That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Another one bites the dust. CNET has reported that 505's horror survival adventure game, Rule of Rose, which was first intended to hit Australia come February next year, is now just another one added to the ever-growing list of games that won't be hitting the Australian shelves - or New Zealand's for that matter. However, unlike many of those games preceding it, 505's game didn't even make it to the stage to get shut down by the ratings department. The local distributor of the game, Red Ant, told Gamespot.au that the game would not be seeing Australian soil at this time. Product Manager, Nichola Bryan, said that 505's horror game had not even been submitted to Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) for that big ol' tick of approval.
Being on the receiving end of bad press - much of which that has been circulating Australian in the last week - the game has not been well-received by the media and family organizations, and that's not just here down under. The game faced the cancellation of its release in Europe last week due to its violence and inappropriate content.
Rule of Rose is a horror survival adventure game, set in 1930's England. The player takes on the role of 19-year-old Jennifer, in a strange world of mysteries and secrets, ruled by an aristocrat organization of female children known as the "Red Crayon Family". Jennifer faces a series of puzzles and violent encounters as she tries to piece together her tortured past, and escape from the dungeons she has found herself in.
Nothing much you can do when even the company who made the game won't even put it in for submission
From a business view, I wouldn't bother about releasing a game in a market if it were going to get banned or refused classification anyway, if, that market were too small to bother with.
Australia and New Zealand are two such markets.
Does it cost the publisher anything just to submit it for classification?