DayZ Ban Drives Australian Politician To Fight For Games

In an editorial last week, I wrote about US gun laws and the idea that removing games would be the worst way to prevent these mass shootings that America sees weekly and monthly now. The weekend prior when I was drafting my comments, there was a little bit of news out of Australia. The land down under, where games are banned and gun ownership is rife seeing very few mass shootings. As I pointed out in the piece, the last high profile case was the Lindt Cafe Siege where one person was killed by the attacker. Three died, including one hostage at the hands of police.

To make a long story short, the reason Australia is such a high profile case is how they restrict games. Before 2013 everything from 50 Cent: Bulletproof, Fallout 3 (later reclassified), Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, and a whole host of others had been banned. While these bans have been in place gun crime persisted, including in Darwin this June. I’ll refrain from commenting too much further, but gun crime slowed once restrictions on firearms were in place. However, to this day, there are cases where games such as We Happy Few, Outlast 2, Hotline Miami 2, and South Park: The Stick of Truth all found themselves on the RC (Refused Classification) list.

However, as I stated in the opening paragraph, there was a more recent case in these last few weeks. DayZ, one of the originators of the: 100 players on a map and hunting each other down format; otherwise known as Battle Royale, is the most recent to receive a refused classification sticker. Back in the day, long before PUBG and Fortnite killed their competition and then battled it out for a KFC-based dinner, DayZ was just a mod to Arma 2 standing above the rest with Minecraft’s Hunger Games modes.

The now fully-fledged game recently released on Steam (Windows), Xbox One, and PS4, with a physical release slated to be coming soon. DayZ developer, Bohemia Interactive, later mentioned to PC Gamer that the Australian declassification was only for the physical release, and does not affect the Steam release. Regardless, the question still lies, why? Drugs. Australia isn’t “protecting the children” from the loud machines that make a bang and the men bleed in their digital fantasy media, no. Much like the reason for Fallout 3‘s declassification (and others) it falls to the depiction of weed, at least presumably.

My personal opinion (and knowledge of Portuguese drug laws) aside, there is a reason for this being questionable. Since 2013, (the same time as Australia’s introduction of an R18+ rating,) there has been the IARC (International Age Rating Coalition) which the ACB (Australian Classification Board) is a part of. Under the IARC’s automatic systems, DayZ was given an MA15+ rating for Australia, though this was later contested (possibly by the attorney-generals) into the first RC of 2019.

https://youtu.be/tw1tBALwWJ4

Now a member of Australia’s Liberal Democrats, Tim Quilty, has given his opinion on the matter. Stating the countries decision makes it look like: “the wet blanket and laughing stock of the whole world.” The Northern Victoria politician appeals straight to the attorney-general, Jill Hennessy, who’s word is final in these cases. However, as Quilty states: “Though the actual classification of video games is federal, the enforcement of classification is state-based.” Going on further to state that the R18+ rating is for games with adult themes and thus should be used for these cases.

Quilty (shown above) also states the refused classification stamp should only be used for items that display illegal materials, such as: “child pornography and snuff films.” Under Australian law cannabis or marijuana is currently illegal, as it is in many parts of the world, though is being accepted for medical use in some. While I won’t argue my points for or against medical weed, some will use argue its pros all day long. However, I do agree with Quilty’s argument that it is of adult themes, therefore adults should be allowed to view such material at hand.

What Quilty has ignored, however, is that while this is a proposed theory for the declassification, Bohemia Interactive has yet to confirm this to be the reason. While the inclusion of marijuana for healing is speculated, you can already use morphine to heal in-game. Back in 2008, before the release of Fallout 3, the series (now owned by Bethesda) had a drug in it called morphine. In a quick change of file names, morphine was out and we’d now have what would be “Med-X.”