DayZ, the standalone spin-off of an ARMA 2 mod, had been in development long time before its release earlier this year. While it took developer Bohemia Interactive a little over half a decade to release a full game, it seems that they are not done tinkering with it just yet. After the game failed to be classified by the Australian Classification Board (ACB) recently, the developers have decided to modify the game on a global scale to be in compliance with the ACB.
According to the refusal from the ACB, games that “depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults” will not be classified. A report was also published by the ACB detailing the more exact reasons the game was denied. Apparently, the use of cannabis by players to increase stats was the big no-no. The Guidelines for the Classification of Computer Games 2012, which the organization references in the report, states that “drug use related to incentives and rewards is not permitted,” resulting in the denied classification. According to an article by Kotaku Australia, the organization even had plans to try and get the game banned outright.
Since the developers “don’t want to separate Australian players from the rest of the world, since many people play cross-region,” they will be altering the game to match compliance with the ACB for all versions of the game, according to Kotaku Australia interview with Bohemia Interactive. The team stressed that the changes to the game will be made in such a way to not alter the player experience, though did not specify exactly what those changes would be. It can be assumed that the utilization of cannabis in the game would be removed or altered in some way to fall in line with the ACB’s guidelines.