SiN Episodes: Emergence? Blade NOO
Star Wars Dark Forces???? they are quick :v
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Well, given it's Germany we're talking about I'm not even suprised. This sucks big time.
Set up a VPN and pirate these games, don't let the system have the last word.
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I would say buy DRM free versions.
It's not developers fault that german government contains astronomical ammount of idiots.
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the government did not do this. Valve are idiots for still not having any form of age verification. they could easily sell those games to 18+ members. but they choose not to. also, importing those games would be absolutely fine and legal. Valve and the publishers are overreacting. the activation lock would not be necessary. no law demands anything like that.
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Cretating law that bans people below 18 from buying games is stupid imho.
And how do you suppose they should implement verification of age? Send them your picture with your ID?
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Cretating law that bans people below 18 from buying games is stupid imho.
well, would you apply that logic to everything? what about porn? would it be ok for kids to buy porn? i guess most people would say no. and a lot of parents don't want their kids to play extremely violent games. so while i personally don't quite agree with the law, and absolutely disagree with the effects it has, i can see that the reasoning behind it kind of makes sense.
And how do you suppose they should implement verification of age? Send them your picture with your ID?
yes, of course. that would be the easiest solution. there are other ways as well. in Germany you can do age verification in the post office, for example. there are also online services that can help with that (i.e. Giropay). it's not a new idea, shops already do it. so Steam could offer it as well (as an optional service, so nobody is forced to do it).
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Most people forget that they were younger than 18 back in time. I still remember how I played brutal games, watched porn and so on. And I'm not a murderer nor rapist.
What Is stupid for me is that governmant is trying to do job that parents should do.
It's parents role to contoll how their children are spending their money.
And to talk with them about sex and other stuff, also games (brutal games including).
Sending ID scan to somebody? What the fuck? I know that some shops in some countries require that. But I will never do such thing. What about privacy? What about some vital data? You can take huge loan if you have picture of somebodies ID. And do other illegal and dangerous things ;) Its pure stupidity and lack of reponsibility to send anyone your ID in my opinion.
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you already give your personal data to every shop you order something from. they need your real name and address, so you give it to them. same with the ID. i mean, i don't say post it everywhere on the internet. we're talking about sending a picture over https to a company. the security risk is quite low, actually. server hacks happen, but it's not like they happen that frequently. and as i said, there are other (and better) options. i don't know if this is available in other countries, but i guess so: we have something called "Post-Ident". you go to the post office, show them your ID, and your age is verified. in that case you wouldn't have to send a picture or anything. absolutely safe.
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"Post-Ident" - sounds like a good idea - but haven't heard about anything like that before :) Gues it's not available here.
Also all data I use in online shoping is my name and adress where they have to deliver my package / email.
All I risk is that they will send me spam.
With ID scan risk is higher. Ofc - frauds are not often, but they happen. It's human factor. I don't trust shop workers enough.
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i guess most people would say no. and a lot of parents don't want their kids to play extremely violent games.
That's what parenting is for. If you don't want your kid to play violent games, don't let them. In my experience most parents don't give a shit. I've seen people buy GTA games for their 6 year olds...
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Well, yes. Several German online shops do exactly that. For (legal) weapons, for example. And for porn, I'd guess.
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I don't think that sending your ID to anybody is a good idea.
Also there is a little difference between buying "Star Wars Dark Forces" and buying smg.
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When you buy online you already provide a lot of personal data to the shop. An ID scan is not a big deal in such context. Here, for example, you need to do it to open an account on gambling and betting sites and people... just do it.
Of course there's a difference between games and weapons (even though I was talking about knives, crossbows and the like), my point was that there is another commerce field in Germany where proof of age is required and that's how it's handled. See? You clkick on the AB 18 JAHREN icon top right and it tells you you must upload, email or snail-mail your ID card.
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All data I use in online shoping is my name and adress where they have to deliver my package or/end email.
All I risk is that they will send me spam.
