Throughout the year it’s inevitable that a couple of games will run afoul of the Australian Classification Board, but rarely do we see the true scope of what goes through their doors. Here’s a little look at a year’s worth of games for the good ol’ classification board.
The data comes from the AusVGClassifications, an unofficial Twitter account that tweets out all the games that are classified during the year. Here’s the breakdown:
Classification board is off until New Years so here’s some stats! In 2017, 344567 games were classified up from 316755. Ratings breakdown was R18 – 762 MA15 – 6342 M – 32906 PG – 13751 and G – 290650. 156 games were refused classification.
— AusVGClassifications (@AusVGClass) December 27, 2017
You probably don’t remember seeing 34,4567 games get released this year. Unsurprisingly they’re mostly mobile games, and AusVGClassifications has credited the jump in numbers to IGEA for helping reduce costs for mobile devs looking to get classified.
Why so many? Thanks to the work of @igea mobile developers can now get classifications without the high fees to go with it.
— AusVGClassifications (@AusVGClass) December 27, 2017
If you’re curious, you can find a list of all the R18+ games here, which range from Yakuza 6 with “Sexual activity related to incentives and rewards” to a game called Mermaid Princess Love Story 3D which is apparently full of high impact violence.
The list of games that were refused classifcation can be found on the classification board’s website too, though most of those listings don’t mention what about the game caused it to be refused classification. With names like “virtual Marijuana” and “Camper Van Meth Lab: Breaking Bad RV Truck Driving” it’s not too hard to guess, but you have to wonder what was wrong with the game innocently titled “golf”.
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