Aussies given censored version of Borderlands on Steam

Thanks to the repressive nature of the Australian games classification system, it's not too surprising that developers are a tad on the cautious side when it comes to submitting violent games for classification. Despite 2K Games' postapocalyptic shooter Borderlands passing through the Classification Board without a hitch with an MA15+ rating, it would appear that a toned-down, less-violent version was accidently uploaded to Steam.

Australian players were tipped off that something wasn't quite right when they went through the game's installation folders and found a suspicious file called "borderlands_low_violence.ncf."

2K Australia has confirmed that the wrong version of the game was uploaded for consumption by Aussie players. "We'd like to confirm that the Australian version of Borderlands is not censored in any way. This applies to all platforms and distribution methods, including Steam. Because of an internal mix-up an incorrect version of the game was available to preload on Steam for a brief period of time. This version has since been replaced," a 2K spokesperson said.

The bad news here is that in order for people to play the uncensored version of Borderlands, they will have to completely wipe their install and re-download the entire game. While it may not be an issue for other countries with uncapped broadband, this could prove problematic for Aussies with a small download limit, who may end up going over their download allocation correcting 2K's mistake.

On the plus side, thanks to a broken timer that pushed back the unlocking of Borderlands for European and Australian Stream users, anyone wanting to re-download the game won't be missing out on much because the game won't unlock until October 30.

Check out GameSpot's review of Borderlands here.