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According to the Sydney Morning Herald and IGN, Australia has prohibited the retail of games that haven’t been classified by the Australian Classification Board.
I bet you’re wondering how this effects World of Warcraft and countless other MMO’s such as Warhammer and Age of Conan? Because these games do not contain a single player game they could not be classified within Australia’s national standards. However, they were legal due to a loophole that classified them as a social experience, but that loophole was indeed closed.
This news is causing quite a mess on most of the popular World of Warcraft sites and especially the official WoW forums. The news was first posted on the general forums and escaladed to eleven pages before the thread was locked by Blizz.
There was a blue post in response to all the flaming over the news, which said:
We will always respect the laws of the countries in which we operate. This thread has gotten a little out of control and has been shut down.
This is not surprising since the thread had turned into a discussion on whose country was better.
The Australian government plans to strictly enforce this new act as well as police will be issuing penalties to anyone caught operating outside of the Classification Act. Apparently the fines for can be anywhere from thousands of dollars to jail time and this goes for companies as well. They also were encouraging citizens to report anyone, and even retailers for violations. All I can say is ouch?
This seems a bit harsh and sudden.
