JWAN said:
Treblaine said:
I have a solution for Valve:
Allow users of Steam to buy Left 4 Dead overseas and enter the code to activate it on Steam even if they live in Australia and play it online from Australia.
The law only says the game cannot be SOLD without a rating, not a ban on mere ownership. A serious Aussie gamer could take a trip to NZ or some other country in the free world, there shouldn't really be anything stopping Valve hosing aussie gamers playing Left 4 Dead online down under, they can reasonably assume they legally bought it outside Australia and brought it in.
Or use STEAM or just go to another website and have it shipped.
That probably won't work. The game may be imported FROM another country, but shipping it to Australia or even buying the game from within Australia and downloading it via steam would be considered "selling the game" and the Aussie censors have specifically refused this game classification making sale of the game in Australia ILLEGAL. Who knows if some public prosecutor with an axe to grind and a political career to make could go after these websites.
No online retailer of the hard copy is going to risk the wrath of custom officials and Gabe will likely be having a meeting with their lawyers saying if they want Steam to work at all in Australia then they must block the sale of L4D2 games via Steam. Who knows, downloadable games might be beyond the remit of the law but I highly doubt it as it is fundamentally the same as an ordinary sale.
The bottom line is getting Left 4 Dead 2 in Australia is not going to be easy. No retailer, online, offline or downloadable would want to risk breaking the law with hefty fines, legal fees and jeopardise their various licences just for a 1% more game sales.