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'Chop' and 'Mad Riders' rated in Australia
Two mysterious games have appeared on Australia's Ratings Board, one published by Ubisoft for PS3, and one published by Microsoft for an unspecified platform. The PS3 game in question is called Mad Riders, and carries a G classification, suggesting that nobody is too mad. Microsoft has the Microsoft Studios-made Chop, whose violent title also belies a G rating. Chop was rated concurrently with Grasshopper Manufacture's baseball-action Kinect game Diabolical Pitch and its collaborative shmup Sine Mora, which both earned M ratings. We've checked in with both Microsoft and Ubisoft, and we'll let you know when we find out what all the chopping and riding is about.
Blizzard kills Diablo III's RMT to appease South Korea
Blizzard Entertainment made waves last year when it announced that Diablo III would be supporting real-money trading (RMT) through its in-game auction house system. While it proved to be a divisive topic among fans, apparently it was too much with the South Korean rating board, which sees such activities as potentially violating the country's anti-gambling rules. The board was quoted as saying that "the feature involving for-cash trades between users was not included in the presentation to the rating committee, and therefore it was not subjected to any scrutiny." To appease the board and pave the way for release, Blizzard has dropped the RMT auction house for the Korean version. The ratings board has warned the company not to sneak in the feature in a future patch and gave the title an 18 rating for the country. Interestingly enough this makes South Korea the first country to slap a rating on Diablo III to date.
