{"id":30033,"date":"2018-07-03T17:43:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T17:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/321285"},"modified":"2018-07-03T17:43:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T17:43:00","slug":"after-initial-refusal-we-happy-few-granted-r-18-rating-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/07\/03\/after-initial-refusal-we-happy-few-granted-r-18-rating-in-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"After initial refusal, We Happy Few granted R 18+ rating in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We Happy Few<\/em> was denied classification by Australia\u2019s Classification Board <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/318609\/We_Happy_Few_refused_classification_by_Australian_ratings_board.php\">back in May<\/a>, but the organization\u2019s Review Board has now reconsidered that ruling and instead allowed the game an R 18+ rating.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Without classification a game cannot be legally sold in Australia, so reversing the initial \u2018refused classification\u2019 decision and instead rating the game R 18+ will now allow it to be sold in the country, though only to persons over the age of 18.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The board\u2019s original decision stemmed largely for the fact that it believed the content of W<em>e Happy Few<\/em> fell under section 1(a) of the National Classification Code\u2019s computer games table dealing with games that feature \u201cmatters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence, or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Drug use, particularly the fictional \u2018joy\u2019 drug that the story of the game centers around, is featured prominently in <em>We Happy Few<\/em>, alongside violence. Following publisher Gearbox\u2019s request for\u00a0 reevaluation however, the Classification Review Board decided instead to give the game an R 18+ with labeling that specifically informs purchasers of \u2018fantasy violence and interactive drug use.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>In a statement shared by the review board, it was explained that games must keep drug use under a certain threshold to seek release in Australia, and, by the sounds of it, <em>We Happy Few<\/em> scraped by just under that line.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe National Classification Code and Classification Guidelines requires the treatment of drug use to not exceed high at the R 18+ level,\u201d reads the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.classification.gov.au\/Public\/Resources\/Documents\/2018-media-releases\/3july2018--we-happy-few--classifiedr18plus.pdf\">statement<\/a>. \u201cIn the Classification Review Board\u2019s opinion <em>We Happy Few <\/em>warrants an R 18+ classification because the interactive drug use is high in impact. The overall impact of the classifiable elements in the computer game was no greater than high.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We Happy Few was denied classification by Australia\u2019s Classification Board back in May, but the organization\u2019s Review Board has now reconsidered that ruling and instead allowed the game an R 18+ rating.\u00a0 Without classification a game cannot be legally sold in Australia, so reversing the initial \u2018refused classification\u2019 decision and instead rating the game R [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}