Ew Nue

Same shit different smell

Valve announced today they have appealed the OFLC refusal to classify the highly anticipated and somewhat controversial Left 4 Dead 2.

A demo of L4D2 was announced days ago, scheduled to drop in late October. Shacknews is reporting that the demo will be exclusive to both Steam and Xbox 360 pre-order customers on October 27.

This is looking like bad news for Aussies if the ban appeal by Valve is unsuccessful. We've contacted Valve asking for a bit more information on whether a castrated version may be released for Australia, and whether or not there will be any region restrictions on the demo. We'll keep you posted if any more info is forthcoming.

Get a friend from the UK to buy it for you. P:
That's what I want to do.

Jack Thompson Was Right!

As promised, AusGamers went down to check out what was happening at the Park Hyatt in Sydney, where renowned Valve head, Gabe Newell, was hanging out, apparently to catch up with a Brisbane native now attending RMIT in Melbourne to study game design.

The whole scenario, to be bluntly honest, was really quite weird. If you aren't aware of how it all happened, Gabe was asked by a local modder by the name of Joe W-A to check out his mod. Gabe jokingly responded that he would if Joe could fly him to Australia. Joe rallied the gaming community and managed to raise 3K to bring Gabe out, at which point the Valve head was forced to call the young man's bluff.

This all lead us to the event today, which saw Joe and Gabe meeting in person for the first time, alongside a little spiel from Gabe regarding the strength of the PC gaming community, Valve's continued support of modders and their creativity and freedom finishing with a final touch on the state-of-play for Left 4 Dead 2.

So ultimately Gabe gave us info and just how and why he was standing before us, but threw up some stats for us to eat up, such as Valve having some 170,000 servers worldwide, apparently generating more internet traffic than all of Italy and continually pointed out the strength and foundation of PC gaming and its legions of communities. Valve wouldn't exist without them, and Counter-Strike, arguably the most played action title in history, began its life as a community-created game based on what gamers wanted to play.

In support of this, Valve are working on a community funding mechanism to empower young people like Joe with monetary incentive or help (the model is still being worked out) so they can get their creative juices flowing and maintained, through a bit of a Q&A with the media on-hand, that consoles simply can't support community the same way PC can.

Left 4 Dead 2 came up on the cards, and we were told the situation here in Australia will see Valve continuing their appeal of the Refused Classification the game recently received. But a modified version of the game, he and Valve believe is in line with what the ratings board are after has also been submitted, as the ultimate goal will be to ensure Australia does not miss the November 17 launch of the game.

The question was raised as to what the situation would be if the appeal were eventually successful after the modified version had been released to which Gabe responded PC owners of the game would simply get a free update which would convert the game back to its original form, but couldn't specify how it would work for the console version because of all the red-tape and lengthy approval processes involved with each release and update console games go through.

I mentioned how shitty they must be after including the cricket bat and Australia jersey-wearing zombie and Gabe said he'd be looking at doing something special in the Australian release related to that because of this whole debacle. But ultimately, their goal is to have the original version released, it's simply that the appeal process is lengthy and drawn out and they don't want to mess with their launch plans, but even asked we refrain from asking what has been changed for the modified version, because the more media attention it grabs the worse it is for them, and he seemed confident we'd be seeing the game as it was intended to be released in Australia.

After all of this, we got some hands-on time with the "Parish" section of the game, which I'll go into detail about later with a full hands-on report.

So there you have it - Gabe's whirlwind visit to Australia solidified his and Valve's commitment to their community, the continued and elevated support of the PC platform and their overall desire to ensure Aussies are playing Left 4 Dead 2 the way it was meant to be played.

so we get the bitch version of l4d2?

Read the whole thing... He's claiming a patch will come out to put it back to normal... Though I'll still import to be sure (providing that will work with a steam game)

Well they submitted 2 copies for reclassification. Now there is a MA15+ rating for the game.

They haven't said which one yet (but we all presume it's the modified version).

They expect to get to the next stage of the appeal on 22 October for trying to push the unmodified version through (this is where it sounds like only the modified version was allowed), but that would push it past the planned release date.

So their plan is to release the modified version first and continue to fight the classifications board to allow them to distribute the unedited version. So provided that goes well we'd have the game.


My problem is that it's a steam game, so can we download the UK version through steam? Will a boxed version from the UK be playable? And would the UK version be compatible with the Aus version...

F**K I hate the classifications here! Slap an R rating on everything violent instead of trying to make it accessible for kids. It's just so damn retarded what they're doing, they're not protecting or helping anyone at all! Kids get to play violent games and adults have to play toned down games!!! AHHHH!

Kill them LOTUK, in the name of MHz

I would be doing the work that Natural Selection has as yet failed to do...

Lock and load:

Dead people cannot protest. The message. Kill the protestor.

The German L4D was rated "M", L4D2 will basically be the same amount of gore as L4D I assume, the only 'major' change is decapitations (from what I've heard), you should still be able to defeet (get it get it??) zombies and take them to the 2nd hand store (lol, these are great puns).

The modified version was submitted and this was the outcome...

Valve told us yesterday that they had submitted an edited version of Left 4 Dead 2 after the game was previously refused classification due to its high impact violence. Gabe Newell declined to say what had been edited out.

That edited version was awarded an MA15+ rating late yesterday. This morning the Classification Board told Gamespot what had been cut:

The report states that the Australian-specific version of Left 4 Dead 2 no longer contains depictions of decapitations, dismemberment, wound detail, or piles of bodies lying about the environment

Valve are also appealing the original classification decision and still hope to release Left 4 Dead 2 in Australia in its original, unedited state. Our goal is not to ship this second [edited] version, he said.

Newell told us yesterday that the appeal ruling is expected to be made on October 22.

3rd Edit: http://www.news.com.au/files/left_4_dead_2_modified_version_decision_report.pdf

This is what my friend on CG has to say:

Zombie: 8th of October:

Code:


Look at the gameplay of Killing Floor. You can actually walk up to a common "clot" zombie (amongst others), and take its head clean off with ;

Chainsaw
Axe
Katana
Knife
Something else

These rulings are fucking stupid. I actually feel like composing a short video of me being able to beat hispanics to death with a baseball bat in GTA4, smash an old ladies face into my knee in Prototype, chainsawing off zombies heads in Killing Floor, killing the little sisters in Bioshock etc etc. It just makes no sense that these can get let through, yet L4D2 cant?


Reading this report makes me want to cry.