Australia Finally Gets An R18+ Rating

The Australian government for years has decreed video games harmful to society and therefore refused to have a Mature classification for games. In other words, if some games were deemed too violent then instead of getting a Mature rating like they would in the United States or Europe, the game would simply be banned. Many games like Left 4 Dead 2 and Fallout 3 have been banned in Australia, due to things like violence, drug references, or sexual content. If a game could not obtain the MA15+ rating, the game would be banned. Games like Fallout 3 would then be censored so it could be rated MA15+ so it could released. To this day Syndicate is still banned in Australia, although some of the more cynical people would say that is a good thing. However, today Australian Parliament has passed a bill that will add a R18+ rating to video games, basically removing the chance of certain games being banned. With both the Australian House and Senate passing this bill video games will no longer need to be censored before being released to the public. This rating already exists for movies and other forms of media in Australia, but with the passage of this bill video games will finally be on similar footing as other media forms. This has been a battle that has gone on for years and it is nice to see that people living in Australia will finally not have to worry about games being banned or censored. However, the bad news is that the new ruling won't go into effect until January 1, 2013; so gaming fans in Australia will have to wait a little longer for the banning to stop.