Dragon Age: Inquisition - Unavailable in India?!

Aubrielle

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A recent press release from EA confirms that Dragon Age: Inquisition will not be releasing in India.

In a recent post on EA’s website, the company claims that the long-awaited Dragon Age: Inquisition will not be available in India. At 06:11pm GMT yesterday they released the following statement:

“In order to avoid a breach of local content laws, Electronic Arts has withdrawn Dragon Age: Inquisition from sale in India. Unfortunately, that means we’re unable to fulfill your Origin order.

  • All affected purchases for Dragon Age: Inquisition will be refunded. This applies regardless of payment method or date of purchase.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition may still temporarily appear in your Origin library, but it will be removed before its launch date.”
Breach of local content law typically pertains to manufacturing number or percentage in host location. So, it is interesting that the game has also been lifted from all digital platforms as well as retail.
And in an update...

We have still not heard back from EA... There is a general consensus that the game was removed due to explicit sexual content and homosexuality but users have also reported that Inquisition has been cancelled in the entire region, with orders getting cancelled not just in India but in Bangladesh and other areas.
Ouch!

More Information.

More information.
 
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INDIA!? (Zloth tries to wipe off his monitor to see if "India" changes to "Iran" after a little cleaning. Nope.) INDIA!?!?
 
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I think Risen is still banned in Australia. Witcher 2 and South Park were forced to remove content.
 
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And thus starts the age of piracy in India.
Couldn't they just censor whatever is preventing the sales like Ubi did with The Stick of Truth?

While we wait for more details, perhaps an interesting thing is what IGN did, compared DA3 on PC and two consoles' versions.



Guess which ring rules them all.
 
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i think it could be not about censorship its about money.
people hide their ip and pretend to be in india to get unbelivable discounts on new games on origin.
 
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i think it could be not about censorship its about money.
people hide their ip and pretend to be in india to get unbelivable discounts on new games on origin.

That's an interesting theory. I'm leaning toward the censorship theory myself based on past incidents but you could be right.
 
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It's likely the gay romance options / nudity giving them problems in India. And Bioware being quite progressive, is probably happy to stand on its principles in a non-primary market.
 
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Yea right, because of same reasons India banned Mass Effect games.
Oh, they did not?!

Never heard about discounts in India, but if it's true what turian says, then it's definetly the reason.

A player from India went loco on Bio forum, haha, seems there isn't really any law but it's some bull from EA PR probably:
http://forum.bioware.com/topic/519345-dragon-age-inquisition-no-longer-available-in-india/

Oh and… A slightly offtopic pic from tweeter last year, but since GTA5 full of nudity had no problems with laws in India, let's see how Rockstar solves issues compared to EA:
Ea_0265c8_4826934.jpg


Dunno if it's authentic, but it's true.
 
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It's likely the gay romance options / nudity giving them problems in India. And Bioware being quite progressive, is probably happy to stand on its principles in a non-primary market.

I think this is very likely the reason. I'm sure many games have not been looked at too closely by indian censors, but I reckon they've read the ESRB description, looked into it and found it also had gay action, and their extremely hardline conservative element has kicked off.
 
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What strikes me as a little odd is that I went to Joxer's link and checked the forums, and apparently games that were almost banned in India for "controversial" material didn't set off any alarms anyway.

*shakes head* Indian fans will still buy it and import it via Amazon, and they'll still torrent it, probably even more now.
 
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From the main Bioware thread:

"Although LGBT relations were there in the past ME and DA games the court recently ruled in favour of article 377."

This seems likely to me.
 
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But that's the law enforced on India's citizens (150 years ago and by another country) not on games for god's sakes. They didn't have videogames in 1860.!

Whatever the case is, this scandal will bring the game into all news for sure. Unpaid advertisments incoming. Couldn't work better for EA.
 
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Well, you'll get no argument from me that the law is archaic and ridiculous, but they've just renewed their commitment to it, and it will affect all media. I think it's fair to say that India is a fairly politically chaotic place, and a lot of these things depend on whether some reactionary windbag politician latches onto them or not.
 
