Cyberpunk 2077 Won't Be Censored For Australia, Receives R18+ Rating

In April, CD Projekt Red confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 crossed a major milestone when most of the world's major ratings groups assigned ratings to the much-anticipated title. This includes Australia's Classification Board, which is known for its strict ratings (remember South Park: The Stick of Truth and its crying koala censors?)

CD Projekt Red's Kuba Kutrzuba tells GameSpot that Cyberpunk 2077 has received an R 18+ rating in Australia, which is classified as "high impact." The game will feature sex, violence, and references to sexual violence. The big news here, however, is that Cyberpunk 2077 has not been refused classification, which was the case for Saints Row IV and State of Decay, among others. Those games needed to re-submit with edits to get approved for release.

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Editing can be a controversial move, as fans want the full, unedited experience. Thankfully for Cyberpunk 2077 fans, that's exactly what they're getting.

"Receiving an age rating in Australia was an important milestone on our way to releasing the game in September," Kutrzuba said. "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."

You can check out the box art for Cyberpunk 2077 in the images above, where you can clearly see the R 18+ rating description.

CD Projekt Red's previous game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, also received an R 18+ rating in Australia. However, that game's predecessor The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was banned in Australia and had to be censored to reach an MA 15+ rating.

CD Projekt Red's John Mamais previously told GameSpot that he was expecting Cyberpunk 2077 to be approved for release in Australia.

"I was [concerned about censorship] because I know Australia has issues with drugs and the other thing is sexualised violence--those are the two things that can kill your product [in Australia]," Mamais said. "But I've been looking into it [over] the last couple of days. It seems like we're safe. You don't get rewarded for [using] drugs as far as I know in the game. The player doesn't do any kind of sexualised violence at all where it's really tasteless; we wouldn't do anything like that."

The full ratings description for Cyberpunk 2077 in Australia or other parts of the world has not been released yet, at least not officially. Brazil's classification board published a rating for the game, and then deleted it, but not before people on Reddit captured it. The rating reportedly warned of sexual content, drugs, and extreme violence, as well as depictions of sex work and suicide.

Designer Paweł Sasko tweeted a screenshot of the leak saying, "You surprised? We don't f**k around."

The ESRB, the ratings group for the United States, has not yet published its rating, but it's expected the game will carry an M-for-Mature rating.

Cyberpunk 2077 will be released on September 17 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Stadia, and PC--and potentially the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.