The Australian Government has revealed that its reforms to the classification of games containing simulated gambling will go into effect starting from September 2024.

The proposed changes, which were published earlier in the year (the original story is below), were agreed upon by all states during the most recent Standing Council of Attorneys-General meeting.

The new guidelines mean that any game released after September 2024 will receive an automatic R18+ rating if they feature simulated gambling (think the kinds of online, social casino games you see on mobile platforms), but perhaps more crucially it means an automatic minimum of a an M rating for any game that carries in-game purchases with a chance element, ie “loot boxes.”

The review explicitly points out “casino-style games where the player cannot cash out winnings” as an example of the latter, but it’s unclear if this would extend to the many “regular” games that include in-game casinos (think Dragon Quest XI or any Yakuza game) or in-world games of chance or if the context would be taken into account before automatically slapping on that big R18+ rating.

Outside of these changes, the government is also proposing improvements to how digital-only games are classified, as the current system is largely still built around physical media, including expanded options for self-classification of content to streamline the process for the video game and streaming content industries and make it more cost effective.