Dark Sector banned in Australia for excessive violence

The Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), Australia’s classification board, has refused to give a rating to Digital Extreme’s latest game, Dark Sector, essentially making it illegal to sell the game in that country. The OFLC considers the game to be too violent.

Dark Sector is a third-person shooter about a black-ops agent named Hayden Tenno who, while investigating the propagation of a deadly virus, gets infected with it and turns into a bio-weapon with extraordinary combat abilities. One of the main weapons on the game is the glaive, a plate-sized throwing star much like the one on the movie Krull. This weapon can help in solving puzzles and also in delivering extreme finishing moves and it is this area that has been put under heavy scrutiny. These finishing moves range from neck breaking twists to cutting an opponent’s arm and beating him with it, so the guys at the OFLC are not very happy about Hayden’s MO.

In a report sent to GameSpot AU, the OFLC states that they consider that the game depicts an excessive and unjustified use of violence.

“The finishing moves and most violent game play includes decapitation, dismemberment of limbs accompanied by large blood spurts, neck breaking spurts, neck breaking twists and exploded bodies with post-action twitching body parts. These moves are relatively easy to accomplish and once the player has mastered the moves and is able to get close to his foes, these violent moves can be executed.”

Australia’s highest rating for a game is MA15+ so any content deemed unfit for this rating gets the boot.

The game will be most likely modified and tuned down and then resubmitted, but this will hinder its release down under. I certainly hope the OFLC reconsiders about this because this game looks promising and also as video game fans increase in number and age range, people are going to start looking for different subjects, many of which will probably be more mature oriented. Australia has to implement a higher rating for video games such as R and start being more open to these kinds of games. With the majority of the Aussies being in their 20s, they are not going to be content with just rainbows and happy endings for long.

Read [GameSpot AU] Also Read [IGN]