Virtual Drug Use Keeps Blitz Out Of Australia
Blitz: The League, Midway’s Xbox 360 American football game, has been denied classification by Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification (the “OFLC”), thereby preventing sale of the video game in that country. At issue for the OFLC is the player’s ability to choose to have team members take both legal and illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Though the player can choose for the virtual athletes to reject the illegal drugs, the OFLC argues that the player has an incentive to use such drugs to improve the team’s performance.
Australia’s restrictive game classification system refuses classification to titles that “depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults".
Red Ant Enterprises, the local distributor for Blitz: The League has not yet decided whether it will appeal the ruling.
Coverage at: http://tinyurl.com/2ce3tk (Gamespot)