We’ve recently discovered that Hotline Miami 2 has been refused classification in Australia as a result of its depictions of sex and drug use.
The Classification Website stated the following:
The computer game is classified RC in accordance with the National Classification Code, Computer Games Table, 1. (a) as computer games that “depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified.”
We’re currently trying to acquire a copy of the classification report. More details when we get them.
Thanks Player Attack
Comments
100 responses to “BREAKING: Hotline Miami 2 Has Been Refused Classification In Australia”
Outrage in 3…. 2…. 1….
I am not outraged as much as I am disappointed, first reaction was to sigh.
Knew this would happen. The only difference between MA+ and R ratings is an increase in violence.
Because is violence is ok!
Games should not have real life themes!
*facepalms through face*
yay for US PSN accounts
Yep yep yep.
Yay for region free Xbox accounts! Region switch, download, switch back 🙂
Yep. Was going to comment “oh well guess I’ll just buy it on my USA psn account then”.
Ah well, import it in and save money. Thanks classification board 🙂
Those same criteria could have produced an RC when applied to Hotline Miami 1… what’s the difference now?
The people who reviewed it are more prudish than those who reviewed the first game.
Despite the mostly positive changes to the system, it’s still a very ad hoc process where inconsistencies such as this are still quite common.
The classification board is currently hiring, might as well put your name down and see if you can make a positive influence.
I’m suspecting as he isn’t a catholic priest, they wont hire him.
Actually I’ve been thinking about starting my own religion.
I’ve simplified the commandments and rules to live by down to one rule since we’re all time poor.
First and only Commandment:
Don’t be a Dick.
I won’t ever be asking for donations, but I will be installing Holy Pokie Machines. I have to pay for the church bus, our sermons have music, drinking and strippers. Both genders so look where you like and don’t be a dick about somebody elses choice.
We’re tolerant of everybody just don’t be a dick about it.
HM1 didn’t depict drug use or sex, which presumably the new one does, given the classification reasons.
Actually, the girl you save from the boss’s house that becomes your girlfriend was chained to the bed in lingerie with needles next to her and had been heavily beaten, implying she was a sex slave.
Australians all let us rejoice, For we are young and free;
Unless you are a Gamer, in that case, fuck you, we make the rules.
Why even have an R18+, seriously?
That Young and Free part really needs to be changed we’re losing more freedoms daily.
Our youth too. We have an aging population and it’s been that way for a while.
Well, see, we need greater population growth so that there are more young taxpayers to support our increasing aging population. And when that greater number of young taxpayers becomes aging as well and lives even longer, we’ll need even MORE population growth so there are even MORE taxpayers… We just need to keep adding more people, forever! Nothing will ever go wrong with this cycle.
It’s fine. We’ve got boundless plains to share.
Unless you’re a boat person. :\
It’s ok… theyre both half man half boat anyway
Unless you’re a burden to society and don’t help in any way*
We are also girt by soil.
As for “those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share”, I don’t think we all got the memo: it’s now “stop the boats”
Hey hey, we don’t sing the second verse :p
It would be unAustralian to sing the second verse of the Australian National Anthem.
bah, that didn’t even rhyme!! 😉
So now I HAVE to buy it…….
why would it even be put up for classification in the first place when the levels are like 30sec long
Fair enough, They’ve said repeatedly their stance on drugs giving boosts and violence would normally result in a RC. Worst case scenario, people can import it/use a overseas account
Can’t have sex in games, just imagine what would happen to the world if adults knew about sex…
How is porn legal? How can the government say this is too hazardous to its citizens but allow thousands of people to die each week from smoking? … yay for consistency!
Porn isn’t as legal as you’d think. I haven’t looked into it lately because following it is just depressing, but last I checked even most softcore American porn would likely be refused classification here for weird reasons. It’s actually really embarrassing how creepy out classification system gets. Apparently there’s a wrong sort of vagina.
Pretty certain X rated porn is illegal up here in Qld still. All vaginas are wrong here.
That’s because they have not figured out a way to tax vagina’s yet
A cup sizes are banned because apparently only kids have breasts that size, so if you can’t porn with them, those pedos won’t be watching them. Or something. Ugh. Fucking hell.
I wonder if they are pro- or anti-vagina dentata?
Sometimes I think the reason we have so many issues is because they do know about it. Idiocracy is a documentary from the future.
Boo..
Boo Wendy Testaburger…
Boo…
The review board can only work with what they’re given.
Unfortunately what they were given sounds like it was written by John Lithgow’s character in footloose.
“And they sang and they danced in the house of the lord!” Let me dance Australia… Let me dance.
You’re funny
Lol
Oh noes, if I play it I might have the urge to have sex…
Cue the people who still don’t understand how the rating system in Australia works.
Education time, kids. Gather ’round!
