The Bug Butcher Refused Classification in Australia

The Bug Butcher is a shooter game by Awfully Nice Studios. You play Harry, an exterminator who gets tasked with slaughtering bugs in a futuristic research facility, in order to buy the surviving scientists time until the total decontamination process is complete. It’s a simple game where you face wave after wave of enemies, picking up new weapons and power-ups in order to enhance your slaying skills.

No big deal right? WRONG. The Australian Classification Board, notorious for their controversial censoring on video games like Saints Row IV and South Park: The Stick of Truth, refused to classify The Bug Butcher. The game was released back in January of this year, and it sailed along in the Steam store without an issue until this recent decision.

The only information available as a given reason comes from the official website page.

“The computer game is classified RC in accordance with the National Classification Code, Computer Games Table, 1. (a) as computer games that “depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified.”

An official statement from either the game’s publishers, or Steam, is not available at this time, but we’ll update you on that when it comes.

For those of you not in Australia and want to see what the fuss is about, the game is available on Steam here. If you want to investigate it further, there’s always the website, Twitter, and Facebook.