Australia's History with Banning & Censoring Video Games

Your dad is based

The Left 4 Dead 2 one is downright criminal

Thanks for the time stamps

I remember in high school the IT guy lost his mind because i brought postal to school and he tried to get me suspended because its "illegal to own" 😂😂 p

We did not have an 18+ rating for games until 2013 that lead to a lot of games being banned or censored

Reason is mostly is because games here are rated the same way films and tv shows are. We don't have a separate ratings board for interactive media. The games industry here is unfortunately too small to get it's own board.

Games 😏

The board has indeed been cracking down less on violent video games but I wouldn’t say they’ve become any less censorious. They just turned their attention elsewhere. See Omega Labyrinth et al. Outside of video games, until recently Yen Press had refused to sell any of their books in Australia after the controversy over No Game No Life.

I do find it odd that that was considered too much but every bookshop in the country has no issue just selling outright yaoi. Fucking fujos.

Not that it matters since with the power of Amazon, I can own anything.

Alexa Bliss swallows.

Ah yes I remember that scene from FEAR 2 where Alma gets 𝓕𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓴𝔂 ❤️

How do you get factor beeb in aus

just look at all the shit you could do in the SAINTS ROW games smoke weed root hoes and so on not a word AND ALSO Dead island was way more graphic the most of that lol

Starfield is a hard R18+ in Australia because of interactive drug use?...

Fear 2 MA15+ For strong Violence, Blood and gore, Moderate course language. 0 mention of being sexually assaulted lol

I think even Rockstar’s legal team might be responsible for convincing the Australian National Ratings Board to introduce the R18+ rating for video games as GTA5 was the first game to ever receive the rating in Australia! :)

i'm so glad i'm not australian.

"Extra, extra, read all about it!" 📰 Mortal Kombat, Night Trap and Doom turn Australia's upstanding citizens into cannibalistic savages. 🙈🙉🙊

Seriously, you cant understand how revolutionary GTA3 was unless u were there

" trust me he liked it." The ratings board on fear 2

'Left 4 Dead 2 AU' must've ran beautifully on an old crappy teachers' laptop with crazy amounts of optimization like that.

Banning or censoring video games is something that just doesn't get forgiven

When my dad visited Australia in the 80s he loved how laid back it was. When I visited from england last year I was surprised that I couldn’t smoke on a beach . Not surprised it has strict censorship also

If the history branched after WW2, Med-X should technically be methadone. It’s good for you!

Does anyone find it ironic that Australians are portrayed as a strong people who are descendants of criminals brought to Australia that were able to brave the extreme danger and hardships of the Australian wilderness yet for some reason they cannot handle violent video games for some reason man talk about ironic.

I think it's hilarious how they went from censoring every hint of blood from 18+ games, to making Saw 3 15+.

Remember when Kochie from Ch7 Sunrise petitioned to get GTA IV banned because of the ladies of the night.

I find it kinda dumb how people say "the game is violent, but you're not forced to kill anyone"

Same as saying "there's whores in the brothel, but you're not forced to bang any of them"

Like yeah man, I agree that censorship is dumb, a proper rating system is much better, but to look at Postal 2 of all cases and say "nah bro, the game is squeaky clean, these politicians just don't get it" is just braindead

I love videos like these. Always liked hearing how other countries and governments felt about different games and genres and methods used to “protect the kids”. My favorite form of censorship is in GTA San Andreas, I believe it was Japan (hope I’m not wrong) censored out money falling from people after they died. Like they took away one of the mains things that’s been in GTA for the longest.

The Australian government is a nanny state. Their legislation to stop youngsters using social media being only the most recent example. It's a shame, because it didn't always exist this way. Back in the 1970s there were things on Aussie TV that would've made America and Europe blush. Full frontal on a soap opera called Number 96. The deviancy in Prisoner Cell Block H. Heck, even in the early 1990s there were frequently softcore movies every weeknight on SBS. This country went ultra censorship crazy at some point and never looked back. It's kind of sad. And 99% of the population will immediately go, "Oh, they must be doing it for a good reason", and never question it at all.

Sony was the worst when it came to censoring video games in Europe back in the PS2 and PS3 era. If Australian or Germany forced a game to be censored, everyone in Europe was also forced to have the censored copy as well because Sony was too lazy and cheap to do a different disks

Straya

It’s hilarious that they think they can stop people from playing these games in this day and age.

I remember before the R rating coming in all the good games were either banned or censored, thank the Gods we got an R rating to allow pretty much all games into Aus uncensored. As a big MK fan not being able to get MK9 was heartbreaking at the time. Also people think Fear 2 was less violent than 1? what! Fear 2 was far more violent. And I made sure to have a shotty on me every time I played.

I remember when mk9 was banned here,, hehe ,,, Ebay and a ps3 that wasn't region locked bypassed that sht :D

Are you okay, dawg? You didn't add a single reverb fart sound effect over the clips of the censored L4D2 explosions. It's not like you.

Censorship and banning is at the core of Australia. We're less a nation larrikins descended from convicts, and more a nation descended from prison guards.

Some sweaty L4D2 players like the zombies disappearing upon death.

When I was a kid in NZ we used to mock Australians for being so sensitive and banning everything, "Banned In Australia" stickers on products were a sign of quality.
Sadly these days NZ is just as pathetic, Perhaps even more so.

That why I love crack…

I remember playing the postal games when i was younger....they where so stupid yet they were actually a lot of fun....the best part of them games was the fact you could whip out your dong and p*ss all over the place...the sh*t was hilarious....kind of like the movie Napoleon Dynamite, it was so stupid it was funny!

Thing about the bans was it was also completely ineffective, if you wanted it, you could usually find it in a shop, hell I played most of these games from blockbuster, the L4D2 one was annoying as hell until it got modded and then flat removed though.

Punisher deserves a remaster/remake.

Once a nanny state always a nanny state

I'm still annoyed about postal 2. It was banned in New Zealand too. We don't have as much of a history with banned video games as our cousins in auzzi. But what really pissed me off is when it got unbanned in auzzi, suddenly its available for kiwi's too. Like wtf, we are a different country. We had to wait until the snowflake auzzi censors were ok with it for us?
Bullshit

Imagine if they ban gta 6