The R-Rating in Australia means that some games that depict drug use and sexual content can be rated. But, that doesn’t mean that every game ever created is going to be rated under the R18 rating. Some games still don’t fit under the rating because their content is too extreme for the rating and thus can be REFUSED CLASSIFICATION under Australian law.
BUT WE HAV DA R18 AND IM A ADULT I WANT 2 PLAY DA VIOENT GAYM AND SEE DA VIRTUL BOOBIE BECUZ GURL FRIENDZONED ME 4 LYF
Forward this to Dr Nerdlove – he may be able to offer some advice.
Chin up, brother.
1 step forward, 2 steps back……… now that bloody song is in my head!!
Looks like more of my money is heading overseas
Nobody gets too far like that.
Time to pirate (sorry developers).
MY CHILDREN ARE NOW SAFER!!!
Wont somebody pleeeease think of the children!~
/s
It’ll be interesting to see the report.
Not enough information about why this has happened to draw any conclusions yet.
I’d like to agree with you, because common sense should exist within our world.
Unfortunately the reality of our Classification Board is that they will provide ‘X’ reasons for this game to be RC. I will then proceed to list a minimum of ten games allowed release that involved ‘X’ reasons (likely to a more extreme extent).
I still do not understand why parenting can not be left to parents. It’s kind of entirely, 100% their responsibility.
I dunno. I do agree with the idea of staying balanced until I know all the facts and not jumping to wild conclusions, but I sort of feel like more information is counter productive. It’ll only make people avoid the topic of refusing to classify a game and focus instead on the merits of the game. It suddenly becomes about how poor/out of touch their judgement of the specific aspect of the game was and not the fact that games are being refused classification. Or worse it enters that GTA zone where you inadvertently validate their judgement by focusing on it’s ‘redeeming’ aspects in an effort to convince them part they take offense to is cancelled out by the good.
Personally I feel like a media needs no redemption. It doesn’t need to be art. It doesn’t need to be good. It doesn’t need to have some greater function. It just needs to be classified, perhaps restricted in how it’s distributed, but ultimately left up to the consumer to decide if they want to see/play/listen to it.
I passionately cared about the games ratings for a number of years, but I’m just over it now.
It’s becoming more obvious to me now, that there is a serious disconnect with the current crop of politicians / public servants and anyone under the age of 40 or so.
Unfortunately before any serious change can occur (rather than lip service in the form of the current R rating games have) we will have to wait for a generational change of those in “power”.
Thankfully there are other avenues for the technologically informed to access games which fall victim to this joke of a system.
Slightly off topic, this not only for games either, but a number of other areas which a currently shafted priority wise, or considered unpopular with voters, e.g. internet speed, and the “war on drugs” to name a couple.
Yeah, that will take a while though. Our education doesn’t seem to be improving either.
Either way, the world is a small place now so any of this doesnt apply to anyone who is willing to take 1 small extra step on getting what they want.
Eh, it’s only one game
Won’t be long before it happens again…then again…then again…soon enough Australia will only sell G rated games that are family friendly
A lot of people said the same thing when South Park got hit last year. It was the only game hit with the banhammer last year.
One game is not worth claiming Gaming Armageddon about.
Don’t forget Saints Row IV. Alien narcotics in a virtual world are wrong mmkay.
What about all the violence and pill popping in the new and updated Left 4 Dead 2? Or the incentives for abusing women in GTA5 (only if you bought it from Target anyway, I hear they have some kind of bonus).
Oh well, I’m just going to go back to forcing children to tread water for 8 hours in the pool before they die and make their parents watch though a glass wall. Thats acceptable.
While Alien drugs im all for, I think the issue they had with SR4 was the Alien Anal Probe weapon, and looking at this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8HYdt2O03M I can sort of see where they were coming from.
Actually wasn’t the banned content in the South part game also due to Alien Anal probing? Perhaps there is a trend here… Soon to be refused classification in Australia its Alien Anal Probe 3: Sticky situation!
The anal probe was removed from the game, added as DLC available for all versions of the game (and not available in Australia). They still cut out the whole mission involving Shaundi getting her power in the virtual world, just the same as all your other companions… just because she got hers inhaling a broken light bulb instead of writing vampire fan-fiction.
If you can find a youtube of the mission, you’ll see just how much of a joke it is.
… and Destroy All Humans got away with an anal probe weapon and an M rating 😉
http://youtu.be/QfBzv7PcviE?t=1m27s
Just use a US PSN? Sick of even caring about this stuff.
F***
Yes. According to the article that’s the problem.
“Generally accepted by reasonable adults”, as if to say that people who don’t accept that stance are likely unreasonable adults.
Thanks for telling me who I am, as usual.
I had no intention of purchasing this game, I know very little about the series and have no interest in learning.
That said, I’m going to make this a day one purchase via proxy, because telling the Government to shove it is the Australian thing to do.
Because some things are too dangerous for adult minds to comprehend.
