um... that's new zealand

Yeah was about to say that was a gross misunderstanding of Oceania, its like me saying Hollywood is in New York.

Given he misspelled Sydney and called it the capital city when it isn't (Canberra is the nation's capital) I'm assuming this was a subtle joke.

So how is this different from the German censored version? Oh right, it isn't...

yes I sure hope you know more about games than geography...

New Zealand is a fair way from Sydney Tom. ;)

But yeah the censored Australian version of L4D2 (which I believe is actually the German censored version) is awful and certainly not worth spending money on. The violence level is less than that in the original L4D which did pass the OFLC guidelines.

I guess I can understand that the Australians who live in the province of New Zealand are protective about their identity. It must be a cultural thing. For instance, I live in California. When someone says I live in America, I don't correct them that I actually live in California, even though California is part of America just like New Zealand is part of Australia.

Also, Los Angeles is a long way from our capital city, New York, but my understanding is that the real Mt. Doom is so tall and foreboding that if it was in New York, we'd be able to see it from California.

Finally, that's interesting to hear that Australia just got the German version of the game. It actually makes a lot of sense. If Valve already has a toned down version ready to go for those squeamish Germans, why not ship that to Australia?

And on a more serious note, since I presume NZ doesn't have the same problems with its ratings board, I wonder if there's much cross-border videogame traffic between Australia and NZ. I know Steam brings with it all sorts of additional complications, but otherwise, if I was an Aussie, I'd be tempted to hop on a ferry to Christchurch or whatever for all my M-rated gaming needs.

I'm sure there's some importing going on but given piracy is cheaper and importing banned games is still highly illegal I suspect most people just torrent.

Many people in Australia are using VPN tunnels or having the game gifted to them from non-censored countries. Only problem I see is that if it is a Steam version won't that revalidate the game if it sees different files for your region and overwrite the non-censored version?

New Zealand is a country, not a province of Australia.
>>New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (commonly called the North Island and the South Island), and numerous smaller islands, most notably Stewart Island/Rakiura and the Chatham Islands. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand)

New Zealand actually has a sensible rating system that is applied to all media and unlike Australia ours actually includes an R18 classification. Local stores do a very brisk trade in exports to Australia for games such as GTA4, which were (eventually) released here uncensored

Sadly, we occasionally get a watered down version due to publishers not wanting to produce different PAL versions for NZ and Australia. We also got the horrific Australian packaging for Forza Motorsport 3 as well :(

That's absurd, Mr. Astley. Just because some place is an island doesn't mean it can't be part of the country it's not attached to. Just ask Hawaii, Madagascar, and Taiwan.

Also, RE: your name: I see what you did there!

Tom, I just want you to know that New Zealand is very upset at your comments and wants you to know that we totally are a real country.

We can beat Australia at rugby any day, and just because the Queen is technically our head of state doesn't stop us being a proper nation, there are other ways to sort out differences than violence you know, not that you do.

Also the earth goes around the sun and is more than 6000 years old, just a heads up, I know you Americans struggle with these things.

In the first LotR movie, you can totally see the 'Made in Australia' graffiti inside Balin's Tomb after Sean Bean says 'They have a Tom Chick'...

QED

This censorship REALLY pisses me off. Not only do I feel like the game is being censored FAR beyond the standard applied to other games... but more importantly the censorship has substantial affects on gameplay.

Further the fact that everything Valve is controlled through Steam means I will be unable to import the game and make an adult decision that I'm not offended by the violence.

Ultimately I'm not interested in purchasing this version and I only hope that Valve find some loophole to patch it to be fully featured in terms of gameplay as soon as it's released.

Im importing this from NZ or if my mate goes over some time soon il get him to buy it for me it would be cheaper since the Aussie dollar is always high and is much higher now

Actually us kiwis usually refer to Australia as the "West Island" so I totally understand your confusion.