I have very bad experience with sending ID scan. I have openned bank accout with credit card via internet. All data they required were on my ID (they didn't want anything that wasn't there). They also required my ID scan.
Only verification if that was me - was when I was signing agreement brought by courier. He was supposed to check my identity by comparing my original ID with papers.
In the meantime he just gave me papers to sign. Took them back and dissapeard.
In this way - I could make bank account as anybody. All I need is just random ID scan.
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Can't argue with that - it's true. All I'm saying is common practice. You can open an online bank account here in the same way. Are you sure about the courier bit, though? I find it unlikely that they would take the resposibility to validate someone's identity.
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It was some king of "special courier". Just for delivering papers from this certain bank. I made some research after that. At the beginning they were empoyes of the bank. Later they turned this department into smaller, separate company to cut costs. After that quality went down.
I'd rather trust nobody :) I mean - being scammed is nothing nice. It hurts if you lost game key. But I suppose that it hurts even more if you loose your house or lifetime savings :)
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Well, can't argue with that, either. :) Also, now that courier thing makes more sense.
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I never agreed with banning a game or a book or a movie i want to choose what i want to experience or not , but they are being unfair with some of the games
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Wow! I feel sorry for German gamers. Why are they being treated like children that need to be protected from the big, bad games?
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Because 75 years ago they were playing Genocide Simulator 1942-1944 and have chosen to deal with it by being more sensitive to violence than their neighbors.
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I wonder if Germany sees the irony of banning certain forms of media?
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18+ would be fine, but those titles are BPjS indexed.
They just never updated the list.
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It is legal to purchase most of the titles if you are 18+
all of them, actually. even the ones with swastikas and such things. it is legal to buy, own and play them.
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The ministery that bans those games, most likely just seeks for games to ban, because they need to do their work, it's just business, nothing to do with actual "we care about violence", they just need to make money and make ppl think they're actually doing something.
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Germany has a ministery whose purpose is to ban games? That's mind blowing, in a bad sense.
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I just said it wrong, it's agency then, as sappyMA said. But that agency needs to earn money somehow.
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How do they earn money by banning games? Being a goverment branch they get their salaries n maater what.
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If that agency work is searching to ban or censor violence in games, they need to do their work, if they don't do their work, their agency will be useless then and have no reason to exist.
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There's thousands of goverment agencies worldwide who do literally nothing and they still get their paychecks. I don't think that anoyone is pressing them for results.
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Well I do believe that not allowing those video games, was more of a political agenda in the past, than based on real research whether these games can be "harmful" or not. But I really want to emphasize, that this was not some sort of evil government-propaganda to make us all stupid.I just know that a a lot of people had and still have prejudices towards video games here and these laws were more a thing to give into these public fears.
Nevertheless, it has become extremely rare that a game does not get a sale-permit nowadays. The problem is more that publishers still fear these laws, and that is why they cut their games*, before they are sold here.
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It's not exactly irony though... censoring is what you'd expect them to do, because it's what they've been doing for a long time. Now, if they didn't censor things, THAT would be ironic.
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Why would they block Painkiller? The german censorship board is crazy.
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Pfff ... this is not good :(. The ones that already have the games , can they play them or not ??
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Just tested it with Painkiller Hell & Damnation, which already was in my german Steam library, probably from a bundle or so. I can download, install and play it just fine. So it's only for those who want to buy it in the german Steam store from now on ;/
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Did they block only the first Prototype? And not even every Painkiller?
Of course that's a stupid idea, but well, the government is showing how much he "cares" about people...
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Thank you for this list of games. I missed most of them and now they are on my wishlist for sale :D
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The Chaos Engine (also Key-activation)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm-X8zmxpns
But hey, Doom & GTA are fine...
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Yea, I dont get it, why Chaos Engine is banned -_-
It looks like Dogs of war on the Amiga, which was banned also, but it was bloody as hell.
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German gamers should really try starting a referendum on the issue of game bans and ask for games to be recognized as art so they cannot be banned for stupid reasons anymore.
