The Australian IARC tool did an oopsie! Kingdom Come Deliverance not banned after all and other "banning" news

It was reported by various outlets today, August 21, 2019, that Kingdom Come Deliverance was banned by the Australian ratings board. Daniel Vávra, the creator of the Kingdom Come Deliverance, was so upset by the news he shot off a fiery tweet. Well, the truth is the International Age Rating Coalition, IARC, tool generated a Refused Classification rating on Kingdom Come Deliverance dspite the game already having a R18+ rating assigned to it. Kingdome Come Deliverance wasn't the only game the IARC tool got a hold of as We Happy Few also had its R18+ rating changed to a rating of RC. There is no word as to why this situation happened but IGN are on the case so expect an article to drop some time in the near future.

In the meantime, both Kingdom Come Deliverance and We Happy Few have had their original R18+ ratings restored. It is worth noting that despite both games having a RC rating placed at on them at some point, neither game was ever actually banned. In fact, as far as I can tell the games never stopped being sold in Australia. Perhaps the error was only limited to the classification website and not the actual database which is used when selling a video game. Whatever the case winds up being, it looks like the sales of both games were unaffected.

In other banning news, DayZ developer Bohemia Interactive recently submitted a modified build of the game to the Australian video game classification board. The result of the submission is that DayZ now has a MA15+ rating in Australia. The game should be back on digital store fronts due to this new classification. For those unaware as to why DayZ was banned in the first place, Vara Dark of Dark Titan Enterprises has an excellent breakdown of the situation. I've embedded her video below, do yourself a favor and give the 5 minute video a watch.

Okay, all done with the video? Great, because we need to talk about what Bohemia Interactive did in order to get that MA15+ rating. Despite people claiming that the marijuana featured in DayZ was only a mod, it appears there was marijuana in the code of DayZ that was submitted to the Australian Classification board. Whether this was because Bohemia Interactive submitted code that was modded with the marijuana mod or it was already in the code to be released at a later time is unknown. What is known is that the new code did not have this reference in it and this is why DayZ was able to get itself a MA15+ rating. 

Oddly enough the rating for DayZ does not indicate any drug use being in the game despite both morphine and codeine being in the game. This could indicate that both of those drugs were also removed from the game or that the Australian Classification board was not looking for those drugs in particular. We will have to wait a few days until DayZ is being played in Australia once again to find out if those item are still in the game or not. The Geek Getaway will do a follow up on all three of these situationss should any new information come to light.

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