Konami’s upcoming Silent Hill f has been refused classification in Australia, meaning the game would not be able to be sold within Australia at this time. However, Silent Hill f’s RC rating has been assigned by an automated rating tool and not via actual Australian Classification Board members so, based on precedent, it’s unlikely this is the end of the story.
Konami does not distribute its own games locally in Australia, but IGN has contacted its third-party distribution partner for comment.
The specific reason for Silent Hill f’s RC rating has not been supplied at this time. Since the introduction of an adults-only category for games in Australia (R18+) in January 2013, games that have been refused classification in Australia are only typically flagged for sexual activity with a person who appears to a child under 18, visual depictions of sexual violence, or tying incentives and rewards to drug use. 2008’s Silent Hill: Homecoming was initially refused classification in Australia in the lead up to its release due to a high impact torture scene but that was several years prior to the introduction of the R18+ rating, which now accommodates high impact levels of violence. Silent Hill: Homecoming was later released in Australia with altered camera angles for the problem scene, rated MA15+.
What we already know, however, is that Silent Hill f’s RC rating in Australia has actually been assigned by an online tool maintained by the International Age Rating Coalition – which is a classification system designed for mobile and digitally delivered games. The IARC classification tool is an online questionnaire where applicants simply answer a series of questions about a game’s content. The IARC tool will subsequently assign an automated rating from each territory based on the classification standards from each participating country. In Australia’s case, the IARC tool then sends the decision to be published automatically on Australia’s National Classification Database.
In Australia, the tool can only be used for digitally-distributed games (it was adopted in 2014 due to the fact that, while the Australian Classification Board was rating an average of 755 games per year, over 40,000 games were being released annually on the iOS app store alone at that time). There have been a number of instances where automated IARC ratings have demonstrated a tendency to trend higher than human ratings from the Classification Board. For example, in 2019 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and We Happy Few were widely reported to have suddenly been banned in Australia when they had not.
The IARC tool is free to use, which particularly benefits small publishers and developers. Importantly, all physical releases are still required to be rated by the Classification Board itself so, if Silent Hill f is planning to have a physical release in Australia, a submission to the Classification Board was always going to be mandatory, anyhow. The Classification Board itself can override any classification given by the IARC tool if it disagrees with it.
In Australia, game publishers can either have staff members who are accredited classifiers or authorised assessors. Accredited classifiers are in-house staff who complete training from the Classification Board and can classify games themselves, and their decision will take effect as an official Classification Board decision. Authorised assessors are staff or contractors who have similar training, but their classification decision is limited to a recommendation made to the Australian Classification Board, which must then decide whether to apply it or not.
For now, it’s too early to say whether Silent Hill f’s RC rating in Australia will be upheld after further actions or not. It is, however, the first Silent Hill game to get an 18+ rating certification in Japan.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.
