Australian gamers planning to import their copies of Fallout 3 to avoid playing the version censored to appease the Aussie Classifications Board no longer have to bother as Bethesda have now revealed that the same game will be shipping worldwide.

In a Q&A with Edge Online, Bethesda's Peter Hines confirmed that "there will be no differences between the version that releases in Australia and the versions that will release in other territories, including Europe and the US."

"An issue was raised concerning references to real world, proscribed drugs in the game, and we subsequently removed those references and replaced them with fictional names. To avoid
confusion among people in different territories, we decided to make those substitutions in all versions of the game, in all territories"

The important thing to take away from this is that Bethesda don't seem to be concerned that the alterations will negatively impact on the quality of the game. It is still disappointing however, that developers have to waste time conforming to the censorship standards of various countries - this decision perhaps being a reactionary measure to avoid having to work on multiple builds of the game.