The report originally appeared on GameSpot, where CD Projekt Red’s Kuba Kutrzuba confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 has been rated as 18+ in Australia. Back in February, we reported that Cyberpunk 2077 could run foul of Australian censors due to its inclusion of two things: drug use and sexualised violence. The former will appear in abundance - after all, you can’t really have Cyberpunk without uppers - but the latter won’t be “tasteless.”
“We’re not going to water it down but I don’t think there are any situations where you can take any real street-named drug and get a reward from it,” producer John Mamais told ONMSFT in February. “And there definitely [isn’t] going to be any tasteless sexualized violence either.” “In the real-world, there’s lots of sexualized violence, right? It happens. So it might exist in this world but the player will never be involved with something like that.” This news of Cyberpunk’s Australian rating comes in the wake of CD Projekt Red’s upcoming blockbuster receiving a range of 18+ stamps from countries all over the world, with the predominant reasoning behind the assigned age classification being due to the prevalence of sex, drugs, and death in Cyberpunk 2077. “Receiving an age rating in Australia was an important milestone on our way to releasing the game in September,” Kutrzuba told GameSpot. “We’re creating a mature title for a mature audience, so we were expecting R 18+.” “We haven’t had to alter the game in any way and Australian gamers are set to enjoy the full Cyberpunk 2077 experience.”
Australia’s ratings board is one of the strictest on the global market. In August 2019, the Australian Classification board de-listed DayZ after it was discovered that players could regenerate health by smoking a jazz cigarette. In order to put the game back on the market, Bohemia Interactive had to pull the feature from all versions of DayZ across all territories. The board also straight up refused to classify We Happy Few. However, the news that Cyberpunk 2077 has been officially marked as 18+ should allow CD Projekt Red fans in Australia to breathe a sigh of relief. If you want to know more about Cyberpunk 2077, we’ve compiled a handy Cyberpunk 2077 primer for you. As of recently, you can also check out the Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay demo in 8K.
