Cyberpunk 2077 developer and head CD PROJEKT Red’s Krakow studio, John Mamais, has addressed the concerns over the upcoming title possibly getting banned in Australia.

The game, which has been pushed back for a September release instead of the initial April 16 launch, will be quite mature. Violence, obscenities, sexual references and depictions of drug use are hardly uncommon for video games nowadays, such has been the case for a very long time.

And, because Austalia draws a hard line when it comes to the above being involved in mainstream media, there’s every possibility that Cyberpunk could get banned in the country.

Titles such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, GTA V, and Mortal Kombat are a few of the many games that have been banned by Australian authorities.

San Andreas and Mortal Kombat had bans reversed after they were reclassified. However, others weren’t as fortunate as reclassification bids were simply shut down.

As it pertains to CDPR’s inbound game, Mamais shares everyone’s concerns.

“That was the big question for me when I came here. We have a big list of things that could be bad for us in Australia,” he told On MSFT in a wide-ranging interview. “The two big things are sexualized violence and drugs with rewards but you can’t really do cyberpunk without drugs, right?”

The interviewer suggested that drugs be referred to as “vitamins” in the game. But Mamais has no plans to make things PG just to suit censorship laws in Australia.

“We’re not going to water it down,” he vowed, “but I don’t think there are any situations where you can take any real street-named drug and get a reward from it. And there definitely aren’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.”

Ultimately, the studio chief doesn’t think Cyberpunk’s going to get banned.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” the dev asserted. “I think we’re going to be okay here.”

Cyberpunk 2077 is now set for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Google Stadia on September 17, 2020. We’ll see about that Australia thing.

Source: On MSFT