking chunks out of personal freedom ever since.
Australia has had authoritarian, paternalistic governments since, at least, the end of WWII. Consequently, the best and brightest tend to leave the country (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_diaspora). This leaves Australia with two major pastimes: digging coal out of the ground and selling houses to one another.
They can't be banned for content objectionable to parents, but they can be banned for being too similar to an incumbent's product. See, for example, Atari v. Philips (similarites between Pac-Man and K.C. Munchkin for the Odyssey2 console), and Konami v. Roxor (similarities between Dance Dance Revolution and the StepMania-powered In the Groove).
nope, it means the game was refused classification and it is illegal to sell it or import. Even after they opened up the classification laws we still have a range of games that will never be legal to be sold here, anything that shows illegal drug use, violence on woman etc etc. The summary makes it sound like the bans have gotten worse, in actual fact the laws have become far more relaxed here in the last few years with the introduction of an R classification, just the proliferation of people trying to cash in on cheap gimmick apps to attract immature buyers has increased 100 fold.
This is also something that is never and realistically can never be enforced.
By the sounds of it, most of the games are mobile games (I still have trouble accepting mobile games as proper games, they're the modern equivalent of the old flash games I used to play in a browser in the early 00's) so a lot of the sales will never take place in Australia, the method of distribution doesn't take place in Australia and the method of distribution is pretty much unstoppable. This is just government bureaucracy trying to say it's doing something.
However this is the kind of shit that happens when elect an ultra conservative government. As an Australian this wasn't even on my radar and realistically, still isn't because we have so many other problems such as the government trying to make it possible for them to strip citizenship (in the name of fighting teh terr'sts), trying to neuter the ABC, trying to strip the public health and education systems, increasing unemployment and destroying the economy. Australia elected it's own George W Bush in Tony Abbott and yes, we were warned.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
the OP had it best. they can be effectively banned if they won't sell. the publishers will self censor and focus on games that will sell. if walmart, target, gamestop etc refuse to sell a game then that scares the publishers. Combine this with an industry-wide rating system that evaluates content for appropriateness and you have a pretty effective censorship system, at least under the old industry structure. The new way, with google play and other online stores, publishers have much more freedom to explore game content. Apple is still pretty strict about content guidelines, but otherwise there's more freedom.
It started when bicycle helmets became mandatory across all Australian states in the early 90s. They've been hacking chunks out of personal freedom ever since.
No - it started long before that. Seatbelts in cars compulsory from 1970. Motorcycle helmets before that. Horns on horseless carriages.
If bicycle helmets are your biggest whinge, you've been lucky so far. Try something like building a house, or running a small business, and see how many pointless regulations there are to make your life difficult. At least helmets are useful, even if the laws are not.
Anything Apple won't publish is essentially banned.
This signature is lame.
Australia can't have a game with blood in it and Germany can't have a game with Nazis in it.
the OP had it best. they can be effectively banned if they won't sell. the publishers will self censor and focus on games that will sell. if walmart, target, gamestop etc refuse to sell a game then that scares the publishers.
Note this is different than Australia, where if you are caught trying to import censored video games (or movies), you can be fined and the censored objects will be destroyed.
"People don't want to buy this game" is not the same as censorship.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What happens if you download the game off the internet? (For example, most of the games mentioned here are on the Android play store).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You mean selling houses to the Chinese.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
Ehh. In a few months Greece will totally implode and it won't matter anyway. Enjoy your generous social welfare system while you can.
it is enforced and very successfully so,
How? They cant even get Apple and google to comply 100% of the time and bypassing this is simple.
Steam barely does anything and Gog completely fails to give a shit. I can buy games that have been banned in Oz for years (Postal series) on Gog.
You're definitely not Australian or you'd realise how much bollocks you've just posted.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Australia has been ban happy with games for years.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I am Australian and they most definitely "CAN" get Apple and google to comply and they have been. They are called fines, over time if they continually fail to comply the fines increase significantly. you really have no clue on how the world works, just because it is easy to get around the restrictions doesn't mean it isn't being enforced. the vast majority of users have never heard of gog let alone use them to purchase anything. They use the major distributers, shops for physical and apple, google, steam for digital.
What about, say, Amazon Appstore?
Banned games? None that I know of where I live (Sweden).
