Games industry pressuring Australian govt to implement R-rating on games?

Here’s something that may get gamer’s hopes up: according to a columnist, gaming industry representatives are allegedly trying to pressure the Australian government into implementing an equivalent of an R-18 rating for games. What’s good about it? It means that Mature-rated games won’t get banned in the land down under. Read more about it in the full article.

According to The Australian columnist Ross Fitzgerald, there’s a possibility that people working for the game industry are trying to pressure Australian government officials into approving the implementation of an R-rating for use of video games released in Australia.

The move was started more than a month ago, and we certainly hope the Australian government caves in: as it stands right now, any game that goes beyond the MA 15+ rating is banned and not released.

Here’s part of the snippet taken from Fitzgerald’s article:

The whisper is thatÂ… Attorney-General Robert McClelland (left) and his junior, Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus, have had a stream of lobbyists representing Nintendo and Microsoft in their ears about creating this new R-rating for violent video games.

Fitzgerald doesn’t sound all too happy about it though, and added the following:

The rest of AustraliaÂ’s state and federal attorneys should hang their heads in shame for trying to foist a category of computer games on us that will contain mostly mind-numbing violence.

We’ll just try to refrain from commenting on that last quote, but here’s what we can tell you: we certainly hope that Australia gets the R-rating it deserves, so adult gamers will finally acquire their right to play games that are rated for their use.

Via The Australian