Silent Hill: Homecoming won't see a commercial release in Australia. Citing "excessive violence," the Office of Film and Literature Classification refused to classify Konami's upcoming survival horror title -- no rating means no release in the region.
With the decision,
Homecoming becomes the fourth title that the OFLC has refused to classify just this year. It releases in North America on September 30, but distributor Atari would have shipped the game in Australia on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC in November.
Atari had
similar troubles releasing
Marc Eckō's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure in the country after the Board determined that the title "promotes the crime of graffiti."
The previous 2008 titles that the Board refused classification for include
Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, Dark Sector, and
Fallout 3, the last of which was banned for "realistic visual representations of drugs and their delivery method (bringing) the 'science-fiction' drugs in line with 'real-world' drugs."
Developer and publisher Bethesda eventually edited the drug content in
Fallout 3 and submitted a revised version of the game, which the Board Classified as MA 15+, or restricted to users age 15 and older. Both
Shellshock 2 and
Dark Sector 2 were also cleared for release after publishers resubmitted modified versions.
The first report of the denied rating comes from Screen Age, which notes that Australian censorship ministers
continue to work on implementing a proposed "R18+" classification for mature content, currently developing mechanisms by which to canvas public opinion on the issue.
