Can we talk about how Australia banned a video game for a joke quest that wasn't even offensive?

Last week I found out a game I played 3 years ago got pulled down under for a satire mission about a political leader, and now I'm worried my other saves might get caught up in regional censoring, has anyone else had their downloads wiped because of a country's rule change?

2 comments

2 Comments

mark67616d ago

The whole situation feels like it sets a bad example for other countries to follow. A satire joke that nobody even complained about getting a full ban just seems like a waste of everyone's time. Now you gotta wonder if other games with similar humor will get retroactively pulled in regions that used to allow them. Regional censoring is already messy enough without moving goalposts years after release.

tessa_kelly16d ago

Remember reading a piece from a gaming lawyer a while back who said the problem isn't really what's in the game, it's that regional laws are written super vague on purpose so regulators have all the power. @mark676 you hit it exactly about the moving goalposts thing, because if they can pull this joke now, what stops them from coming back for other stuff next year? Feels like the devs got caught in a trap where the rules changed without warning, and now every publisher with a back catalog is probably sweating bullets. Really makes you wonder how many other games are sitting on jokes that could get them banned in a region they already cleared years ago, doesn't it?