Saints Row IV - Meet the President

The Australian Classification Board has finally decided to give Saints Row IV a rating and to allow release in the country. That in itself is good news, but hardly the real story here.

What is most shocking is that the game which was effectively banned twice from the country has now been given a rating of MA15+, the second highest rating the board offers. How a video game goes from being banned to being available to anyone over 15 is beyond me, but publisher Deep Silver shared the details with what they had to remove.

"To achieve this rating one loyalty mission featuring the character Shaundi has been removed. This mission has been widely reported on and contains the use of alien narcotics to obtain certain superpowers."

A 20 minute mission in an open world video game that spans for hours on end kept this game from not only being released, but also was so severe that it lifted the video game's rating an entire two levels. Consider me baffled.

It seems like the Australian Classification Board immersed themselves in Saints Row IV a little too much. Any group who makes such ludicrous decisions can only be thinking along the lines of such a bizarro universe. Stay tuned for more controversy, because it's bound to lift its head somewhere.

Saints Row IV will be released on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC on August 20th.