State Of Decay — that awesome-looking zombie game once banned — has been reclassified as R18+.
The Classification Board has confirmed to us today that State Of Decay has been reclassified as R18+ following the submission of a modified version of the game from Undead Labs and publisher, Microsoft.
The game had prevously copped a Refused Classification stamp and was subsequently banned under its unmodified iteration, which reportedly fell foul of the Classification Board for its use of interactive drugs. It was resubmitted to the Classification Board last month.
The Classification Board reports that drug use is now only mild-impact, while VG247 reports that State Of Decay now has the R18+ rating after rebranding the drugs used in the game.
Update: We have now got our hands on the official document from the Classification Board. On the use of prescription drugs:
The Board notes that the original version of the game was Refused Classification as it contained drug use related to incentives and rewards. In the opinion of the Board, this modified game can be accommodated within the R18+ category because of the removal of references to proscribed drugs.
Hooray for semantics! [Kotaku]