The Witcher 2 Censored in Australia

Yet another instance of gaming companies needing to alter their content to satisfy our brilliant classification system.

This morning I read a press release (5/5/11) from CD Projekt RED detailing the age ratings given to their upcoming sequel, The Witcher 2. Unfortunately, for mature Australians, our edition has had some changes made to it that will differ to the international version (what the rest of the world will get come May 17th):

Australian Government Classification Board
Mature (MA 15+)
Strong violence, sex scenes, nudity and coarse language

In order to obtain the rating in Australia, CD Projekt RED was unexpectedly obliged to make small changes to game content relating to the topic of sex as a reward. Since these changes are quite minor, especially relative to the total amount of content, they are unlikely to significantly affect the overall play experience.

“From the time we started developing The Witcher 2, our goal was to create a single international version. So, we are happy the game will be available almost everywhere exactly as we envisioned it. At the same time, we are disappointed that because Australia’s rating system for computer games does not go above MA 15+, we had to make two small content changes in order for our game to be distributed there at all. I would like to assure our Australian customers that we aware of the situation in their market, and will do everything we can to support them,” stated project lead Adam Badowski.

What more can I say? Regardless of how small a change it is and whether or not it would jeopardise the overall gameplay experience, it's simply another case for mature Australian gamers to get an R18+ rating and be done with it. This isn't anything new, and has been brought up several times on previous gaming releases that had to be chopped someway or another. But it further reinforces the need for such a rating.

Either way it's still looking bloody hot. Looking forward to playing it on the Xbox 360 when it releases.