Australians can't buy Crusader Kings 3 yet

Log on to Steam from an Australian account and you'll be greeted by a banner for Crusader Kings 3 saying, "NOW AVAILABLE!" But click through to its store page and you'll be told, "In agreement with the publisher, Crusader Kings III is currently not available for purchase in your region." I tried to buy it from the Paradox Store in Australia, and at the checkout was greeted with the message, "Crusader Kings III is currently not available for purchase in your country. We're working on resolving this as soon as possible."

Last month the Crusader Kings Twitter account said that, "Currently the sales of CK3 in Australia & New Zealand are halted as we are investigating matters having to do with age ratings. We’re working on resolving this as soon as possible and Paradox will honor already placed pre-orders." The issue was cleared up with regards to New Zealand before launch, but apparently the same isn't true of Australia.

Normally in these cases it's Australia's Classification Board that's to blame, but Crusader Kings 3 doesn't even have a listing there. Meanwhile its predecessor, Crusader Kings 2, got away with a rating of PG for "mild violence" and "online interactivity". What could be so shockingly different about Crusader Kings 3?

In a statement to Kotaku Australia, Paradox said that, "Up to this point, we've been handling the ratings classification issue through an intermediary body, not the classification board directly. We don't have any more details to share, I'm afraid, since a lot of this process has to, necessarily, be kept between the parties involved. We hope that things will be resolved soon, so our Australian audience can enjoy Crusader Kings III."

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.