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Germany, you have my sympathy. (And my membership of the uncut group).
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Dark Forces was banned 1995, 21 years ago
back then Doom was "realistic"
Fun Fact: After 25 years on "index", Games get automatically removed from the list
So Steam just could have wait the last 4 years :/
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I wonder why the haven't banned any of the Doom games.
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Doom I, II asweel as Doom III (EU/US-Version) are still banned (You can still buy it though, just don't advertising it)
The newest Doom from Bethesda aswell as the newest Mortal Kombat got a +18 Rating, so it won't land on the "Index"
the criteria to land on this list got a bit liberal over time
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But the Mortal Kombat X got the same amount of gore, if not more, as the other MKs and the better graphics compared to other ones makes it more realistic. Wonder why they haven't banned it.
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Like Eddy said: "the criteria to land on this list got a bit liberal over time"
Back in the 80ths early 90ths all this "new stuff" like videogames was just "to much" for most older people in goverments, even "funny" punkrock songs, softporn and stugg like that get banned.
Than in the middle 90ths that all changed a bit: softporn was on tv (ofc at night) like the old "banned" punkbands where, and also in games more was possible.
But in the early 2000ths there was a school massacre in a town called Erfurt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_school_massacre ) and the boy played some games... Media, politics and parents went crazy and blamed games and music for this shit...
Now, 14 years later we see, games don't make killers and the old gamers from back then are adults today.
The fact that his games from the first post got banned from steamstore is more a Valve thing... If the publishers would ask for a review from the BPjM I'm pretty sure most games would get a +16 rating.
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Damn that massacre alone sounds like enough reason for them to ban all the violent video games. Not saying they had any part in this, but you know parents.
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yet there is plenty of Doom in the German store. ^^
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Games are still being blocked/banned in 2016? O.o
I feel bad for German gamers.
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Most of the games were banned 10~20 years ago
why steam decides to remove them NOW from the german store, dunno
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What Swift didn't mention, is that the group blames Steam rather than the German law, for that problem.
Neither Steam or any other platform or organization managed to establish any (not to mention a convenient one) age verification system.
That most of those games don't belong into the hands of kids (at least by the standards back when those games got released), goes without saying. But that adults should be able to buy them too.
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Have been indexed back then, and are still considered "too violent" - they're too lazy to update this list.
(can't be publicly advertised, nor sold to minors)
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Sadly not, they just don't care to update those old entries.
And since Steam has no proper age gate...
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I guess someone started to ask questions and forced Valve to act?
Still, quite arbitrary bans.
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Well as stated, the games are still not allowed to be sold here openly*, not until they get officially removed from that "sale-ban"-list.
I think these publishers and valve just took this as a caculated risk. I can't tell for sure, but I think it's still not clear in which way valve or a publisher could be held responsible, if they sell those games in an online platform. So I think they just looked, how it went, and then removed the option to buy those games, when they feared this could still have legal consequences.
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there's only one question left...
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I saw that movie. Haven't seen it in years, though.
You haven't seen Two Guys... No one remembers Two Guys. Bobblehead Ryan Reynolds. That other guy. Traylor Howard.
Was just the first place my mind went with that GIF and Reynolds looks young enough.
What should have thrown me off is I doubt there's a clip of Two Guys that could possibly be that high quality.
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These are games that have been banned from the stores decades ago, when rules regarding violence in video games were a lot harsher in germany.
These games would not get banned today.
The problem is that, nobody cared to let them test again, so that they could be sold today. ( I personally don`t know how that works either) But a lot of publisher just went on and released the games on steam anyway. This can - of course - be a problem as these are still not allowed to be sold here, even if they got "banned" 20 years ago. These intial "bans" don't just vanish. ( I just read they actually do after 25 years) . I don't know how the laws are to get a game removed from this sale-ban, but I'm sure this is more of a money issue (to test a game again) than a problem with the violence in these games.
I'm not sure about all of this, but it would have been nice if this post had a more in-depth explanation about this, I see too many people who think german video-game laws get just worse and worse everyday. But this is more problem of old "rules" that have not been updated and were probably not thougth-through in the first place.
