April 4th 2008 - Rockstar has produced an edited version of Grand Theft Auto IV for Australia in order to obtain an MA15+ rating.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification awarded the game an MA15+ rating on December 11 last year, advising consumers that the game contains "strong violence, strong coarse language, drug and sexual references".

A Rockstar spokesperson confirmed to Screen Play yesterday that the company had produced a special version of GTA IV to comply with the Australian classification system, which does not currently contain an R18+ rating, but declined to reveal what material had been cut.

The game has been rated R18+ by the British Board of Film Classification, New Zealand's OFLC and the German Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle. It has been rated M17+ by the Entertainment Software Rating board in North America.



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So we pay $120 for a 'special' version.

Previous games only lost the ability to pick up prostitutes and had some scenes altered.
It will be interesting to see exactly what us Aussies will miss out on in the latest edition.

Just posted about this in the bitch thread, it's a complete joke, get an R rating here already damn it. :angry: We're screwed if it's not region free, i'm steaming right now. :reallymad:

EDIT: found this...



:lol:

Beaten to the punch, dammit. Ah well.

That said, I'm not overly worried; the sex bits in GTA3 and GTA:SA were pretty shitty and didn't do anything for the game at all. After the mess of minigames and extra-cirricular stuff added in San Andreas, honestly, the less crap put into GTA4 the better it will be.

Although i'll probably only "do it" less than 10 times during my playthrough(s), I still want it in there just so I can. It would play on my mind knowing I haven't had the complete experience if you know what I mean.

I knew the previously announced GTAIV receiving the MA rating was too good to be true.

This has been the case with all the GTA games these days, so of course GTAIV wasn't going to be different.

Does it greatly change the game? We'll find out when it comes out probably!

Yet again, the need for the R rating shows itself.

It might not be just hooker stuff, perhaps they have removed drink driving for instance? I wouldn't take the chance, why not import and save some money in the process?

I've imported the USA copy so I'm not too bothered - plus I'm sure my JAP PS3 will have some auto-censoring crap anyway

And yes we do need a R18+ rating, last I heard the politicians couldn't decide so it's going to be a public vote

Nope, I think it's just a community forum so that out of touch MPs can hear the opinions of a select few who supposedly represent the gaming public.
Then they'll just make the same decision again <_<

Why don't you guys have an 18+ rating or equivalent? Kinda makes little sense if you've got an age-restriction on cigarettes, alcohol and sex.

Anyway, that's horrible for you guys. Hope they don't censor out too much. Perhaps they'll get rid of the more graphic car-crashes or something?

Ah, well. Sucks to be you guys! Living in Europe pays off. :P *derogatory snigger*

Because games are for kiddies! only movies need 18+ ratings..
[\OFLC]

Well it might not matter because apparently the Xbox 360 is pretty much dead in Australia - http://gamerush.zoomshare.com/files/news/0...mp_Xbox_360.htm What a bunch of bullcrap. This just shows the astounding ignorance of retailers. The 360 has by far the best online service of any console to date and also happens to be the console with the most games, therefore how exactly is it dead? :lol:

Maybe because it spends most of its time "dead"? :P

That article got far too much publicity.

The writer was once a respected journalist (it was his investigations in to the Painters and Dockers unions that launched one of the biggest corruption investigations in Australian history) but these days is considered nothing more than a low life who feeds off notoriety and fame. He has appeared on Media Watch for plagerising the content of sites like PCWorld and presenting it as his own.

The sources from the original article are somewhat suspect and flies in the face of the sales figures Microsoft has been producing for this region.

C'mon folks... spend 10 mins in a gamestore and you know the guy is talking out his arse.

I initially thought you were talking about the GTA4 censorship article and was thinking "weee it was wrong" but then you weren't :(

Sorry. :(

I'm sure that they're not just gonna dump selling a system because its been low a few months... :rolleyes:

I didn't react as much as most people did to this announcement. I mean sure, the fact that it has happened is crap and Rockstar should have alluded to it a lot earlier than they did but really, the content missing or edited could be extremely trivial and perhaps even irrelevant to the game experience.

We won't know until it is revealed (which won't happen until after the game is out) so until then I'm actually quite happy to stick to my Aussie version of the game. It means I'll get to experience Liberty City on day 1 and see what the new GTA title is like. Once the missing content (or whatever) is revealed, I'll make the decision then. If it is a significant piece of content then yes absolutely I'll import another version of the game. But if it's not, well meh at least I'm still getting the majority of the experience.

Regardless of how we purchase/enjoy the game though, this news only further proves that we need that damn R rating already. More fuel to the already overblown fire can only be a good thing for sometime, before it gets so out of control that it's ridiculous.

Or perhaps we're already at that point of ridicule...

Although I'm quite curious as to what they edited out, it doesn't concern me in the slightest as I own an NTSC-J Xbox 360 and import almost all of my games. It's not surprising to hear that Rockstar submitted an edited version on their own accord, since there's a bit of a history with GTA's being censored here already. Imagine the uproar if the game had been delayed instead of watered down.

^ If the delay was to water it down then the uproar would be justified, however, if the delay was so they could work on the game some more then I would be in full support of it.

There were rumours going around that it wasn't going to make the April 29th date either but they have now gone out the window because of the game having gone Gold.