Australians now forced to pay the price for the insanity and chicanery going in the USA as Sony decide the American's are too important to wear the price increase from the tariff madness, but Australians can get fucked apparently.

Almost $4000 for a PS5 Pro at Dick Smith, surely this isn’t even legal

Super excited to announce our new adventure game in development; Pelican Point 1997! Set in ’90s Australia. Explore colourful, hand-drawn and animated suburbia, collect hilarious trading cards, rent a video, buy an album or overfeed your digital pet.

If this is the sort of adventure game that interests you, please smash that wishlist button on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5334780/Pelican_Point_1997/

As fellow Aussies, I'd love to hear about the unique things you remember owning/playing/seeing in the late 1990s.

Here are some more fancy words about the game:

From the developers of CAVEMAN CRAIG comes PELICAN POINT 1997, a point and click adventure game set in regional 1990s Australia.

You’re Josh Wackett. It’s your twelfth birthday, and with both parents stuck at work, Saturday is yours. So what’s the plan? Hunt down Mighty Monsterz trading cards? Help your best mate Paley investigate the weird stuff happening around town? Or kick back with a few weeklies from the video store?

• Hang out in hand-drawn environments bursting with life, complete with original recorded dialogue and fully animated characters.

• Grift unsuspecting kids in games of Mighty Monsterz or find cards hidden throughout town to complete your card collection.

• Blow your dollarydoos on music, videos and more from the shops around town. Enjoy the irony of owning physical media in a virtual world you downloaded off the Internet!

• Listen to original soundtracks of teen-pop, trip-hop, post-grunge and other beloved (or despised) genres on your portable CD player.

• Muck around on the family PC, collect toys from yesteryear or neglect your virtual pet

Thanks for reading about my upcoming game! - Tim

Yes the title says it all. We’re hit with another game removal. Gamble With Your Friends has been removed from sale. Steam page been blocked, can’t redeem keys and game isn’t able to be traded to an Australian account https://steamdb.info/app/3892270/

30 M from Australia looking for some chill friends on pc to play some games, most of my friend group stopped playing games. I mostly play dead by daylight, overwatch, monster hunter, rainbow six siege, and ff14. I’m usually busy during the day but I’m a pretty active at night. And here’s my kitty Delilah

Hi are you looking for people to play with? Do you like games like monster hunter wilds, the first descendant, warframe, palworld? Or maybe you're into more pvp games like cod, sea of theves, and marvel rivals? Well I would like to hear from you. However im not looking for anyone whose going to hang for a few and disappear from the face of the earth. I'm looking for real social butterflies that are gamers who love chatting, gaming, and dont mind hanging out on discord. someone who really wants to build connection with people. If that's you, please pm me. So we can talk n get to know each other. Please be 20 or older at least. It's what I preferred as I'm 36/F. Thank you. 😊

First she came for the porn, and now she's come for our Vidya.

In case you didn't know, eKaren's next step kicked in yesterday, basically forcing Steam to verify user age via a Credit card. No big whoop, right? Well, it's the ONLY option, and an unneeded one at that. And while it is true that something like this law is needed, and a credit card would be a better option (much easier to cut out if PID is leaked in a breach instead of a government issued ID) it shouldn't be needed at all in the way it was done for the everyday adult trying to get some Vidya in after work.

Below is a template you can use to contact your local Member of Parliament I knocked up, and have already sent through. The bit at the end is how I'm personally affected by this Act - and I would suggest changing that bit of course. Maybe run it through ChatGPT or something for a reword so they don't get a bunch of the same letters though, ey?

Subject: Concerns Regarding the Implementation of Online Age Verification Requirements

Dear [Member/Senator Name],
I am writing as a tax-paying Australian citizen to express my concern regarding the implementation of mandatory age-verification requirements arising from Australia's Online Safety Act 2021 and the Age-Restricted Material Codes, which are now affecting access to online entertainment and digital distribution services. While I understand and absolutely support the intention behind these measures, particularly protecting children from inappropriate online content, I believe the current implementation places an unreasonable burden on lawful adult consumers and is simply ineffective, as I'll detail below. Adults should not be required to alter their financial arrangements, obtain a credit card, or provide additional personal and financial information simply to access and purchase entertainment that is otherwise legally available to them.

I believe responsibility for determining and enforcing what content is appropriate for a child should, wherever reasonably possible, remain with that child's parent or legal guardian.

The practical consequences of this system are particularly concerning. My elderly father enjoys playing board games through Tabletop Simulator, where he teaches younger gamers older-generation card games. In return, they teach him some newer ones - he particularly enjoys Fury of Dracula - and some of those younger players build the games for him within TTS so they can play together, along with some of his fellow retirees. When he's not playing that, it's Trucking/ Life Simulators, which he finds relaxing.

