Australia is completely insane.

Argghhhh fucking Australia needs to normalize it's rating system.

Basically back in the day Australia classified video games as being for kids only, so right now it lacks an adult classification for it's video games. This is why Fallout and several other games simply got banned before and needed to be modified to be allowed into Australia. Fallout 3 was restricted because it had real drug names like Morphine, this was changed to Med-X.

The move to create this new adult rating has been laid down, but it needs a sign off from all provinces, and one in particular (I believe it was New South Wales) isn't signing off to allow the creation of this new rating.

The OFLC has attracted much criticism from gameplayer's groups, industry associations and publications about the absence of a Restricted 18+ category for games. Essentially, this means that any videogames designed purely for adult players do not receive classification and thus are not be able to be sold in Australia. As the demographics of the videogames industry changes, signified poignantly by the average player age of twenty-nine years, the censorship situation is criticised for not fulfilling its perceived role of protecting the vulnerable but also allowing adults to freely choose the material they consume. Media effects theory and its role in creating moral panics seem to reinforce attitudes toward videogames and the resultant censorship situation.

Others in favour of censoring game include pro-censorship advocate Barbara Biggins. She states that 'here are instances where adults' freedoms to see what they want and where they want, have diminished the rights of children to be protected' (Biggins, 1998). Other groups in favour of further censorship of games include: The Lyons Forum, the Christian Democratic Party, Australian Family Association and former Senator Brian Harradine.

Bomb em all...

How do these people not see the problem is their own incompetence?

Ya, Australia banned an old personal favorite of mine as well - years back - Phantasmagoria. It was horror based, more like suspense, but fun at the time.
Not really worth banning though - some people have no sense of adventure!
Lucky I'm in Canada!

http://kotaku.com/5147424/no-world-of-warcraft-has-not-been-banned-in-australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Atkinson, the South Australian Attorney-General is the guy holding out on the R18+ rating for games that i think Farhad was talking about...

...i eagerly await his untimely death.