We Happy Few Will Release In Australia After All

Compulsion Games have announced that their upcoming psychedelic horror adventure We Happy Few will be launching in Australia, after being denied classification towards the end of May.

We Happy Few was rejected for the way it depicts drug use, though it seemed to stem from of a misunderstanding of how that drug use affects both gameplay and the narrative. Players could take the drug Joy, which would stop them from being harassed by NPCs. The Australian Classification Board subsequently argued that taking drugs made the game easier, which they felt contravened some of their rules.

Naturally, Compulsion Games chose to appeal the decision, and after a month, the ACB have decided to overturn their ruling. We Happy Few will now be released with a R18+ rating, and the game won’t have to modify itself to appease the board. In a blog post on Compulsion Games’ website, the developers have said the following:

We went to a great deal of effort to get this decision overturned. We Happy Few will be rated R18+ in Australia. We are extremely pleased with the decision of the board and excited that our Australian fans and new players will be able to experience We Happy Few without modification.  We want to thank everybody who got involved in the discussion, contacted the board and sent us countless messages of support.  Your involvement made a huge difference.

We Happy Few will be released on August 10th on PS4, Xbox One and PC. With Compulsion Games joining the Xbox family of first party developers, it’ll be interesting to see how the game develops post-launch. In any case, it’s good to see a game that was banned in one region actually have that decision overturned. This is a good day.

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