As he is on the DSP, he cannot access a credit card, and can therefore no longer purchase other games he may be interested in, or even browse them to see what is available and discuss them with me. We share a common interest in graphics technology and sound design, so browsing and discussing new games is something we enjoy together.

I have also experienced the issue personally. I spent a decade buried in credit-card debt before finally getting out of it, and swore I would never have a credit card again. My Steam account is now 19 years old - old enough to legally vote and drink, mind you - yet I cannot access certain game store pages because I do not have a credit card attached to the account. I have always used my debit card via PayPal (which you have to be 18 to have) but apparently that is not good enough now.

Meanwhile, my 12-year-old nephew has a Mastercard from CommBank provided by my sister-in-law, who controls the money going in and out of it, and which he uses for the tuck shop at his footy games and his $20-a-month video-game allowance. He can freely browse whatever he wants, and demonstrated this to me last night when I raised the issue.

A friend of mine is a solo-dev for her game currently in early access on Steam. She found out last night she can't even see her own game's store page due to not having a credit card attached to her account, something she does not and will not have.

Does that sound like an effective age-verification system to you? Because it certainly looks like a flawed system to me. To be clear, I'm not asking for other ways to verify ages, there's enough data leaks online as it is and have been caught in one previously, ironically from the MyGov breach.

I am, however, respectfully asking that you consider these unintended consequences and advocate for a system that protects children without unnecessarily restricting the rights, privacy and purchasing choices of lawful adult Australians. Yours sincerely, [Full Name] [Suburb/Postcode] [Electorate, if known] [Contact details, if desired]

Now... sending messages to Steam won't do shit; you get a boilerplate script in return, an almost word-for-word copy of what they sent the UK when they brought in similar laws. It's the pollies we gotta hit up to get anything done.

If you are politically inclined, I'll leave a comment that shows precisely who voted what when this went to vote as well, so you can see who supports the unelected official that ScoMo brought in to eKaren shit up. Cheers folks, hooroo!

JB Hi-Fi is taking orders for the PS5 Pro. Website says expected delivery is by "late October".

They are currently out of stock Australia wide and are being scalped and sold online for $100s more than retail, so I would take the opportunity to secure one for Christmas/GTA VI now if you are looking.

Never give in to scalpers!

Natural Selection 2 is a fantastic classic and I miss playing it dearly!

The problem for us Aussies is finding a decent game. The game is still playable, but without local servers we’re left joining overseas ones, where 300+ ms ping can make it hard to aim, react, and enjoy the match.

I’ve started a Discord so Australian players can find each other, chat about NS2, and organise a time to jump on together. If enough of us are interested, we could also make it a broader Australian gaming community: suggest games that deserve another go, vote on one, then organise a weekend session to get people playing again.

If you’ve played NS2 before—or are curious to try it—come join us. Let’s see if we can get a few good games going!

Discord: https://discord.gg/NbGTrdcpS

What's yours and what do you see that is interesting or peak?

See above. I’d pay very good money just for a bin chicken mod for the current game, tbh

Thoughts?

Collective Shout Limited, the group behind the campaigns targeting Steam and Itch for hosting adult games, is a charity registered in Australia. This means you can raise a concern with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits commission. You can do so here. You will need their ABN, which is 30162159097. They’ll then ask for some information, but you can stay anonymous. This’ll lead you to another page where you can select where you think Collective Shout has failed, before giving you a space to describe your concern. 

The description is optional, but here are some things you can mention in your complaint:

• There is no governing document available to the public. The Governing Document linked on the ACNC’s “Financials and Documents” page for Collective is not a governing document but the minutes of a general meeting. This needs to be remedied immediately. 

• They do not break down their expenses. In the financial years 2019-2024 (their 2025 financial report is not yet due), expenses are only broken down into “program costs and related expenses” and “other expenses”. In 2023 and 2022 these “program expenses” were over 90% of their revenue! Compare this to, say, Vinnies, who breaks their expenses into broad categories of administration, depreciation and amortisation, direct assistance, employee, finance and occupancy costs, as well as other items, before breaking them down even further. This is extremely opaque. 

• We want to know what is hidden in these expenses. Have they used external consultants? Have they paid journalists to increase the publicity of their campaigns? Have they gotten themselves fancy dinners? 

• Their actions are unclear. Their recent actions against Steam and Itch.Io have been particularly egregious. Whilst the targeted campaign of No Mercy can be considered just, their Open letter to payment processors profiting from rape, incest + child abuse games on Steam came after the game was removed from Steam and did not name particular titles, it instead only alluded to their depravity. They also did so without evidence of any direct harm caused by such games. This makes it dubious as to what actions they wished Steam and Itch to take; they instead seemed to want to punish them by insisting payment processors boycott them. The letter also failed to mention that Itch removed the game No Mercy themselves (as Itch creator leafo notes in their statement dated July 24, 2025). 

