We've no doubt that many of you are not particularly fond of the Classification Board at the moment thanks to their refusal to classify Left 4 Dead 2 effectively neutering what was one of the most anticipated releases of the year.

Resident gumshoe Brenna Hillier did a bit of sniffing around the Classification Board's website to see what else they've been up to, and dug up some rather interesting stuff.

Read full article by Brenna Hillier

*sigh*

Qft.

If your not ordering your games from overseas at this point...
Cheaper with boobs and blood.

lol at Dragon Ball:Origins having an M rating.

dragon ball refused classification. Wtf. Ok the ratings board and the people on it are insane.

Writing letters to newspapers about those darn skateboarders, sucking up a current affair like ritalin and grumbling about anything that indicates progress, lamenting about how much better life was when they had horse drawn carts, wondering what the hell this internet thing is and getting involved by proxy in anything where they suspect people are far happier than themselves in order to drag them down to their own pathetically boring level thereby validating the virtue of their existence

they did that in the interim while a new classification was considered, which makes sense really. because if something was considered unclassifiable and still available for sale while they were reconsidering it, that would be a less consistent approach (e.g. new content is not available for sale while they are making consideration, otherwise we might've been able to get l4d2 uncensored for a while)

what the end of this article makes me wonder about is this: l4d2 had the violence decreased to make it in with ma15+. the problem iirc was that the zombies looked too much like humans for the dismembermet etc to be appropriate. Instead of dumbing down the violence and causing what now seem to be game breakers for censored playing with noncensored, why not make the zombies look less human?

don't know if this has been discussed before or not. maybe if they made them glow green or something, i don't know, but i wonder if it would've been a viable alternate means of getting ma15+, or if the method they used they tried because they knew it would work...

so was the Gothic 2 and Dragonball Origins bannings just a mistake and have since been reversed? that's what I got outa the article at least from DB:O

Not a mistake, the distributor requested a reclassification as they felt the game should perhaps have a higher rating.
Much as the submitter can resubmit a game for classification if they think it was given too high a rating - or refused classification altogether. Like was done for Left 4 Dead 2.

And the second application for the uncensored version to be given a rating has already been knocked back a week or so ago.

People need to stop blaming and maligning the OFLC for these issues - they are doing their job. Left 4 Dead 2 in its uncensored form is clearly a game that should be rated R18+. The OFLC can't give games such a rating and they don't get to decide what ratings are available. Their job is only to decide what classification to give a submitted item based on the guidelines given to them.
Get educated, please.

R18 Gaming Censorship Issue - One Thread to Bind Them for more discussion on the issue.

Don't forget at the end of the day, when they retire to their shrine to Andrew Bolt and pray that someone will do something about those blasted refugees and boat people.



Did Valve re-resubmit their application? Because AFAIK we are getting censored out the wazoo.

Yes they did and as I just said, the resubmission was rejected a week or so ago.

Again, freedom, no such thing.