Sadly even after GOG.com staff and CDPR members stated on Kotaku Australia on two separate articles that the GOG.com version of The Witcher 2 would remain uncensored for Australians, that is no longer the case.

I just received a e-mail from GOG.com support stating the following:


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Hello,

Unfortunately we had to release a slightly edited version of The Witcher 2 to conform with the restrictions imposed by the Australian Classification Board. This is the case for every release of The Witcher 2 available in Australia, however as far as we're aware the changes are very minor and make little impact on the game experience.
---
Regards
GOG.com Support


How very disappointing. I will now have to import the game from overseas instead of buying from GOG.com and will not be able to support CDPR fully as I would have really loved to..

TheEnigmaticT stated to me in a PM before that they will be contacting the Australian gaming media about this today and will be trying to have a few interviews done and such..

Sad day for Australians :( Off to import I go.

I'm wondering how they are going to pull this out - different versions on GoG, distributed according to the country of origin of the buyer? And why the hell would GoG have to obey Australian laws, if they are physically in other country. Doesn't make sense to me.

Still, can't blame CDPR or GoG for sick Australian video game's laws. Can't you guys put some pressure on your representatives in the government? It's XXI century, we have enough violence all around in real life, so if a mature (and adult, as these are two different things) gamer wants to play The Witcher 2 with all the violence, bad language and sexual content - I'm quite sure it won't make him/her an aggressive, fault mouth pimp...

Dose it really matter that much tho? The only thing there changing is that you can't get sex as a rewarded for one of the quests. Thats it.

I am disappointed that it is 'censored' too, however I am looking at it as a Aus censored bored being dumb about one small thing. The fact is that it is only a VERY small thing. Its not even a main quest, so you could not even bother doing the quest in question as you play through the game. There are no cards to collect this time, so its not like there is anything making you want to do it out side of the 'its sex' factor.

I don't even care about the censorship. It is such a minor change anyway. The thing that gets me is the fact that there has been a price hike and us Aussies now have to pay twice as much as everyone else.

WTF is with that?

Only on Steam. lol. Gog still selling it at the 44USD mark.

Nope think again. GOG confirmed they are hiking the price for Aussies on their facebook page

no matter where you buy witcher 2 from on gog.com it will be $44 or $49 depending on pre-order. Though you may be paying more up front, because they can't actually undercut the other sellers, you will get the price difference in a store credit that you can use to buy other gog.com games.

I understand the difference will be in store credit but why the increase in the first place? What if someone doesn't want store credit but wants the game for the original $44?

We've been putting pressure on them for around 10 years now.

Our government is so horribly set up with things like this that it is basically impossible to get the law passed so that we can have a R18+ rating for video games. Every single attorney general has to agree on it, if a single one comes out and says they don't want it BAM, it's pushed back another 6 months - 2 years.

You know what I find hilarious? We almost had the R18+ rating once and then the "Australian Christian Lobby" came forward and started crying that the children needed to be protected so it got thrown out.

You know why that is hilarious? Because 99% of games that are rated R18+ overseas are released here UNCENSORED at a MA15+ rating, leaving adult material available to children.. ridiculous!

The Australian Christian Lobby obviously had no idea whatsoever they were even fighting about when they came forward about it so it's an extreme disappointment.

There is no reason at all for us NOT to get a R18+ rating - Adults get to enjoy the material they should be allowed to, and children are protected from adult material. Why is that so wrong?

:-\

It's also extremely stupid that Australians have to pay as much as 150% of what Americans do for hard copies of games - For our digital copies! I'm pretty sure there are price fixing laws against things like this, but the gaming world just seems to not worry about those at all and get away with it fine!

Don't get me wrong, Australia is one of the luckiest countries in the entire world and I love living here, beautiful place, kind people, beautiful women, fresh air and an extremely low crime rate compared to places like America and the UK, but damn, some things really annoy me!

So the reps were full of it, all version from GOG are not the same.

I hate having to import, but it's better than supporting the clowns at the ratings board.

It's a sad day indeed.

Even though the price hike doesn't affect us if we pre-ordered early.

Even though the censorship is very minor.

I won't be satisfied knowing I'm playing an incomplete version of the game.

I know it's not CDProjekts' fault, it's our backwards government, but I will be looking to import like others in this thread.

I preordered the uncensored version of the game. They better deliver the uncensored version of the game or it's straight to a torrent site I go.

I suggest for you all to import from a reputable overseas game shop.

You can also choose between the US version of the game and the Asian version of the game. The Asian version being considerably ($20 or so) cheaper, I'm guessing that is because it is of poor make or something though?

Thanks for the info, though I'd be careful to refer to any websites that could possibly act as competition to GoG

Not sure if there are forum rules about this kind of thing, but just a heads up that this can usually be a sensitive issue ;)

In any case, I used a UK importing site for Shogun 2, since that had a crazy steam *and* retail price in Australia, and it arrived on time, no hassles, and no shipping charge, so I'll probably be sticking with them ;)