The third time was the charm for Saints Row IV and developer Volition. After being refused classification in its previous two appearances in front of the Australian Classifications Board, SR4’s third application for classification got the game rated and cleared for sale in Australia with an MA15+ rating.

In both the first and second classification attempts, the Australian Classifications Board denied Saints Row IV classification as a result of sexual violence through the inclusion of an alien anal probe gun and incentivized drug use (drugs and stimulants boosting the player’s powers.

To comply with Australian classification guidelines and get the game classified for legal sale in the country, Volition have made two changes for the Australian version of the game.

First, the alien anal probe gun has been removed from the base game. It will still be available as DLC as part of the game’s Season Pass.

The drug use that irked the Classification Board has been eliminated from the game completely. Volition and publisher Deep Silver said that the drug use was isolated to a single side mission that was optional for the player to play. In a statement, Deep Silver said that the “mission contains the use of alien narcotics to obtain certain superpowers.”

What’s interesting is that State of Decay was just classified R18+ after applying for classification following an initial classification refusal. Rather than remove drugs from the game, Undead Labs renamed the drugs to remove references to real life drugs which allowed it to pass the Classification Board. Why Undead Labs could do this and not Volition isn’t known yet but it’ll be interesting to see if they could have conceivably done that once we get our hands on the game.

While I can appreciate that you wouldn’t want such subject matter as incentivized drug use or alien anal probing in the hands of children, banning everyone from seeing it is an antiquated view of video games. You have 15+ and 18+ ratings for a reason, Australia. Games aren’t just for children any more. I think people over the age of 18 know that alien drugs won’t give you superpowers. If you actually knew about the medium you were classifying, you would know that gamers aren’t all 8-year-olds playing games in the living room on an Atari 2600.