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The publisher can ask for a review (not sure if they have to pay for) but why should a publisher care for a 10 - 15 year old game...
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not worth the money to ask for... and if you look at the games, most of them are from publishers that are not even active anymore
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Well someone will hold the rights of these games or else the games will probably removed from the store at some point. My guess is that the publishers and valve just calculated, how much they could earn from publishing the games on steam. Then figured out if they run into trouble with german laws - figured that it's still worth the risk and now just removed the games, because they feared that they could now run into legal trouble and didn't want to bother to get these games removed from the BPjM indexes.
Regarding reviews: Apart from costs for lawyers and stuff I do remember that you had to pay a fee to let your game test ( not sure nevertheless, but I do think that would make sense). It is in any case cost factor.
also: not in all cases is the publisher that is stated on the store page still the legal owner. I think they sometimes just name the initial publisher of the game for marketing reasons. Especially, when the initial publisher went bancrupt and the legal ownership was divided between share holders or sold to speculators, who are not necessarily game publisher. (too complicated for me, but jeah that could be it)
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Saints Row 2(&3) and Wolfenstein (new order and old blood) are heavily censored there as well. Ridiculous!
Shame on the extreme liberal socialist German government for all this censorship.
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There is no social-liberal governmenet in office right now and most games were "banned" while a conservative government was in office. But these aren't directly responsible for stuff like this anyway.
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In New order they removed all the signs in the game and so on. i think they could have banned previous ones.
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I know a lot of documentaries on WW2 are illegal to be shown there. I was once watching something on national geographic or history channel and they had a disclaimer before it started saying it's illegal to be shown in Germany.
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I'm from Austria so laws are a little different here but trust me there are tons of documentaries on WW2 on german TV. What is apparently indeed forbidden (I only found out because it was blocked on YouTube when this topic came up the last time) are unedited Nazi propaganda films (without historical context).
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Don't they only ban game because of history?
Like how they don't allow games like Wolfenstein in germany.
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No
Most games with more or less extreme violence are either cut or banned
Compare violence to sex/nude stuff in the us and you might have a idea how it works here with stuff like these games
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The "ban" of Wolfenstein is based on this law which
prohibits the distribution or public use of symbols of unconstitutional groups, in particular, flags, insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting.
Swastikas and other symbols that were used during the third reich are affected by this.
The main problem here is, that it is allowed to use these symbols, for history lessons or in art, like historic movies, but games aren't considered to be part of any of these groups.
I'm not an expert in this, but jeah, that's basically it. I do encourage people to do their own research, regarding this.*
Also: Keep it mind that the word "ban" is often not correctly used here. Publishers do of course look out if they run into legal problems before they distribute a game. So bethesda never checked if they were allowed to sell the base game 8as far as I know), but just made a "german edition".
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Yeah, that's a shame really. I totally understand that one would want to discourage Nazism in all its forms, but one thing that still really bothers me is that its allowed to depict swastikas in movies, but games are somehow except from this rule.
I'm also really dissapointed to see these games removed from the store because I had the feeling that the BPjM (the institution in charge of these bans in Germany) had become more sensible lately. IIRC the Evil Dead series (movies) is no longer on the index in Germany, because the BPjM acknowledged that the special effects and violence depicted in the movies no longer shocks anybody. Similarly, they removed quite a few games from the index not too long ago for the same reason. Thus I'm surprised that these games are now (again?) affected by a ban, considering that some of them are rather old.
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I don't think that the BPjM had anything to do with that, other than maybe reminding those publishers that these games are still "banned". I wrote above that this ban just does not vanish over time. As far as I know, publishers have to apply for these reviews and these take a certain amount of time and do cost money. I can't really say how they work.
But I'm 100% sure that it is now more of a "bureaucratic act" to get these games removed from that list.
At least the majority of them. I'm not sure about postal 2 though.