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India. A country where 10 men raping a woman with an iron rod is "normal" and an everyday occurance, where widows are still burned with their husbands, but gay affection is untolerable. I find that morality... questionable.
 
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Eh, whatever. This should not be a surprise given how many "regions" have religious insanity or screwball governments trumping logic and/or freedom.

At the same time, I personally don't care about and don't want romance in my RPGs. Even before I was married and started to find it a bit more disturbing and pathetic I wasn't into it. I know BioWare is known for it in their games but I would love their games just as much if the stuff wasn't there.

You know how some games have options to turn off gore? I'd never do that, but I'd turn off romance if I had the option. If the stuff was designed that way then you could just hide it for these other markets (for players to figure out how to crack back in, yay).

It seems like RPGs would be perfectly fine without the "controversial" bits and then there would be less controversy. Then again, some countries refuse to allow some games and media for all kinds of goofy reasons so it's not like you could ever please every control-freak entity so should you even bother...

Oh well, bummer for some folks I guess. If you're supportive of your government/culture/religion/whatever and having them think for you, it shouldn't be a big deal anyways, right?
 
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Given the prevalence of homosexuality in recent Bioware games (almost every character in your party was either homosexual or bisexual except for Varric) vs the actual prevalence in modern society (about 3.8% in the US, under 2% in the rest of the world), one has to assume that Bioware is overly PC or they have some other agenda. Why no Polygamy?

India. A country where 10 men raping a woman with an iron rod is "normal" and an everyday occurance, where widows are still burned with their husbands, but gay affection is untolerable. I find that morality… questionable.

What a load of hogwash. The few times it has happened this year has drawn nationwide condemnation and protests.
 
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While we wait for more details, perhaps an interesting thing is what IGN did, compared DA3 on PC and two consoles' versions.



Guess which ring rules them all.

When not defining pc gaming in order to achieve the conclusion that PC gaming(PC gaming, sales of games on PC) is not dead because it cant die as there always will be games sold on PC (that 's asking a question that cant be answered by a negative so useless question) but when sticking to PC gaming for what it (used to) means, this kind of comparison appears hollow.

Commonly, console players and PC players are not expected to play under the same conditions.

Commonly, PC players are expected to play sitting at their desk, on a 24'' something monitor, with a distance from their eyes to the monitor under the meter (mostly around 60~70 cm)
Consoles players are expected to play sitting in their couch, on a bigger screen, with a distance from their eyes to the monitor over the 1m50.

Different conditions, different requirements on the images.

Console screens usually show aliasing. As they can. Sharpness is not that a big issue when the image is conceived to be watched from a certain distance. It turns out an issue when the player sticks their face to the screen (closer to common pc usage, not console usage)
Sharpness in screens is a demand from PC usage conditions, not console usage conditions.

Another point (among others): when PC gaming is kept to what it means, that is games developped, designed, conceived to take advantages of PC potentialities, the issue of composition of images appear.
The composition of a painting obeys a few rules when it comes to occupation of space and they do not scale. Images on a bigger space are not composed the same way as on a smaller space, it does not scale 1:1. Well composed images when magnified or reduced usually lose their balance in composition. It follows that the eye sight is usually guided elsewhere.
It was a common issue some decades ago when movies conceived to be watched on a silver screen were released on the home video market. Usually, movie makers tried to draw the watcher into the screen and they have to work their angles to achieve their effects.
When moved to a smaller screen, suddenly, the effects went flat as the geometry of the image changed and watchers no longer watched the point the movie maker wanted them (and succeeded in theaters) to, they looked elsewhere. Sometimes, on defaults in the image. Hence blunders appearing etc
Today, it is a factored in issue and images are reworked to smoothen the translation from one format to another. It still remains though.

It turns relevant for video gaming when games try to achieve an immersion effect: drawing people into a screen is not the same when people watch a large screen from 2 meters than when they watch a smaller screen from less than one meter.

Now who is priviledged in this regard? Who get the design that suit the common circumstances of use and who buy a repeddled product not thought to meet their use conditions, very similar to third world economical satisfactions?
Who is in the first world gaming and who is the third world gaming?
 
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