Soldier of Fortune: Payback Unbanned in Australia

Officials have cleared a modified version of Activision's Soldier of Fortune: Payback for sale in Australia, reversing an earlier ban on the title.

The revised version of the game has been rated MA 15+, which indicates strong violence, coarse language and sexual references. According to Australian gaming site MyGEN, the edited version of the game has been modified to remove dismemberment of enemies, and has also scaled down the blood effects and rag doll physics.

The original version of the notoriously violent shooter was banned by Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification, which refused to issue it a rating due to the game's "high impact violence." A spokeswoman for the OFLC said the game's content "seems to exceed the MA classification." Australia does not currently have a videogame rating that corresponds with M or 18+ ratings found in North America and Europe.

The Australian version of Soldier of Fortune: Payback is scheduled for release in early 2008 on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

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here is yet another case of a game that is not appropriate for 15 year olds (modified or not) being shoehorned into the MA15+ category because we don't have a proper games classification system.
The Attorneys-General don't seem to realise that not having an R18+ rating does not constitute "protecting the children" because if somethings borderline they just put it down with the MA games, instead of being adults only, where it belongs- GTA, i'm looking at you here.

When we first heard about the ban, it was stated that the IEAA was attempting to have an R18+ rating introduced to the system to avoid this sort of thing. Since you sound Australian, are you aware if any progress has been made on that front?

news to me- but then, i just got another 60 days of WoW after a long hiatus, so i'm a bit of an ostrich(emu?) at the moment...
It is interesting to note though that the single highest volume of complaints to the OFLC for the last 6 years have all been about our lack of an R classification for games...
I do think it's important for all My Fellow Australians (so glad we won't be hearing so much of that particular phrase anymore) to know that the OFLC does not define the ratings guidelines- they only enforce them, so all of those letters should be going to the Attorney-Generals office (State or Federal as they are all involved in the decision making process.

With the new Labor Government coming in, hopefully some new, hip, funky ideas will come with them and they might review this sorry state of affairs.

After all, they couldn't possibly be worse than Phillip Ruddock!