http://kotaku.com/5387461/australian-ratings-board-refuses-left-4-dead-2-again
Violence that's "prolonged, repeated frequently" and "insufficient delineation between the depiction of general zombie figures and the human figures"? The reason why there probably isn't much of a difference between the two is they edited it to try to get your country to accept it! This is pretty horrible, and I hope someone eventually wakes them up from the la-la land they're in, so they see that every other country has a more sophisticated ratings system than they do.

Maybe they should take a leaf out of TF2 in Germany's book and killing zombies makes them explode into car tires. This is ridiculous. Why can't those censors make up their friggin mind?

The best case scenario now would be if it doesn't get released in Australia at all now. Hopefully that will result in a lot of pressure being applied to the classification board bringing in the much needed 18 rating.

This news has made my day =) Sorry Aussie L4D(2) fans, but anything that puts a spanner in the works for Valve puts a smile on my face -- they deserve it for stiffing over their international customers for so long.
Now, given this recent ruling, in particular this:
Computer games classified RC cannot be sold, hired, advertised or demonstrated in Australia.
Wouldn't the display of the product page on Steam in Australia (and of course the current ability to purchase) be in violation of Australian law?

The violent (proper) version was rejected on the appeal.
We still have the MA15+ one with "Strong Bloody Violence" available for sale. At least that still gives me a laugh.
It's not up to the board, it's up to some old moral pushing fogey from my home state who just veto's any attempt at progress and discussion. All Attorney Generals in Aus have to agree to an R18 (and X18 but the chances for that are far less.) rating for games in Aus. Michael Atkinson, is the guy holding us back.

Bah. Then I read that wrong, I thought they'd also refused the cut down version. My bad. =S

Wouldn't worry, it's easy to miss with a slightly misleading title like that :)
And the OFLC site is not updated as frequently as it should be. They tend to only do it (edit:*for games) when they get in the media, so at least someone is paying attention to the issue!

Regional pricing needs to go. They should have done it in the same way that Impulse have and show the converted total from USD, but keep the prices the same as USD. But I don't think this is going to help the pricing issue at all.

Whenever people throw the blame on Atkinson I can't help but stir up a mental image of the smug fool at home with his teenage kids, threatening to ban some game they want as punishment for bad behaviour or poor grades. The whole nation of Australia doesn't get to play Left 4 Dead 2 as it was intended because Hugh was caught smoking weed...
None of his arguments make any sense whatsoever or have any credible evidence to support them so I figure my theory is just as plausible right?

You do know that Impulse also do regional pricing, right? It's just harder to spot now as you can usually never find the actual US pricing on their site (unless used in a banner). Case in point would be Tropico 3 which they advertise as $35.99 but is in fact $58 or so (USD) for Japan and probably other regions too -- Impulse claim this pricing is imposed by the publisher, but considering that every other major DD service offers the game at $35.99* for any region using USD, I call bullshit on that claim).
* This is a sale price IIRC with the actual price being $39.99 (at least in NA on Steam right now -- it's $35.99 still in Japan and Australia, although I'm not sure if it's actually been released in those regions yet, the sale price is still being applied, but the pre-order banner has gone).

To be fair all they're doing is fucking over a system that could have removed regional pricing forever, by supporting publishers demand for it. Its not that valve are dicking over other regions for shits and giggles, its that they're willing to allow publishers to keep doing it.
They're not the only digital service that limits sales by region, most others have some title or other that is region limited or disproportionately region priced.
Did anyone outside America get the $5 Assassins Creed deal that Valve have for midweek madness this week? Only by asking in the forums and having other steam users risk their accounts and every game they ever bought on steam by skirting the region system and gifting it to gamers not located in the USA...

Just when it seems like one of them is doing something right...
In any case, bans actually make a game sell better in the territories it's not banned in. Developers usually break out the champagne when their game gets banned in Australia or elsewhere as it's a cast iron guarantee that their game will sell elsewhere due to the notoriety. People want to see what the fuss is about.
Why do you think that Valve appealed with the exact same - obviously deserving of an 18 rating - content in a country that doesn't have an 18 rating? It's nothing more than a publicity stunt.
I did think that was the issue as sometimes UK pricing is almost cheaper than the US. In many cases it is at least comparable. If it was down to Valve then the $1 = �1 issue would be found with every title.

I'd agree that publishers were responsible for pricing if they reflected the same pricing points over a majority of services, but when it's only one service that is using that pricing point (and claiming it was set by the publisher) it seems very unlikely that this is true. After all, if you're a publisher and you want to charge that price in a particular region, you'd want to charge that price on several DD services right? To ensure that a larger number of potential customers had to pay that higher price.
I very much doubt a publisher would single out one DD service just to force the majority of potential customers to then go and buy at the cheaper pricing point from all the other services. All that does is lower the potential for sales from that one DD service (and lets face it, Impulse isn't likely to have as large a crowd as Steam who will steadfastly refuse to buy from another service even when the game is 90% cheaper from the other services -- and it's this refusal to buy elsewhere that pretty much allows Valve to get away with pandering to higher price points). Still doesn't stop Valve from being hypocritical though.

Steam is the most popular DD retailer and there are many that actually want to use it over taking a chance with other sites. Better the devil they know, perhaps. It also commands a great deal of loyalty from many customers.
There is also the issue of online play and the fact that they've built up a substantial Steam friends list they like to play multiplayer games with.
It actually makes sense for publishers to think they can charge more through Steam, just as it makes sense that Kotick would think he could exploit 'rip off Britain' the same way so many other industries do.
EDIT: what makes Valve hypocritical is saying that games would sell better if they were cheaper (true). You only need to take a look at the pricing of their own L4D games on their own DD client to see how they're being hypocritical.