Originally supposed to be a next generation launch title, Watch Dogs’ release date was pushed back to 2014. The excuse for the delay was that the game needed to be polished, as well as, fine-tuned. Now though this delay was upsetting, it has not hindered the hype for Ubisoft’s open world gam.
However, a recent change by the Australian Classification Board (ACB) has made people wonder about how much of the initial content was changed. Recently the ACB upgraded the rating of Watch Dogs from a MA15+ to R18+: they said the reason for this upgrade was because of violence, drug use, and sex. The ACB released a chart to show why the ratings were upgraded and GameSpot was nice enough to show the comparison between the two classifications.
A comparison of the ratings.
In this graph, one can see that the violence was upgraded to High Impact, while the drug use and sex was upgraded to Strong Impact. Now at the moment Ubisoft has not commented on this recent reclassification; however, it is quite odd that a ratings board would change the rating merely months after the initial process. Obviously not a lot can be changed in less than a year, but were there elements added to Watch Dogs that the ACB did not like?
Possibly, yet there are no answers until Ubisoft comments on the topic. But at the same time, the ESRB does not list the M-rating that Watch Dogs was given last month. When GameSpot asked the ESRB they said a representative will look into the situation. Now, it has to be a little bit more than coincidence for the ACB’s change and the ESRB’s removal of their ratings. However, at the moment there are no answers to this mysterious and confusing situation.
Either way, Watch Dogs is still scheduled to release on May 27th: on the Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, and PC. Check back to Gamer Headlines for updates on this situation and any other news regarding Watch Dogs. Also, what do you think of the ACB’s reclassification of Watch Dogs? Please tell us in the comments below.
Source: GameSpot