We reported last week that we in the land down under got to be the first in the world to get our hands on Spore, but it seems that game releases are not the only area we’re beginning to pioneer in. The back and forth over Australia’s lack of an R18+ rating for our games is not a new concern for us, but Bethesda’s vice president of public relations and marketing, Peter Hines, has announced a worldwide ripple effect of Fallout 3’s rating “misconception”.
As we know, Fallout 3 was denied classification by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification, predominantly because of the games use of ‘morphine’. Under the Australian OFLC guidelines “material promoting or encouraging proscribed drug use” cannot be given classification. However, in mid-August, due to in-game edits that changed the ‘context’ of Fallout 3’s drug use, the game was allowed rating by the OFLC.
The twist in this news is that Peter Hines has referred to the idea of an Australian-specific edit of the game as a “misconception”, stating; “We want to make sure folks understand that the Australian version of Fallout 3 is identical to both the UK and North American versions in every way, on every platform.” Due to the concerns raised by the OFLC in regards to the use of proscribed drugs, Bethesda has jumped on the ‘play it safe’ band-wagon and applied the Aussie classification edits to the global version of Fallout 3.
Now with all things considered, this may not be too much of a change to the game to result in worldwide anger being directed at the Australian OFLC, however it does again push the issue of the relevance of an R18+ rating in Australia.
For those purchasing the Xbox 360 version of Fallout 3, check out the recently announced achievements here.