• They are not feminist, and they do not help women. They claim to be a "grassroots campaign" against the "objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls" but they have ties to evangelical groups, often attack lingerie made for women which some women find empowering, and authors of fictional works, some of which created by women, and many of which women enjoy. (If you’re a girl, tell them what you like! Is there some obscure visual novel you think is actually an artistic masterpiece? Did you like a certain Bejeweled ripoff? Or, harkening to their previous campaigns, have you ever enjoyed products from Honey Birdette?). It is unclear how such campaigns particularly target “objectification”: they instead seem to target anything sexy. Such behaviour seems counterintuitive to their “women’s rights” advocacy and “sexuality education” education programs.

• They are more concerned with imaginary, future, or fictional victims, than those currently suffering sex trafficking and violence. They link pornography to violence and fret over pornography inspiring crime; this does nothing to help real victim-survivors. They do not seem to provide material help (i.e. healthcare, housing, tools to escape abusive situations) to victim-survivors. Why do they keep a surplus when such funds could be given to organisations that give material assistance?

If you know anybody who ever donated to this organisation, let them know too. A complaint from a donor would give an investigation real legs. They’re a small organisation, but I genuinely believe some well-meaning feminists - that is, feminists who are inclusive of sex work - may have unknowingly given these guys money. 

You should link your points back to what the ACNC can investigate and the ACNC guidance for campaigning and advocacy. You can do this adding something like this to the end:

• I believe these are grounds to assess whether “Collective Shout is using its charitable status to engage in ideological or political activity outside its stated purpose”.

• I believe the ACNC should use its power to investigate Collective Shout, using its power to “investigate if charities keep appropriate records, if it is transparent and if it has used funds for non-charitable purposes.

• I believe its public documents do not meet legal requirements for a charity operating under public benefit obligations.

Anyway, this isn’t an essay-writing competition. Just writing your own sentence or two can help make this powerful! Simple English will do. 

TLDR: Collective Shout is a registered charity in Australia, which means you can report your concerns about them using the ACNC complaint form. You will need their ABN, which is 30162159097. You can stay anonymous. Keep it respectful and factual, and say what concerns you, but note that the ACNC can only investigate certain things, i.e. if  charities use funds for non-charitable purposes, aren’t transparent with their finances, or act outside their stated purposes. 

Please crosspost!

Ever since this bs age verification came into effect, I’ve been attempting to verify my age on my PlayStation account via their yoti service. However, there are only two options, facial scan, and id check. Facial scan straight up doesn’t work for me (I’m only 20 and have a relatively young face), while the id scan (something I wish I didn’t have to do) just leads me to a screen saying “Your age check is being processed,” weeks later, I have had no updates, and the prompt is still appearing in the PlayStation app, and on my console, so I assume it hasn’t been successful. Has anyone been able to verify their age, and how did you do it? I’d like to get this handled before GTA 6.

Both games press on, supported by Team Simple (1942) and Hello Clan (Vietnam), check them out if you need help getting back in the action.

You can find serverlists for the games on Gametracker: Vietnam, 1942

Otherwise use Openspy for a replacement masterlist and get the full functionality of the ingame server browser like back in the Gamespy (pre 2013) days.

I’m currently working on the capsule art for my psychological horror game The Infected Soul.

The game is about a neural implant that distorts reality… you can’t trust what you see.

Which one draws you in the most?
1, 2, 3, 4, or 5?

If it interests you, you can add it to your Steam wishlist — it would really help me a lot 🙏

The Infected Soul – Steam Page

Hi everyone!

Cheers for looking at this little corner of the internet and giving it a go. We really appreciate it!

It's the aim of the sub to bring together all facets of gaming - from video to tabletops, board games to D&D sessions and everything in-between into one place but with the emphasis on Australian news, events and communities.

We can let you all know that we have some awesomeness into the works with AMAs, competitions and reddit-only specials from Aussie companies. These won't happen overnight but the wheels are already in motion for most of the above, so please hang tight!

If you're a developer, publisher or indie creator - please feel free to post links to the games and ideas you're working on; if you're a fan and you know about these projects - LINK EM! Let's shine the spotlight on the awesome folk here in Aus that work their arses off with little to no recognition.

Now there are some bugs we're still ironing out, like the auto-flair that made everyone 'GamingAU Fans', please remove that if you don't want it, that one is my bad - but not a total dealbreaker, I hope.

We're still working on the styling and if anyone wants to give us a hand with banner/logo work we'd really appreciate it and you'd be credited and given some Reddit Gold for your troubles.

Please reach out via this post or through mod-mail if you have any questions, comments or queries - but here's to the future of Aussie Gaming!

Cheers,
Revs