Apart all of this, there are still games that are not allowed to be sold here openly, but it's not especially bad, like it was in te past
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You're absolutely right, I missed your post when I read this thread the first time.
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This law is just stupid.
*seeing a swastika somewhere
Oh yeah, this sign that was a buddhist sign of peace for fucking eternity, but was a sign of the nazis for a couple of years totally makes me want to kill all jews.
Nazis will be nazis, you wont stop that by forbidding a fucking sign.
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Nazis will be nazis, you wont stop that by forbidding a fucking sign.
That is certainly true.
I don't want to argue about these laws now, but keep in mind that these laws were made right after the end of WW2 and the purpose was to diminish the influence of the NSDAP and their sympathisers - this did not remove these people from society and not even from power in some cases, but this removed the influence of those sympathisers and thus their might in the politics of germany. This certainly was effective to some degree and I would assume that at that time, a lot of people did approve such a law throughout the world.
If this law has the same impact still today is highly debatable in my opinion, because Neonazi organisations have already found other symbols to express their membership and unity.
Also: the swastika is not entirely banned, the buddhistic one can still be shown everywhere. It can also be easily differentiated from the "Hakenkreuz" and is thus not part of this law, but in english it`s just the same word for both signs (as far as I know) *
*reading through that article I'm not completely sure about that anymore
**Hum No I thin kmy initial post was right. At least the symbol I know shouldn't be affected by this :)
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Welcome to the Third Re......eeehhhm, I meant welcome to Germany. :B
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Welcome to Greece, where they have no more serious problems than to connect Merkel to a game banned long before she was in charge. ;)
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Oh, I'm sorry, forgive me. I'm not allowed to talk about anything else other than my country's problems, is that correct? Sorry, I forgot that I have no right to express my opinions. :B Also, the fact that I put a picture of Merkel, doesn't mean that I'm holding her responsible for everything. xD
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Well, you're partly right. It was mostly a joke, rather than an opinion. Still, I was trying to express the lack of actual freedom of choice, so it was partly an opinion.
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Oh you absolutely have the right to do so. Where did I tell the opposite? But I can add that your Germany bashing at every opportunity gets tiresome and that it rarely makes any sense, right?
Just check the simple facts: There are laws to protect young minds from violent content in most countries, right?
But is any of them doing anything about enforcing those standards? Nope.
But if Germany acts upon the lack of any age verification system, they are equal to the Third Reich? Yeah ... logic.
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I don't bash Germany at every opportunity. I actually bash Greece at every opportunity and I'm Greek myself. Get your facts right.
I don't know and don't care about these laws. I know that there are games that are for ages 5+ or 13+ or 18+, etc. The parents are responsible for the games that their kids will buy. Prohibiting everyone from the opportunity to buy a game on steam isn't obviously something that a "free" country would do. Third Reich is obviously an exaggeration and maybe I should have stated that. But it's true that I clearly believe that, at least about the steam games, the German citizens lack the freedom of choice. And that's quite sad.
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You seem to have forgotten that we already had an exchange not so far in the past, where I expressed sympathy with Greece and you answered with blaming Germany. ;(
Plus, I reacted with a joke here first (clearly marked as one too).
And once more: The law isn't to blame, when companies fail to establish an age verification system. Steam is what - 13 years old now? Sounds like you could reasonably expect them to offer a solution in that time frame.
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Just because that we had a dialogue about Germany in the past, it means that I'm trying to accuse Germany in every opportunity? But honestly, I just checked our previous dialogue and I can't find a part where I'm blaming Germany. I only referred to the Germans when I said that they're supplying us with faulty military equipment, which have been said many times in the Greek news. So, that's what you mean when you say that I accuse Germany in every opportunity? Because in the same dialogue, I talked about OUR greedy politicians, OUR greedy priests, OUR greedy businessmen, OUR greedy media, OUR rich people, but noooo, you guessed that I'm accusing Germany in every opportunity. The great powers just took the chance to get our money in our time of need. But it's OUR stupid politicians' fault that we ended up in this situation.
