Watch out world — The reach of the Australian Classification Board now extends well beyond our sandy shores. The censored Aussie version of Fallout 3 will be the version of the game that is released worldwide.

Where coming for your movies next!

Where coming for your movies next!

Gaming website Edge has the full details. Here’s what the game’s PR head Peter Hines had to say:

Calling the idea of an Australia-specific version of the game a “misconception,” Hines told us, “We want to make sure folks understand that the Australian version of Fallout 3 is identical to both the UK and North American versions in every way, on every platform.”

Here’s how it happened:

In July this year, Fallout 3 became one of the most high profile casualties of Australia’s game classification system. Because of in-game drug use (incentives and rewards for morphine injections) it was refused classification and no one knew if it would be censored for an Australian audience, as is usually the case.

Speculation didn’t last long and in August an edited version of the game was approved by the ACB and rated MA15+. Remove an incentive or two, stop calling it morphine, and Bob’s your uncle. Who would have expected those changes to also occur worldwide?

Back to the present and Peter Hines swears the move is to avoid confusion:

“An issue was raised concerning references to real world, proscribed drugs in the game, and we subsequently removed those references and replaced them with fictional names. To avoid confusion among people in different territories, we decided to make those substitutions in all versions of the game, in all territories.”

Call it confusion, corporate responsibility or creative refinement — for now it looks like a case of self inflicted censorship.

Cheers Dom for the tip off.