yeah I heard about that.  sucks man, the game looks like a lot of fun. 

It really does.

I saw this on another website and somehow knew you would write a blog about it lol. They really don't have a decent excuse now that there's an 18+ rating. WTF even have an 18+ rating if your still gonna censor shit?

No idea. If there is rape in the game, then it's understandable, but it said it was implied, not actually shown, which I don't think is reason to ban somehting. 

I wonder who makes up this board.  Is it a bunch of 80 year old men and women who are easily offended by everything?

I have no idea. The annoying thing is they are so inconsistent. Left 4 Dead 2 and Mortal Kombat got banned, but we have dead space, god of war, and fallout 3? I just have no idea what their standards are, and that pisses me off.

The answer to that is very likely a resounding YES.

I knew that Australia was finally getting an actual mature rating, but I didn't know it had happened yet. The only thing I can think of is the Powers That Be are still stuck in that pre-18+ rating mentality that "if it's violent or sexual it's autobanned."

Sorry, whatsacow. I can only imagine how rough it is being a hardcore gamer Down Under.

It's been in effect since January this year, and we've gotten Mortal Kombat in australia finally. That said, the games that get banned I usually don't care about, but in this case, it stings just a little bit.

Does Australia have movie censorship of the same ilk?

Nope. The movie censors are really lenient. We have a 5 tier system of G, PG, M, MA, and R for films, and I haven't heard of any films being banned recently. We even got Serbian film, which I think was either banned in the US or UK.

Wow man, that's harsh.. Are you able to import it at all possibly?

Yeah. I think I could still buy the digital version from somewhere and say I'm Australian, but it's going to suck for console gamers. I mean a guy got two years imprisonment for owning a copy of Manhunt, so I wouldn't risk it.

That seems...a little extreme. Like you are adult enough to drink, go to war, get married, etc, but not adult enough to distinguish between real violence and digitized violence. I would never blow something up in real life, but there are people alive today who can thank the fact that I can blow things up in games (OK, maybe an exaggeration, but it's how I deal with road rage and difficulties in the work place). Two years in prison for owning a copy of a video game?! Seems a bit overboard if you ask me.

It was more for owning a product that is illegal in the country, and since the ban was public knowledge, the same laws applied. I understand that law.

 However, I don't think Saints Row should be banned, as, like Mortal Kombat, it is EXTREMELY cartoonish and purposefully overboard, getting rid of any pretense of realism. I just don't understand this ban. As an adult man in Australia, I am legally allowed to watch a depiction of someone being brutally raped and murdered, have their sexual organs brutalised, but I can't watch "interactive, visual depictions of implied sexual violence?" Video Games still aren't accepted as anything more than a toy here, unfortunately. 

It still seems a bit harsh. I can see a huge fine, but putting someone in jail for owning a video game, even if banned, seems excessive.

They sound a bit like our MPAA, only these people seem to have actual power beyond theatrical releases, and just giving things the NC-17 "death sentence."

That sucks, man.

 A lot of titles that get those ratings live on through dvd sales though. Games don't get that chance.

That's what I meant by the "actual power" thing. lol

From what I understand your government over there is almost on pare with the Bible belt over here. In the U.K. they censored nunchuckus, seriously if you watch a Bruce Lee flick or use the nunchuck guy in Soul Calibur, that shit is all blured out. As stupid and screwed up as my country is I guesse there are worse places to be.

Nah, we aren't as bad as the UK. I heard about some of the things you're board was trying to do to films, like banning certain horror films and what not... Weren't they banning Human Centipede 2? That film isn't even that bad, it's just that it's well known.

Well I know we got the first Human Centipede, wasn't aware of the sequel, not that I  even wanted to see the first one. Someones gots a poo fetish, just thinking about it makes me wanna hurl,lol.

The second one is a bit more violent, and I wasn't a fan, but I've seen far worse than that come out of the UK lol.

Australia has some very strange laws. Isn't nudity on public T.V. A.O.K.? Wasn't there a T.V. movie called Maslin Beach down near Adelaide that they aired, filled to the brim with nude people?

I'm guessing it's still 1993 over at the ratings board and that the members still tthink only 8 year old kids play video games.

I'm playing Saints Row The 3rd and enjoying it as a mindless, violent and outlandish sandbox game but I'll be passing on Saints Row 4. The real McCoy in GTA 5 is arriving a month later. I'd be more concerned if your ratings board bans that game, even if they are getting more and more serious with every passing title.

Yeah, Australia is allowed to show bare behinds on television, but nothing frontal. Also, GTA has ironically had very little trouble in Australia, only America lol.

I'm quickly starting to realise what problems I'm going to have when I want the latest games, luckily I can get mt parents to buy them and post them over from the UK, just need to put on the post packaging that its a Chelsea flower show DVD or something. I suppose this decision might have some ties to that poor Irish girl who was raped and murdered in Aus recently. That certainly doesn't justify a ban but with elections coming up I imagine it's quite a powerful political tool. Make sure you get a PS4 next gen as it's not region locked!

I've got a PC, but Steam still region locks things unfortunately. I'll buy it from somewhere else.

This makes the ratings board useless then. I mean wtf do they even have the ratings thing for? And plus, maybe if parents actually started doing their jobs, we wouldn't need any of this.

Yeah... I know, but it's election time and no political party is going to tell parents to do their jobs lol.

Really sucks man. It's really silly the reasons why they banned the game there. I mean, even Germany, who bowdlerizes the shit out of games, even allows (as far as I know and think) those kinds of games, albeit with lots of changes.

It's like we still live below the 20th century and they don't know that not everything is kid friendly to the world.

Germany is a lot stricter than Australia. I read their list of bans, shit is fucked up.