Yes, the law IS to blame. When the parents give to their child money to buy cigarettes, it's the parents' fault. When the parents give to their child money to buy alcohol, it's the parents' fault. When the parents give to their child money to buy drugs, it's the parents' fault. So, why when their kid buys an 18+ game, it's not the parents' fault? If they were giving more attention to their child and be more careful when giving money to it, then we wouldn't see any similar problems happening. How is the law isn't to blame? Because the parents don't give enough attention to their child when it buys 18+ games, it's the rest of the German citizens fault? Why not allow the rest of the German citizens buy the game that they want? It reminds me of a Family Guy episode where, just because some drunk adults destroyed a library, the mayor decided to raise the legal drinking age to 50 years old. Does this sound reasonable? No? Then why you think that what you're saying sounds reasonable?
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I worked some years in this industry for 2 publishers, I KNOW that many parents give a shit about what their kids consume and even more are helpless and overwhelmed with that task.
Your examples about cigarettes and alcohol are more than amusing, considering that it is forbidden to sell those to kids by law too. Shops have to check their age and get punished if they ignore that law. Those restrictions are on top of the parents' responsibilities and nobody would consider that crazy or a limit on the freedom of choice.
It is the very same approach with games, just that Steam & other shops ignore their duty completely, which results in some few dozens games being not available to anyone. The result is stupid, no doubt. But the blame is solely upon Steam. It is beyond me how you thought that the example of drugs would support your position.
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Oh, the parents feel overwhelmed with their duties? Maybe they shouldn't have given birth to their kids then. None of my examples is irrelevant or amusing. There are rules about selling these things to minors, but they do that. Why? For profit. How do I know it? I've seen these things over a million times. I've even bought cigarettes and alcohol when I was a minor. Whose fault is that I bought these things? My parents' fault! Why didn't they stop me then? Because they knew that I was responsible and I wouldn't get addicted. And it's true, I never got addicted to cigarettes or alcohol. And about drugs, many minors do drugs (I want to clarify that I never did drugs though when I was younger). Shouldn't the parents be more careful about what their kids buy? Parents should be the ones responsible for what games their kids buy. Prohibiting EVERY German citizen of buying these games is totally FOOLISH! It's just like the Family Guy episode I told you before. Because of what some people did, everyone gets the same punishment?! This has no logic at all! YOU want to tell me that safety should be put above freedom and YOU also want to tell me that parents shouldn't be held responsible for their kids' actions?!
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Show me where I told you that parents shouldn't be held responsible for their kids? Pretty please, show me that.
Furthermore we aren't prohibited from purchasing games, we just aren't capable to purchase those games from stores that don't verify our ages. And yes, such stores do exist, so it isn't a problem to purchase games from that index list A.
If you don't get that difference, it's really pointless to discuss it any further.
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Soooo, that's why I say that if the parents are responsible for their kids' actions, that's why THEY should be the ones to ensure that their kids follow the law. Otherwise, they would have policemen into every house to babysit kids.
Yes, I know that it's only about steam games. I told that before. But it's still an unreasonable prohibition. If someone is an adult, why not allow him to play the steam game of his choice? And, for example, I don't really have real money to afford on games, but I have steam money that I made through trading. If I was a German citizen, that wouldn't allow me to play the prohibited games at all. And many stores don't really have good prices anyway. And if you add the censorship that Germany enforces in some games, then I wouldn't even like to be a gamer anymore. That would surely be a problem for me. But even if a German citizen has real money to afford on games, why is he enforced to buy those banned games from stores, even though he's an adult? Why make things harder for them because some parents can't control what their kids are going to play?
We both understand what each of us says, but we have a different opinion about freedom of choice. This whole story is about taking freedom of choice away from people. If you want to suffer from this hardship, then be my guest, I won't enforce you my opinion. But other German citizens are against it. It's just unnecessary hardship. :/
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Maybe we'd get better results if you wouldn't throw that silly Family Guy comparison into my face regularly. ;)
And maybe we'd also get further, if you wouldn't connect it to freedom of choice, while everyone actually has those choices. And maybe you have to experience those "hardships" on your own, to fairly judge how relevant and outreaching they are.
