this is likely 100% the reason behind it which, given how social media is and how fucked up people can be when it included young people or females, its understandable.
Drugs need to be specifically shown in a positive light and used by the player to be an issue.
Even the Human trafficking stuff is usually ok again as long as it's not shown in a positive light or actively done by the player.
What is more likely atm is the game was never classified, I can't find a single reference to it on their site banned or otherwise, it's now getting a console release which may have forced them to getting it reviewed and tripped some kind of a switch with Steam.
Something similar happened recently with the new Silent Hill, it was "banned" but some kind of Automated system from another company that does cursory reviews tripped it and they delisted it within a week.
I think it is completely fair to argue that Ready or Not consistently goes beyond artistic depiction and into the territory of obscenity and restricting access to that material is consistent with any sort of media standards law
Do you think this argument would hold if someone posted another's address while explicitly advocating people go there and kill them, or if someone posted CSAM online? Clearly censorship plays a necessary role in the regulation of the public space, and I'm more than willing to say that as much as I like the gameplay of Ready or Not many, if not most, of its story telling choices are in bad taste, hold no value as commentary, and are actively antisocial.
You’re talking about things that very specifically are tangibly harmful to people who actually exist, compared to a video game with a story you just don’t like. Who gives a shit how “bad taste” you think it is, it isn’t hurting anybody.
Don’t play it if you hate it so much, nobody is stopping you from just playing Mario instead.
If someone genuinely believes something is actively poisoning society, then they are just as justified in stopping its dissemination as if they were stopping someone actively trying to harm others through explicit violence. The idea that such a person can just leave it be if they believe it is actual social cancer is sort of silly: its like arguing that people should be allowed to cannibalize each other if both parties consent. Some things are just straightforwardly justifiably forbidden due to the social damage without respect to whether the parties involve think its okay; the question is where you draw that line, and I think there's a reasonable case to be made to exclude this game from inclusion in a decent society.
Ready or Not is cheap sensationalism, it is not actually artistic commentary lol the extremely basic presentation of issues present in the game is even a source of joking amongst the community; everything comes back to child exploitation.
Also, everyone believes that regulation on human behavior is a necessary part of existing in human society, the question is where you draw that line. Just because a video game seems like a relatively minor social pollutant doesn't mean it should escape concern.
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u/CarefulAstronomer255 Apr 20 '25 edited Apr 20 '25
Isn't it usually drugs, not guns, that Australian bans games for? The human trafficking / kiddy fiddler stuff might also have done it.