Australia Puts The Clamps On MicroTransactions
In many countries around the world, the conversation as been bubbling along feverishly about the impact that microtransactions are having on games, not to mention the gamers that consume those games. Well, today the Australian Ratings Board have ruled that if you’re publishing a game with in-game purchases in Australia, then that must be declared in plain sight to successfully hit shelves. Though no official word has come out, thanks to eagle-eyed Reddit users, it’s been revealed that games submitted for rating from May onwards have been forced to disclose the presence of in-game purchases, highlighted by their rating tag on their boxart.
No news sites have reported this, so let’s discuss: Australia now requires in-game purchases to be disclosed on the front covers of physical video games starting with games submitted in May this year onwards. from Games
As you can see in the Reddit post above, Marvel’s Avengers, as well as a few of EA’s and 2K’s annual sporting entries have all come out the other end of this process, the presence of microtransactions now apparent in their rating. The below image gives us a glimpse into what we can expect when The Avenger’s launches in a few short weeks.
Will this news have any impact on the proliferation of Microtransactions in video games? Not likely, but it is good to see that developers and publishers now need to be more up-front about them before a game has been purchased.
Born and bred on the Super Nintendo era, Paul relishes any opportunity to sink his teeth into an RPG, action or platformer. Despite being an owner of all major platforms, Paul does have a particular love of the Playstation family of consoles – take only a few minutes to skim through his Twitter and you’ll see him ranting about the next big thing on PS4. We swear he’s sane.