Thank fuck we have the superhuman sanity of the classification board there to expose themselves to that mind-poison before it infects ordinary hapless Australians. God only knows what would happen if we were exposed to drug use or violence… in any media other than TV shows, news, books, movies or real life.
So, OFLC, can you please explaint to me why Farcry 4 was released in Australia when it depicts MANY scenes of you taking various drugs (including being doped up by a heroin cloud) which enhance your skills, killing ability, health levels etc? I mean, you even smoke weed in it, then see two guys injecting you with various syringes to ‘top you up’ ffs???
Seriously, I’m curious. Hypocrisy much?
I always thought Far cry 3 would not make it through, but it did no problem and other day I saw kid bout 10 buying it, yet I’m 27 and still get carded for smokes. This country makes no sense
I’m right there with you brother. I’m 24 and got carded for smokes yesterday.
All these games being banned for such abhor-able things, but any 10 year old can Google ‘Dwarf gangbang’ and see some far more disturbing images.
Dwarf gangbang you say… hmmmm… lol
@Rade surmised it well that The Classification Board may be a different group of classifiers than the ones who signed off on FC4. I would like to know why it was refused and then play it anyway to see what the big deal is 😛
It might very well be a different group of people, but they are all given the same guidelines to make a judgement with. There is no ‘gray area’ in this situation.
Hotline miami is my all time favorite vita game, this really crushes me
Grab yourself a American PSN account (in the same way you would set up any new account, except set your location to a US state). You’ll have access to the US PSN store, and can make purchases either through an AMEX card (it won’t accept Aussie credit cards, unfortunately), or through buying digital US points cards online. Anything that you’ve downloaded will also work on your regular account with no trouble.
This is a shame. I was looking forward to Hotline Miami 2.
the best we can hope for is that the devs and publisher stick to their guns and Refuse to edit the game. If they refuse to edit the game and the compile a list of other games that have the same amount of offending content then it will get passed as an R18 games just like AvP 2010 did. every other game that been RC’d and not over ruled is because the devs and publishers caved in and announced they would edit the offending content. Valve did it with left for dead 2, Ubisoft did it with south park, Deep silver did it with Saints Row 4. Only Sega have had the guts to stand up and fight the RC classification
This is such BS. I have steam keys from the action figure kickstarter and know how to use a proxy so I’m fine. I really wanted to play it on vita too, is it easy enough to get around the ban on there?
The Vita only lets you use one account at a time. If you want to use multiple accounts, you need to reformat it whenever you switch.
I was wondering this, too. Cheers for the answer.
PS: I’m not doing that, waaaay too much hassle.
You probably won’t even need a proxy to activate it on steam. I activated Manhunt and Risen and I’m sure other RC games fine… depends how they set it up in the back end I guess.
Wow, it must really be fucked up.
Sogn me up.
They probably still think games are made for children. Speaking of children, I updated Targets catalogue for them to be more child friendly. http://postimg.org/image/jppzd1f9t/
Fear not! Hotline miami was sold on gog. Com. If the sequel is sold there also you should be able to purchase it there via a proxy.
For once, an RC game I was actually looking forward to playing.
The classification needs to be changed. Again. There needs to be some leeway in regards to the depiction of sexual violence and drug use.
And so the ability to buy this anyway digitally means nothing to what classifications are in Australia. US PSN account? Easy. If it were on Xbox, it would be even easier. Either way, these silly classifications are easily bypassed.
Rip
Ill just go back to having sex with hookers, taking a hit of bong and then killing said hooker before escaping from the policemen to repeat the cycle.Pokemon Blue?
Apparently this is the reason:
“In the sequence of game play footage titled Midnight Animal, the protagonist character bursts into what appears to be a movie set and explicitly kills 4 people, who collapse to the floor in a pool of copious blood, often accompanied by blood splatter. After stomping on the head of a fifth male character, he strikes a female character wearing red underwear. She is knocked to the floor and is viewed lying face down in a pool of copious blood. The male character is viewed with his pants halfway down, partially exposing his buttocks. He is viewed pinning the female down by the arms and lying on top of her thrusting, implicitly raping her (either rear entry or anally) while her legs are viewed kicking as she struggles beneath him. This visual depiction of implied sexual violence is emphasised by it being mid-screen, with a red backdrop pulsating and the remainder of the screen being surrounded by black.”
Got this from PlayerAttack.com.au.
ACRB reviewing Games………………
http://i1301.photobucket.com/albums/ag101/p5ych00n5/images_zps24e7823a.jpg
If that’s the csse-fair enough
So this is still in the game?? This scene was in a teaser trailer AGES ago, and there was a tizzy about it and the devs said they were going to change the game because of the outcry.. I’m glad they didn’t but ugh now RC…
I’m pretty sure I remember also reading this particular scene takes place – as above – on a movie set, but that it’s actually part of some movie in the game – not actually you killing civilians and raping a woman.. but not sure if that’s true or notYet we have plenty of movies available in Australia with implied or otherwise viewable rape scenes.
Big whoop