Following the appeal submitted by the publisher Warner Bros. to the initial decision, The Australian Classification Review Board refused to give the new Mortal Kombat Reboot a MA15+ rating. Since Australia has no 18-rating for video games, through this decision the Board effectively banned the game from the country.

The board’s main concern seems to be related to the extreme violence of the signature fatalities present in The Reboot. “Despite the exaggerated conceptual nature of the fatalities and their context within a fighting game set in a fantasy realm, impact is heightened by the use of graphics which are realistically rendered and very detailed,” said the Board in an earlier report.

The Board’s new report stated: “In the Review Board’s opinion, Mortal Kombat could not be accommodated within the MA15+ classification as the level of violence in the game has an impact which is higher than strong. As MA15+ is the highest classification category available to computer games under the Australian Classification Scheme, the Classification Review Board must refuse classification to Mortal Kombat.”

This comes after a strong campaign last year aiming to institute a mature-rating for video games. Although the campaign got a lot of both public and media attention, it failed in obtaining a legal response to its agenda. In conclusion an artistic expression such as video games is still heavily-censored and downright banned from Australia.