Did you know Australia has banned 220 video games in the last four months?

As of today, if any video game is refused classification by the International Age Ratings Coalition then chances are it will be banned from sale here in Australia.

According to ABC News, the Federal Government are now formally participating in a twelve-month pilot program that will leave any game that the IARC has refused to classify blocked from sale on any IARC-participating shopfront In Australia.

The measures are currently limited to Google Play and Firefox Marketplace which means Android devs stand to be hardest hit. Apple is well known for having its own internal app review process. Google made a similar adjustment to its app review process in March.

Australia’s Classification Board has been busily classifying games retroactively to better reflect standards set by the IARC and, if its online ratings database are anything to go by, there have been at least 349 games refused classification under the guidelines to date.

———-

This content has recently been ported from its original home on The Iris and may have formatting errors – images may not be showing up, or duplicated, and galleries may not be working. We are slowly fixing these issue. If you spot any major malfunctions making it impossible to read the content, however, please let us know at editor AT theaureview.com.

David Smith

David Smith is the former games and technology editor at The AU Review. He has previously written for PC World Australia. You can find him on Twitter at @RhunWords.