Of course - there are people crying that this or that should be banned for moral reasons, but unless it's classed as breaking some law like distribution of child pornography or being a trojan it's not going to be stopped.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
It's not blood - it's red transmission fluid.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I assume you mean amazon.com and their apps: they don't even (legally) sell to Australians, you need to go through the amazon.com.au store and regional rules apply, both for content and robbing us blind on software/ebooks.
I agree, in US fewer and fewer games are banned (as a percent of all video games). This is because the number of avenues for games publishing is mushrooming, opening the door for many devs to publish games that wouldn't have gotten wide exposure before. At the same time, the costs of game development is dropping, creating a space for indie devs who aren't making the next AAA shooter.
This creates a vibrant scene where we're seeing games about topics that would have been unthinkable before, because they would have been considered unviable and not worth the investment. Games about censorship. Games about cancer. Games about all sorts of topics, including ones that would be banned under traditional media, either by a govt agency or through self-censorship.
It's the golden age of gaming!
I do not agree with this being the Golden Age of Gaming. With the exception Nintendo, we have console companies that trying to bring PC gaming to the masses, with crappier hardware, questionable controls, a higher price and NO mod ability. Then the PC gets the crappy ports of the console games with the developers shitting on PC users.
I don't even want to get started about the mobile game market. While there are a few gems, it's mostly copy cat crap, and finding the good stuff is like finding a needle in a haystack. On top of that, the in app purchase nags and other ways to get your money blow.
PC side, we got developers that demand DRM, do some crappy Always Online Connection crap, which backfires, but then they keep doing that same thing, fore release after release. PC developers out right lying to their customers, saying something isn't possible when it damn well was. We got MS who says every few years about how they are going to be supporting PC gaming, and then never goes thru with anything.
We've always have Indy Game Developers on the PC, it's just with the last 2 generation of Consoles, all the big developers think they need to do it Hollywood style, big triple AAA titles that have to sell 20 million units to make a profit. And guess what? That hasn't changed much in the last 20 years.
It is not the Golden Age of Gaming.
Be seeing you...
Ehh. In a few months Greece will totally implode and it won't matter anyway. Enjoy your generous social welfare system while you can.
This statement must mean you are in the US which has an imploding corporate welfare system.
I mean the Amazon app store for Android, that is pre-installed on Kindle Fire, but can also be installed as an app on any Android device.
"People don't want to buy this game" is not the same as censorship.
It's the same end result. I used to work for a game distributor, and just like every other distributor in every other industry, there are channel managers who decide what products they think are worth trying to distribute. If your product comes across as unmarketable, then your game was effectively "un-buyable". Obviously this is no longer true in the age of the Internet, but the same goes for government censorship attempts.
An unusual and surprising spike in video game piracy has been noticed in Australia.
You can have games with Nazis in it in Germany. But it has to be censored and all Nazi symbology has to be replaced or removed.
For example, the new Wolfenstein game from Bethesda is available, but the swastikas in the German version are replaced by the stylized "W" from "Wolfenstein", and "SS" symbols like the deathshead or the "SS" itself have been removed entirely.
Also, one scene where you wake up in a gas chamber surrounded by corpses has been altered and all corpses have been removed.
The original "Wolfenstein 3D" was completely banned in Germany, because there was no censored version available.
Personally, I think that is bullshit. Nazi symbols are generally illegal in Germany, but allowed under special circumstances such as for "artistic purposes". But then for some reason, they don't have to be removed from movies, such as Indiana Jones... I really don't see the justification for allowing it in movies but forbidding it in video games.
But that's not all. Extreme kinds of violence in videgames are almost always also banned in Germany unless softened for the German market. Fallout 3 for example, where you can blow up individual body parts, is also altered to be less violent.
I was riding to work one day and woke up in the hospital. Without my helmut, it's quite likely I would never have woken up at all.
In Poland playing poker tournament without valid license is illegal. Online poker is also illegal. I am not joking. People here are so brainwashed by Civic Platform that they still consider this party "liberal".
Germans have been waking up without a helmut since quite some time.
there are plenty of online curated guides to help you cut through the crap, like toucharcade.com. steam and console platforms allow indies to post games for online download for a couple bucks. yes, before anybody could distribute their own shareware games and people could download them off their website, but that's not like today with massive distribution channels.
I was corrected in another thread, it's the silver age of gaming.
Interesting to see the same SJW Gamergate types complain about this, that want to ban things *they* don't like...
I shit you not.
