Australia Bans 220 Games in 4 Months Due to New Classification Model - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 July 2015 / 4,613 Views
Australia has banned 220 games since the introduction of a new classification model back in March. These games are all now illegal to sell, advertise, or publicly exhibit in Australia.
Under the old model the Australia Classification Board banned just 50 games from 1994 until 2014.
Additionally, starting today, Australia will be using the new International Age Rating Coalition to regulate the sale of digital games. This system has also been adopted by the US, Canada, UK, Brazil, and most countries in Europe.
An Australia Classification Board spokesperson said the following:
"Due to the online explosion, there are hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of games currently available online. It is not realistic or practicable for the Classification Board to manually classify each of them.
In preparation for the pilot, a large 'back catalogue' of games has been classified — more than 150,000 to date. After 12 months, classification ministers will determine whether the IARC tool should be a permanent part of the Australian classification scheme."
Source: [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]
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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Why do governments feel like they can tell us what we can and can't play? Censorship is ruining gaming economies, fuck u australia
this is used by the US ,UK , Canada parts of Europe ,it's not just Australia and it's just because of the proliferation of online digital games , most of the banned games one would assume would be cheap porno style games and in most cases the general public wouldn't run across most of these games, an example would be games made for say the Japanese adult market normally with the focus on local consumption that wouldn't impact say Australia but with the focus changing to online distribution they need classification and because of the large volume compared to retail and digital games coming in via mainstream outlets they are trialing this model it's just a matter of the classification net getting bigger.
I thought the point of adding the 18+ rating was to reduce the number of banned games, not multiply it by 4!
it not about the 18+ classification but more about the increased exposure to digital games from around the globe , in terms of an analogy it corresponds to cheap imports coming in without any oversight , and as a solution to the sheer volume they are using what seems to be an outside ratings agency , The retail and digital offerings of games from the major players will be unaffected since they will continue to go through the board also it's being done by a lot of countries including the US.UK etc
here we go with government parenting. ugh.
Well....nothing wrong with more peaceful games being played by more 10yr olds.
