10 Horror Video Games BANNED For Being Too Scary
When games are too terrifying for the government.
The nature of video games as an interactive medium ensures they're under a far greater degree of scrutiny than, say, movies, sometimes resulting in them being deemed so objectionable by certain governments that they can't actually be authorised for sale.
By far the most common reason for a game to be denied a classification is for "disturbing" content - be it, sexual, violent, or otherwise.
As a result, countless intentionally unsettling and downright terrifying horror games have had their releases blocked by do-gooding ratings boards for fear it might all be "too much" for players.
Of course, the global society we now live in makes it easier than ever for savvy gamers to import banned titles - or, for PC gamers, simply change their region settings - but for anyone hoping they could actually walk into a store and legally, officially purchase these games, they were out of luck in certain countries.
Whether well-intended yet misguided, shamelessly nefarious, or simply completely baffling, these 10 horror video games were all banned because, for one reason or another, they gave the bigwigs the creeps...
10. Silent Hill: Homecoming
The Silent Hill franchise has consistently offered up some of the most memorably unsettling imagery in the entire history of horror video games, and this reached a fever pitch with the release of 2008's Silent Hill: Homecoming.
When the game was being certified, Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification objected to a horrific scene in which protagonist Alex and cultist Margaret Holloway wrestle over an electric drill, ending with either Holloway's face being drilled into a bloody mess or Alex getting drilled in the eye. Either way, not fun.
The OFLC called this and several other mutilation sequences in the game "high impact" enough to refuse it a classification, effectively banning Homecoming from being sold in the country. Much the same approach was also taken in Germany.
The game was eventually granted a release in both countries, however, once Konami created a censored version several months later, in which these scenes were edited with new camera angles which concealed much of the explicit violence.
Granted, many impatient fans had already imported the bloodier original version from abroad by that point, resulting in the German authorities eventually seizing a shipment of uncensored copies in November 2010. Oops.