Half-Life ban lifted

Last week, the Singapore Board of Censorships and the Ministry of the Arts issued a ban on the sale of Valve Software's Half-Life and any related expansion packs and mods, like Counterstrike and Opposing Force, in Singapore for excessive violence, despite the game's parental lockout. According to several GameSpot readers in Singapore, government officials ordered retailers to remove the game from store shelves and raided several LAN shops running Half-Life on their servers.

This morning, however, the government recanted its previous ruling and has once again allowed the sale of Valve's popular first-person shooter. An English-language Singapore news site reported that the ban was lifted because the game had been released for more than a year. After the ban was imposed, Half-Life Asia (a local web site), started a petition to save the game, and it has since received thousands of signatures. Several GameSpot readers residing in Singapore expressed hopes that the new ruling would mean that other banned PC and console games would become available for sale in the island-nation as well.