In fact, it was the first game that was banned for minors. Not anymore, though.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
In 6 Months, Australia Bans More Than 240 Games
I knew something weird happens when you cross the international dateline, but I didn't realise it could send news back in time by half a year.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
To me Wolfstein has the same artistic value as Inglourious Basterds. Wikipedia says that the film was not censored in germany, but the posters and such were. Yet the content itself of one was censored and the other was not.
That might be a factor. But I think the major reason is that historically, film in Germany has enjoyed a good reputation as a cultural or entertainment asset. Videogames on the other hand are still somewhat stigmatized. If you out yourself as a gamer, there is still a sizeable portion of the German populace that will regard you as an immature time waster.
If you have South Korea on the one side, where videogames are practically universally accepted and integrated in society, Germany is close to the opposite end of that.
I'm sorry, but how does this work? Is google somehow legally obligated to, despite, as far as I know, not operating in Australia? Or will google simply be censored if they don't comply?
Comment Signature
In my country, the most recently banned game is called "Leaking information of Private Contractors work on Government Surveillance Network installed to Spy on Ordinary Citizens."
What the heck...
In Soviet Russia, video games ban government!
Ok, that really doesn't make any sense.
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"in US fewer and fewer games are banned (as a percent of all video games). This is because the number of avenues for games publishing is mushrooming"
Are those same avenues not available EVERYWHERE?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
I suppose, perhaps, depending on regional availability of these app stores and language support for non-English languages. I can only speak to the US experience.
That's a completely different issue and a question of immaterial rights. Not a question of banning on the reason for being morally questionable.
Bans for sex, bans for violence, bans for copyright (K.C. Munchkin), and bans for patent (In the Groove) are bans for very different reasons but still bans. This is in much the same way that copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret are very different areas of law but still included in the umbrella term "immaterial rights" or "intellectual property".
I wonder how many games that will end up having hidden content (easter eggs) with some questionable material not visible when the game is approved.
The ESRB requires all disclosure of all Easter eggs that would materially affect the rating. Rockstar got in big trouble for the hidden "Hot Coffee" stuff in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Well, there is lots of corporate welfare in the US. It generally doesn't work out. Greece being a fully socialist country, it's corporations are fully dependent on the State. Funny that you failed to mention that.
It's the same end result. I used to work for a game distributor, and just like every other distributor in every other industry, there are channel managers who decide what products they think are worth trying to distribute. If your product comes across as unmarketable, then your game was effectively "un-buyable". Obviously this is no longer true in the age of the Internet, but the same goes for government censorship attempts.
Even though the results look similar, you can't still say censorship is the same and no one wants. One is to intentionally block (force) and the other is demand & supply (willingness). If you said the result is the same anyway regardless the path to get there, then there is a huge problem with your thought.
What if your family is starving to death. You attempt to get food to feed them by either stealing from others or working hard to earn food for your family. Yes, the result is the same -- your family get fed -- but the approach to get there are 2 completely different paths. Please don't over simplify by looking only at the results.
I pity your blinkered view of gaming.
I'll get on with working through my backlog of high quality PC games with gameplay experiences to match anything released historically and often graphics and sound that are far better.
Console ports are lazy and don't represent the high-end of PC gaming, but that doesn't negate the other options available, whether it's indie games that match the AAA games of just a couple of years ago, the AAA games that fully exploit PC capabilities or the esoteric games that reach a market previously unavailable and genuinely do different and interesting things.
Golden age of gaming? Maybe, maybe not, but I've never had access to so many such high quality games before.
They can pry my Platinum Edition of "Virtual Marijuana Smoking" out of my cold dead hands.
Yeah, and will be every bit as regionally racist as the rest of the Kindle range.
In one example the classification board prevents distribution (product is still accessible on black market)
In the other the Channel Manager of the distribution company prevents distribution (product is still accessible on the black market).
Same, same. Someone somewhere has an opinion which affects the availability of a product. In the case of a distributor it is worse because a large distributor can own the rights to distribution from a studio, thereby guaranteeing your product never sees the light of day. With public classification, you can always appeal your case, or tweak it slightly to get it approved.
Tepples, why the heck do you keep stating such outdated and incorrect info?
Because I have not been made aware that a particular piece of information has since become outdated and incorrect. Would it be more proper to phrase all such anecdotes in the past tense, citing a particular article that was published in a particular month and year?
"garage developer"
Which I did not mention at all.