Australia Approves Final R18+ Gaming Guidelines

dotarray writes "Despite stories suggesting that a change to the Australian ratings system may be as far as two years away, the Federal Minister for Home Affairs has announced that each Australian state and territory has signed off on the final guidelines required for the introduction of an adult R18+ classification Down Under."

Re:What guidelines?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Apparently you don't know about the problems with video games down under. Many are outright banned right now as they do not meet the requirements for the Australian teen rating (13?) and thus cannot be sold, and some of it makes no sense. Some violent games get through, some barely-violent games get banned. Many then end up resorting to piracy, so then the games industry says "oh, its just pirates there, we won't bother" and it just cycles around and around. (Like Russia, which has been blown off as full of pirates, so nobody localizes for Russia, so there are more pirates... Gabe Newell just did an interview where he addressed it and they found that if they did proper releases in Russia, their sales were 3-5x what people expected).

The very thought that content would have to be approved before getting sold to adults is chilling.

yeah, Orwell thought it was scary too. :) In all seriousness though, censorship is a problem.