Bethesda has stated that edits made to drug references in Fallout 3 in order to get it classified in Australia have also been made versions of the game in other territories.

Addressing what he called a “misconception”, Peter Hines, VP of PR and marketing for Bethesda, said, “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.”

He went on to explain, “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.”

As far as we could ascertain this was a reference to morphine as a named drug.

He categorically concluded, “I didn't want people continuing to assume the version in Australia was some altered version when it's not. There are no references to real world drugs in any version of Fallout 3.”

So, because the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification decided that real world drug references were unsuitable for gamers Down Under, where the highest rating for a game is MA 15+, the game has been edited for all of us.

Fallout 3 was originally refused classification in Australia thanks to its depiction of drugs being, as Hines said, too close to real life.

A large part of the problem is the fact that Australia doesn't have an R18+ rating for games, as it does for other media – an ongoing problem for games classification in the territory. There's a great big splodge of hypocrisy thrown into the mix too, however, since SPOnG found several films featuring real world drugs that received the MA 15+ rating, which is applicable to games.

It later emerged that the game had been allowed classification after the aforementioned references to real life drugs were removed.

Frankly, SPOnG can cope without real-life drug references in the game. We're sure it won't have a massive impact on how it plays. We object, however, to not being allowed to see them because some organisation on the other side of the planet is too prudish to let gamers see stuff that's readily available in other media.

You can read more about Fallout 3 in SPOnG's recent preview.

^{Source: Edge Online}