Comments on: Borderlands Censored for Australian Market?

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:27:50 +0000

@Saul,

Personally I’d rather wait 3 days and have the full version.

Nice that someone has finally admitted the mistake.

By: Saul

Saul — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:11:47 +0000

So, it turns out we DO have the censored version pre-loaded, but it was a “mistake”:

http://games.on.net/article/7266/Borderlands__Wrong_version_uploaded_to_AU_Steam_accounts

Oh, and they just delayed the Steam release by three days, literally at the eleventh hour. So we get screwed again. Hooray for us.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:59:28 +0000

@Sam, on the upside, if that’s how it manages the settings, it may be possible to remove/replace the ‘borderlands_low_violence.ncf’ file.

Alternatively, it may be an optional in-game configuration.

I’m still torn — and today is the last day of the pre-sale on Steam.

By: Sam

Sam — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:22:36 +0000

I decided to be optimistic and pre-order on Steam. It turns out the following file appeared in my ‘SteamApps’ folder: ‘borderlands_low_violence.ncf’. Hmm. Apparently this file has only shown up on German and Australian versions. Not looking good.

However, Australian Xbox360 owners are reporting that they are getting full gore in Borderlands, so who knows?

It may all be to do with the games release date. Australia traditionally shares release dates with Europe but Borderlands is releasing several days earlier in Australia, along with the US. Germany happens to be the only European country that shares this earlier release date and I’m hoping this is the only reason we appear to have been given the same Steam package.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:00:00 +0000

So far, everything points to it being a glitch with Steam initially.

The fact that it comes up with “Borderlands Australia” on the page is slightly worrying, but this may have been due to the possibility of a separate 2K Australia package (according to the Gearbox forums).

As pointed out by others before me, if you have friends in the US, you can always get them to gift you the game on Steam and get the NA content.

I’m torn — I really want this game and am tempted to pre-order it; but I also want to know if it is the ‘full’ version before I do.

As Sam stated, some official word would be nice.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:49:42 +0000

Unfortunately, when a game is banned in Australia, the publisher has to spend the extra time and money to remove the elements that got it banned in the first place, then resubmit it for re-classification. It has been suggested that publishers should boycott the country due to our ridiculous game ratings so that in the end, the publishers themselves will encourage gamers to break the law. I am not sure if this would make the government implement the R18+ rating then.