Borderlands Accidentally Censored in Australia
Australian gamers got a bit of a surprise when they discovered that their Borderlands [http://store.steampowered.com/] contained the "low violence" version of the game, even though the uncensored version had been approved for sale in the country.
Poor Australia just can't catch a break. Its silly Classification Board is bad enough, with its arbitrary, often random rulings, but now it seems as if Fate itself is against the gamers of the nation. A few observant folks Down Under noticed during the Borderlands pre-load that the game contained an extra file called "borderlands_low_violence.ncf" which isn't present in the standard North American release of the game. Edited, "low violence" releases of videogames are nothing new in Australia (Left 4 Dead 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95636-Left-4-Dead-2-Australian-Appeal-Fails], anyone?) but this case seemed odd because as far as anyone knew, the full version of the game had already been approved for sale with an MA15+ rating.
Turns out the whole thing was a mistake. A wildly ironic mistake that probably isn't nearly as funny to Australian gamers as it is to the rest of us, but a mistake nonetheless. How it happened remains a mystery but 2K Games [http://www.2kgames.com/] issued a statement confirming that Australians will in fact get the same version of the game as everyone else.
"[2K Australia [http://www.2kaustralia.com/]] have been talking to the US 2K team via email and working out how this happened/ what the next steps are to amend this via Steam," the company said. "They're working on clearing this up with Valve right now and know to ask how they will handle those people who have already d/l'ed the wrong version."
So in the end, as the saying goes, it's all good. And luckily for 2K and everyone else involved, there's time to get this cleared up: Borderlands for the PC was released in North America yesterday but won't come out in Australia until October 30.
Source: AusGamers.com [http://www.ausgamers.com/news/read/2803777]
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Australian gamers got a bit of a surprise when they discovered that their Borderlands [http://store.steampowered.com/] contained the "low violence" version of the game, even though the uncensored version had been approved for sale in the country.
Poor Australia just can't catch a break. Its silly Classification Board is bad enough, with its arbitrary, often random rulings, but now it seems as if Fate itself is against the gamers of the nation. A few observant folks Down Under noticed during the Borderlands pre-load that the game contained an extra file called "borderlands_low_violence.ncf" which isn't present in the standard North American release of the game. Edited, "low violence" releases of videogames are nothing new in Australia (Left 4 Dead 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95636-Left-4-Dead-2-Australian-Appeal-Fails], anyone?) but this case seemed odd because as far as anyone knew, the full version of the game had already been approved for sale with an MA15+ rating.
Turns out the whole thing was a mistake. A wildly ironic mistake that probably isn't nearly as funny to Australian gamers as it is to the rest of us, but a mistake nonetheless. How it happened remains a mystery but 2K Games [http://www.2kgames.com/] issued a statement confirming that Australians will in fact get the same version of the game as everyone else.
"[2K Australia [http://www.2kaustralia.com/]] have been talking to the US 2K team via email and working out how this happened/ what the next steps are to amend this via Steam," the company said. "They're working on clearing this up with Valve right now and know to ask how they will handle those people who have already d/l'ed the wrong version."
So in the end, as the saying goes, it's all good. And luckily for 2K and everyone else involved, there's time to get this cleared up: Borderlands for the PC was released in North America yesterday but won't come out in Australia until October 30.
Source: AusGamers.com [http://www.ausgamers.com/news/read/2803777]
Permalink
