Prior to the worldwide release of Grand Theft Auto 4, after we had learned that the Australian (and New Zealand) versions of the game would be watered down to meet our country's nonsensical censorship requirements, the rumour mill was churning with bunk confirmations on exactly what had been removed.

Rockstar had declined to offer any hints so the only way we were going to find out was with a one on one comparison. Fortunately one of the readers over at Kotaku.com.au has done the hard yards and confirmed the following three minor differences.

• Street hooker interaction has no options and all the player sees is the car rocking.
  
• Dead pedestrians don't leave a blood pool.
  
• Player and pedestrian models don't accumulate bruises/blood patches (no pain skins).

That's it. So Rockstar couldn't tell us this why? Because it would have spoiled the game? Perhaps they just didn't want to offer any more fuel to protest groups that already whinge enough about their games without actually playing them. Check out Kotaku's full article for a more descriptive breakdown of the omissions.

i understand why hooker interaction was left out, but blood... wtf?

To me, the most ridiculous thing is, you can still pick up hookers and do the car rocking thing _exactly_ the same act that caused the original GTA 3 to be banned and re-edited here back in 2001.

did rockstar just decide to make these changes or did the oflc tell them to?

Rockstar made the changes before submitting the censored version. OFLC passed it without requesting any changes.

Makes sense that they'd do that, its probably cheaper for them to just sanitise it in advance for the too-soft Aussie market to save having to go back and cut stuff later.

So where can one quench their hooker interaction, corpse blood and injury accumulation thirst these days then? This is an outrage.

as if you wouldn't have imported it. $50AU cheaper and uncut.

if the local games industry is too busy gouging consumers instead of lobbying for their rights then they can do without my dollars.

if the local games industry is too busy gouging consumers instead of lobbying for their rights then they can do without my dollars.

It's the local retail industry gouging customers, not the local games industry.

Nah, chances are its both.

where did you import it from?!

if you want to do that stuff so badly, just do it IRL. you get the added buzz of being a real life badass.

I imported mine from UK (gamehubs.co.uk), played the aussie version for 4-5 days before I got it and I must say I didn't notice much difference at all

classic quote from my brother (I had just gone over to my parents place to visit), I asked "wheres dad?"
my brother replies "downstairs killing a hooker"

I lol'd, GTA IV is GOTY fo' sho'

It's the local retail industry gouging customers, not the local games industry

I don't think this is true, because it's the publishers that set the RRP. An easy way of seeing this is on steam. On steam, it's the publishers that set the prices and not steam itself. Some games on steam are almost twice as much for Australians as they are for Americans.

it's all industries. It's the price of living on a small island at the arse end of the planet.

Here's a short list of things we pay too much for :-

Music Hardware ( can buy electronic pianos etc from US shipped for about 1/2 price )
Fishing Tackle / Hardware ( 150-200% higher here than in US )

Computer Hardware ( 120+% higher here than in US for hardware, especially from vendors like Dell/HP )

Entertainment Media ( DVDs, CDs, Video Games, etc ), 150-200% higher here.

etc
etc
etc

It's the local retail industry gouging customers, not the local games industry.

it is the publishers, not the retailers. sure the retailers are making their margins but the publishers set the RRPs and change the price on online delivery stores (steam, EAstore) to screw Australians over.

if people took a stand and stopped buying s*** at over inflated prices the price would drop. look at petrol. people bitch and moan about the price going up but they still drive their stupid gas guzzling family cars and fill up once or twice a week. stop buying it and then see what the petrol companies do to get people to buy it again when all their infrastructure in Australia sitting idle.

it's all industries. It's the price of living on a small island at the arse end of the planet.

Its not geography that's to blame, otherwise we couldn't import s*** individually cheaper than retailers here sell it. Consider:

A:
Product made in Asia.
Product shipped bulk to US.
Product distributed to retailer in US.
Product sold retail in US.
Product shipped retail to AU.

B:
Product made in Asia.
Product shipped bulk (but less bulk than A) to AU.
Product distributed to retailer in AU.
Product sold retail in AU.

It makes NO SENSE for A to be heaps cheaper than B, unless someone in the chain is f***ing consumers in Australia over and over and over by not passing on import benefits of our stupidly strong dollar.

What would be great is if a gaming organisation would step-up on behalf of the Australian gaming community and boycott games that are released with region locking, have a delayed release date for our market or in the case of Activision on Steam are blatantly taking advantage of Australian consumers.

A great way to start would be if Ausgamers did an article on the issue and maybe go through the pros and cons of importing games with some price comparisons between popular titles local RRP vs imported price.

I walked in to EB's yesterday and despite the fact that they had a big sale going I walked out without buying a thing. $20 off of a $99 game is still dearer then importing it, unfortunately it was a Wii game so there is no such thing as region free for it. How old is Metroid Prime 3 now anyway?

last edited by deadlyf at 20:36:37 27/May/08

boycotting doesn't work on a large scale, I have to lol @ these stupid pricks saying 'dont buy petrol on this day'
they're making billions of dollars a year, aint guna mean s*** - they'll just make more money the next day.

That's usually true for consumers since most general people ignore boycotts but I read on here a few days/weeks ago about Ausgamers and some other sites refusing to host content for games that released exclusive demos to Gamespy/Fileplanet and apparently that worked in stopping game companies from doing that. If Ausgamers and other Australian gaming sites produced articles that highlighted the situation and on top of that refused to host content or advertising for titles that tried to stop Australians from importing games for a much more reasonable price through region locking, it might actually have some effect.

Or we could just continue to quietly complain about it on internet forums.

The problem is that drawing too much attention to sites that internationally import games and consoles tends to get them shut down.

Wow Dan - how could I miss that?

I feel so dirty buying Sony electronics now. But if they are the right price I will buy again :(

Maybe my parents sold my soul to the devil.

But if you buy from something like http://www.365games.co.uk/ it won't die, but they might be asked not to ship anymore to here from some higher up.. I guess.

Edit: conroy's filter will remove that probably

if you want to do that stuff so badly, just do it IRL. you get the added buzz of being a real life badass.

as well as the high and mighty moment of checking yourself out at the clinic three weeks later ;)

Any particular reason why you bumped a nearly 2 year old thread, Skythra?

It was bumped by a (now deleted) spam post.

fun fact

I was playing GTA 4 the other day and totally f***ed the s*** out of a hooker, got to choose how and watched the whole thing etc

Local copy of the game too, seemed weird.


Was there some xbox patch update or something that put the rude stuff back in?

You need to report to deprogramming immediately maxe, witnessing that kind of filth in a video game can scar even a grown adult for life according to SA's Attorney General.