Valve resubmitting 2 versions of Left 4 Dead 2 to OFLC
Here’s a bit of semi-good news for Australian gamers. Even with Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360, PC) effectively banned in Australia, Valve is not giving up. They’re still in the process of making sure that gamers in the region will get something come the game’s supposed launch date.
Here’s a bit of semi-good news for Australian gamers. Even with Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360, PC) effectively banned in Australia, Valve is not giving up. They’re still in the process of making sure that gamers in the region will get something come the game’s supposed launch date.
Valve is currently trying a two-pronged approach. They’ve resubmitted an as-is version of Left 4 Dead 2 to the OFLC as well as an Australia-specific version of the game. Here’s what Gabe Newell told GameSpot AU:
Right now we’re pursuing two tracks: the first track is to release the product that we’ve created as is in Australia. This is our very strong preference and what we’re working with the [Classification Board] to see if we can achieve–so we have an appeal of their decision. The issue there is that that process is fairly slow and that the next step on that isn’t going to occur until October 22. At that point I start to run into problems with getting through certification with Microsoft and then getting manufactured in time in order to make November 17.
We are going to continue to go down that path. At the same time we’ve also submitted an Australia specific version of the game which we think is fully compliant with the [Classification Board’s] guidelines for content. We may actually hear about that version today. So the goal is to guarantee that something will be available on November 17 in Australia while at the same time pushing to get approval for that to be the full version of the game
The main thrust is still to release the uncensored version, so in case the uncensored product is eventually cleared after the November 17 launch date, they still plan to update censored versions and bring them up to par with releases in other parts of the world. Doing that for the PC versions of the game is easy, but the Xbox 360 version might prove trickier:
Well, on the PC side we’d just update them so it’s easy there. I don’t have a real clear idea of how we would be able to provide that to Xbox customers. Our hope is to not get into that situation and have the Xbox version be available. Certainly what we would like to do is make it freely available to anybody if we had to make it available after initial shipments. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”
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Via GameSpot