That's FUCKED UP!

Jesus Christ.

I discovered the other day that Australia doesn't even have it's own local version of Amazon - it's like the Dark Ages.

Everything here in retail is overpriced, because it has to take into account high-cost of of local labor (wages) and general sales tax. Which has the effect of making a great amount of consumers just import products (especially blurays, console games, etc) from the UK (due to PAL region restrictions). There's even stores based in the UK (ozgameshop comes to mind) which specialize in selling games to AU customers (free shipping to Aus/NZ) because of this fact. And of course the Hong Kong-based electronics sellers who do free-shipping to Aus, but that's not just an Australian thing though.

I suppose it's mostly the problem of high wages, and no one wants to argue for lower wages, but it has distorted the economy.

Strange its still up on steam here wonder what would happen if I clicked that pre-purchase button...

Sadly this is another reason piracy still happens if people here want to play it thats the way many will go.

Great, back to square fucking one.
HOW can Saints Row III be given MA 15+, but IV is too "mature" for even the R 18+ rating?

Man, for everything we're blessed with, Australia lacks on quite a few fronts.
Our ratings system is outta whack
We pay a premium for both retail & digital games (even when the AUD was above parity of the Greenback)
Hell, even Amazon locks us out (for the most part. Guess which game in my Origin library shouldn't be there :P)

I'm glad that, with help, many of these restrictions can be bypassed so I'm not paying the "Aussie tax" on games.
Well, I refuse to buy games that weren't in the original vision (e.g. Low Violence L4D 2), so I'll be keeping an eye on Gamersgate & Amazon for The Full Package.

Syndicate.

Which is of course another low point in our classification boards' rating shenanigans.

Australia reminds me of stone age - no computer games for both :D

Honestly, I'm done caring at this point. Let the government pull this bullshit all they please. Console games can be imported, and as for PC, all I have to do is trade with any foreigner for an uncensored copy (big thanks to Steam and their non-region locked gifting/trading system).

Come to think of it, maybe the government isn't as stupid as we all think? Maybe they know actual gamers will be largely uneffected, so they can happily win the moral crusader inbred vote with little changes to the rest of their demographics. Or perhaps I'm just giving them too much credit and they're all simply in the early 90's mindset of "video games are for kids". Yeah, I think I'm giving them too much credit...

And here we go AGAIN....

State of Decay RC'ed...

http://forums.undeadlabs.com/showthread.php?26404-Update-on-Australian-release

Can't WAIT to see the BS justification behind this one...

Seriously... R18 - not the new MA15... but the new M!

The reasoning is thought to be because amphetamines are used as a stamina boost item... piss weak IMO and the guidelines NEED TO BE FUCKING CHANGED!

How on earth did the Starcraft 2 stimpacks get past these guys...

Argh

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/06/microsoft-confirms-that-state-of-decay-has-been-refused-classification/

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/06/state-of-decay-has-been-refused-classification-in-australia/

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/06/update-state-of-decay-banned-for-explicit-use-of-illicit-drugs/

Nope. Thant would be the Wortschatzserweiterungskontrollbehörde.



P.S. I only get a 404 error with the OP's link.

Don't look at the OP - way outdated...
I necro'd the topic yesterday as the subject was adequate... though perhaps I should've started a new one instead

Oh. Didn't look at the date. Thanks for the clarification.