Yesterday at a Sydney press conference Gabe Newell, managing director of Valve Software, revealed that their publishers Electronic Arts have lodged another, censored version of Left 4 Dead 2 to the Classification Board. Gabe stressed that this was merely a backup version in case the appeal process to have the original, uncensored version classified as MA15+ was unsuccessful, and that they would prefer not to have to use the censored version if at all possible.

This morning, we awake to the news that the Classification Board have granted Left 4 Dead 2 an MA15+ rating for “Strong, bloody violence”. According to Softpedia, this classification applies to the censored version, as the appeal process for the original, uncensored version is not due to commence until October 22.

Thanks to everyone who emailed in this morning with this news!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 10:57 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Comments on Censored L4D2 Receives MA15+

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   Matt says:

   It’s the censored version, unfortunately. From the comments by Gabe Newell, via Softpedia:

   [W]e have an appeal of their decision. The issue there is that that process is fairly slow and that the next step on that isn’t going to occur until October 22.

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   Tim says:

   Matt: Gosh! You are right! I’ll edit this entry momentarily.

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   Glenn says:

   So if the censors decide to award the uncensored version an MA15+ rating on Oct. 22nd, then it is going to be funny if there are two versions of L4D2 rated MA15+ – the censored version and the uncensored version. It will just be like the GTA4 situation.

   The best thing that EA could do in this case is to order the censored version off the shelves.

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   Matt says:

   @Glenn, according to Gabe Newell, head of Valve, the censored version will not be shipped at all if the original version is reclassified.

   It has been submitted as a ‘last resort’ option in the case of failure of the review so that Valve can maintain its release date.

   Since all Valve games require Steam activation, even if the censored version does get shipped, the uncensored content would automatically be downloaded as a patch if it is later possible to release it.

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   John says:

   Even if the uncensored version is approved at a later date, I’m guessing the missing content could easily be patched in? Especially on the PC version. Consoles I’m not so sure about.

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   Steve C says:

   Even if the censored version isn’t approved, I’ll bet within minutes of release, there will be a patch available online that will revert any change they make. For PC anyway…

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   Glenn says:

   Matt: “It has been submitted as a ‘last resort’ option in the case of failure of the review so that Valve can maintain its release date.”

   If I was the head of Valve, I would not have submitted an edited version of L4D2 in Australia, and refuse to release L4D2 in the country if the uncensored version was banned. We really should play the games as the developer originally intended made them.

   Steve C: “Even if the censored version isn’t approved, I’ll bet within minutes of release, there will be a patch available online that will revert any change they make. For PC anyway…”

   That’s exactly what happened with Duke Nukem 3D. As soon as a patch came out letting us play the uncensored version as it was intended, the censors went spastic and ordered every copy to be remove from shelves so that they can re-classify it RC. A court decided that the censors went over-the-top and I think it asked them to release the US version.