Necrovision – which, to be honest, we’d forgotten all about – has been effectively banned in Australia, after the local Classification Board deemed it unsuitable for an MA15+ rating.
Those in the know will know that, in Australia, MA15+ is as high as the ratings for video games go, with no legal grounds (yet) to rate a game “adults only” (or, as it would be known here, R18+). So the game hasn’t technically been banned, but it may as well have been, since it’s the Board’s way of politely saying “well, we’d have given this an R18+ if we could, but we can’t, so stores aren’t allowed to sell it under Australian classification laws”.
There’s been no explanation from the Classification Board as to why, exactly, the game was knocked back, but being a game about the undead in the First World War, it’s most likely go to do with gore and/or violence.
For the record, the game was released earlier this year in Europe on the PC to a decidedly lukewarm reception.
Necrovision banned in Australia [GameSpot]
Smokey
April 15, 2009 at 4:23 PM
I can’t speak to the actual quality of the game in question but yet another fine example of our fine ratings board.
Perhaps Michael Atkinson should spend less time picking out questionable comments (on the internet no less) which have been made against him.
Report PermalinkI put this to him, perhaps he could actually come up with not only proper merits for his stance but actually ANSWER to the multitude of sensible, rational thinking which has been thrown at him from adult gamers and parents alike.
chann
April 15, 2009 at 8:35 PM
@DrunkAus: He’s the ATTORNEY General. Nitpicking, I know :) At least that means we can VOTE him out next year.
Report PermalinkGive_Up
April 16, 2009 at 2:14 AM
This is good news. Pointless, excessive violence in gaming doesn’t need to be encouraged.
Report PermalinkNo Way
June 22, 2009 at 2:56 AM
We dont want excessive violence to be encouraged.
We just want to be allowed to express ourselves freely.
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