21st Century Digital Boy

Right, I’m getting sick of shit like this:

“Germans Cut Suicide Bombers From C&C3″ ZOMG CENSORSHIP!!!1

No. No, no, NO. For fuck’s sake, NO. Games aren’t censored by “the Germans” or “the government” in Germany. There are no laws that require the removal of stuff like that. None. At all.

The replacement of humans with robots, blood with green goop or oil, and removal of gibs is NOT enforced by any authority. Doing this is a choice made by the publishers and/or developers, and ONLY them, to achieve a lower age rating. Nowadays, age ratings are legally binding in Germany - that is, it’s a felony to sell a 16+ rated game to a twelve year old. Hence, lower age ratings = more sales = ALL BLOOD MUST GO LOL.

On top of that, which is what’s commonly being mistaken for “banning”, there’s a process called “indexing” for excessively violent or pornographic games - a title that’s been “put on the index” of such games may still be perfectly legally sold to adults. It just mustn’t be displayed or advertised in places accessible to minors anymore, and obviously not sold to them either. The BPjM (formerly BPjS), the authority managing the index, used to be rather twitchy and trigger happy, but with a recent (2003) rework of the law for the protection of minors, their abilities to index games have been reduced and their general attitude about putting stuff on the index has gotten quite a bit more relaxed since the “large amounts of pixelly blood = instant awesome” binge in games of the early 90s. Additionally, media may be re-evaluated and taken off the index again (which happened to e.g. Golden Axe), or are automatically taken off the index after 25 years. The BPjM is also required to make available a statement explaining the reasons for a game being put on the index. Do keep in mind that throughout the whole time a title is indexed, it can still be legally sold by stores and bought by adults.

There is an actual “banning” process of games in Germany, which involves the attorney general finding a game that spreads anti-constitutional propaganda (ie. displays swastikas and Fuhrer pictures), and formally declaring the title “seized” - from this point on, sale, purchase and import of said title in Germany are prohibited. Educational material is exempt from this process as far as I know, but anyone who tries to argue that Wolfenstein is educational will probably be laughed at.

There is a grand total of five or six games in all of video game history that this has been applied to - most notably the original versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (because of their distorting depiction of the Nazi regime and their rather liberal application of anti-constitutional symbols), the non-German versions of Commandos 1 (again for slapping a swastika on everything that holds still long enough), and Manhunt - the banning of which was a rather controverse decision because it doesn’t fall into the ZOMG SWASTIKAS category. Instead, Manhunt was banned for its blatant disregard of human dignity (paraphrased from memory). I think these are already all games that have been actually banned in Germany, as opposed to indexed.

To reiterate: It’s not “the Germans” or “the German government” who decide that the suicide bombers in C&C need to go for the German release, it’s Electronic Arts. It’s not the Germans who have forced Capcom and Epic to not release Dead Rising and Gears of War in Germany, it’s a decision they’ve made themselves. The rating authority refused to rate the games - they could’ve been released nonetheless, but unrated games are treated the same as 18+ rated games and are also likely to be indexed ((a game that has an age rating cannot be put on the index anymore). In short, all of these games would be perfectly legal to buy and sell without any changes at all, they just wouldn’t have been allowed to sell them to minors, and, if they would have become indexed (likely), advertise them in public. They decided not to bother and just skip the release altogether. In the case of C&C3, it’s not even sure that the rating authority would have denied a rating had the suicide bombers stayed - EA just decided to cut them to remove as many chances of that happening as possible. All to get a lower age rating and more potential sales.

Whinge whinge whinge, bitch rant complain. I could do this all day. Sorry to Kotaku for bitching about them like this, but their post just happened to trigger this. ;)

In short: don’t get pissed off or laugh at “those silly Germans”, get pissed off or laugh at the publishers instead. Nobody forces them to do it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 12:53 and is filed under braindump, gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.