Syndicate Won't Make it to Australia Due to "Arcane Censorship"

Australia's Classification Board has refused to grant Syndicate a rating. In effect this bans the title from being sold in its current form, and publisher Electronic Arts has no intention of changing the game in order to make it acceptable.

It would not be the first time something like this happened -- a number of games have been refused classification over the years by Australia including Mortal Kombat, The Witcher 2, and 50 Cent: Bulletproof. The latter two were ultimately altered to make them more acceptable while Mortal Kombat remains unavailable in Australia.

The reason for this is because the most mature rating available to videogames is MA15+, meaning any videogame released would have to be deemed suitable to teenagers as young as 15. This is not the case with films and other media and has been a hot issue for some time; earlier this year the groundwork was put in place for an R18+ rating, though this has yet to go into effect.

The extreme violence in Syndicate is largely to blame for it not being granted an MA15+ rating that would allow it to be released. The report cites the presence of "decapitation, dismemberment and gibbing" as one issue, as well as the ability to further injure corpses and kill civilians, according to VG247.

"Combatants take locational damage and can be explicitly dismembered, decapitated or bisected by the force of the gunfire," one part of the report notes. "The depictions are accompanied by copious bloodspray and injuries are shown realistically and with detail. Flesh and bone are often exposed while arterial sprays of blood continue to spirt from wounds at regular intervals."

EA's response to this is that it plans to neither appeal nor alter the game, Joystiq reports. With the current rating system in place, the game simply won't be released.

"The game will not be available in Australia despite its enthusiastic response from fans. We were encouraged by the government's recent agreement to adopt an 18+ age rating for games. However, delays continue to force an arcane censorship on games - cuts that would never be imposed on books or movies," said EA corporate communications exec Tiffany Steckler. "We urge policy makers to take swift action to implement an updated policy that reflects today's market and gives its millions of adult consumers the right to make their own content choices."

Syndicate was revealed back in September after years of speculation that Starbreeze was at work on such a project. Rather than simply revive the franchise with its classic isometric camera view, it will instead be a first-person shooter, much like what's happening with XCOM. Syndicate is currently scheduled for release on February 21 in North America and February 24 in Europe.