R18+ bill goes before Australian parliament in February

@arucious Every government does this, unless you are that one guy that created his own island out of plastic bottles and he practically became his own nation.

@Roflrex
Has if america would allow that

@arucious

The words SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and PCFIPA came to mind. How could a government tell it's people what they should and shouldn't do?

@AntiVillian

inb4 acronyms

@Dashx747

So true. Our Aussie gamers deserve a break now. Here's to hoping all goes well.

@Dashx747
They could also use much cheaper games, it's an expensive habit over there.

@Thesifer Mandatory should be "Voluntary" sorry was thinking about Australian system when writing out the American system.

@Thesifer Also the commenting system on Joystiq is atrocious. No ability to edit a comment, ever. And the delay between writing, and active and oh wait it's not active, wait it is, wait where'd it go? Oh there is it.. wait where? oh.. It's back? ... uhh What?!

@Thesifer Also the ESRB's 18 rating is a banning in a way. Luckily this 18 rating won't be.

Enforcement of the ESRB isn't exactly astounding because many retailers won't sell games that aren't rated.

It's like AO rated games. Nothing is stopping a company from developing one, but almost no retailers would sell it, so almost no AO games get made for the US market by big companies.

@Drakkenfyre Yea but unrated movies and music A OK. *Facepalms*

@Thesifer

Banned the sale of many games? None of them are any GOOD! Mortal Kombat is pretty well the ONLY exception, the rest are garbage that are better not NOT clogging up the shelves at EB Games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games#Australia

I just don't know how i can survive without such classics as "Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude" and "BMX XXX". Oh and not happy about missing out on "Soldier of Fortune: Payback", isn't that the best shooter of the last 20 years? /megasarcasmface

The only games of any substance we've missed out on, is Mortal Kombat (a big loss to me yes) and our watered-down version of L4D2 is actually less violent than the original. 2 games in the history of videogames worth talking about and everyone is chucking up a big stink about it?

Don't get me wrong, im in full support of the R18+ games because the fact is, 99.9% of 18+ games in the US get released here, unedited, and slapped with MA15+. We have the most lenient gaming classification system around, but it does mean 15 year olds are playing very violent games, and we miss out on 1 or 2 games in the last 20 years or so. 18+ games will simply mean kids wont be able to play them, and we'll finally get mortal kombat. So of course i am in support of the bill, i just dont think its necessary that the australian government (who isnt the decision maker here btw, it took the attourney generals ages to get this sorted, NOW the government is getting it passed) and australia in general be criticized constantly over 2 measly games.

From what I remember, the guy who actually controls the ratings board took issue with the bill, and tried to block it.

@Shadowbender

The Attorney Generals, who are the administrative support to the Classification Board, have to all agree on any changes that are too be made to the ratings system.

After a long period of time where one of the Attorney Generals refused to support an 18+ rating it was finally approved by all of them as being a viable change.

A bill citing the changes to the ratings system then needs to get passed by Parliament so that it can actually become part of the law.

@Kevadu

That day is long-gone...
It disappeared the second we decided to follow in the footsteps of the more "civilised" UK and US.