I'd never claim that you couldn't improve our system, because no system is ever perfect anyway. And especially this one is far from perfect.
But here it is simple: Steam had 13 years to implement a function that is essential and that many others managed to implement. Thus they are to blame.
Even worse: Steam went even further than the law would require them to act, when they banned key activation too.
So yes, I'll stick to my opinion that Steam is just ignorant and lazy, paying no attention. And anyone with deeper knowledge about the details of this topic, has pretty much the similar view. See the English statement in the lower half here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/foruncut#announcements/detail/598230515602284673
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So what if I said that Family Guy example? The prohibition of steam games is as silly as that Family Guy episode. Oh, if you have freedom of choice, then please buy one of those games from the German steam store. -_- Oh, you can't? Well, bad luck then. You are free to choose whatever they want you to choose.
Steam is to blame too. But just because they couldn't fix this problem, this means that your country is allowed to take extreme measures against it?
I will never support a politician that puts "safety" above freedom. If the German politicians have a problem with steam, then they should enforce German steam gamers to submit a photo of their id along with their face, before purchasing games from steam. That's just an example, which I wouldn't like to happen in real life.
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But always exaggerating and comparing everything to horrible things, like slavery or the despicable crimes of Nazi-Germany may diminish the graveness of those over time. Maybe these words should be used more carefully, so we don't forget the unique injustice, those words bear within them.
I'm not prohibiting you to say, what you want, but I do think, that this can become a problem in the long run,. and this iscoming from a guy who always liked to make those comparissons, but.. jeah... I don't know...anymore
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I'm always exaggerating? o.O ALWAYS? Slavery? What? xD It was partly a joke and partly an opinion. What I meant is that they are gradually taking the freedom of choice of the German citizens. For "safety reasons", the biggest freedoms have been taken. Remember that. ;) And to clarify something, I'm not accusing any of the German simple citizens. But of course I'm accusing the German politicians. And our Greek politicians too. And almost every politician in the world, with very few exceptions.
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Forgive me my loose use of the word "always", but I just remembered your post about the age of slavery in greece* ( I made this expression up, but I'm sure you know what i mean).
And I'm not arguing with you about this freedom of choice thing regarding video games, although I do believe that you misunderstand some things there, nor do I care if you attack the german people or the government. I just said that it might be smarter to choose some words more carefully.
sorry about that typo* :(
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Oh, that slavery? Yep, when a nation ends up owning nothing and another nation controls its assets, then it's practically a "slave" of the other nation. I don't like choosing "beautiful" words, because they end up decreasing the importance of the problem. I actually believe that we Greeks are slaves from now on, so I won't say that I was mistaken about that. But about the Third Reich, that was partly a joke and partly an opinion, so that was actually an exaggeration and not something I actually believed.
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Jeah I do realize, that it was an exaggeration.
Well, fair enough. I certainly don't want to restrict your use of words.
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Prohibiting everyone from the opportunity to buy a game on steam isn't obviously something that a "free" country would do.
our country does not prohibit to buy and own those games. it's perfectly legal for everyone at the age of 18+. our laws are just about youth protection. get your facts right. ;)
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Didn't they prohibit you from buying them on steam or am I incorrect? I'm talking about their steam versions. If they removed them from steam, how can you buy them? Youth protection is the parents' duty, not the government's duty. Otherwise, just give them your kids, so they'll raise them however they want.
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Didn't they prohibit you from buying them on steam or am I incorrect?
i can't just answer this with yes or no. the government prohibits the sale of these games to people under age. so yes, they kind of do. but the real problem here is that Steam doesn't have an age verification system. they don't prohibit the sale in general.
If they removed them from steam, how can you buy them?
that's easy. i can just buy from other countries. i can buy a boxed version, i can buy from a trader, and i can buy from websites. it's absolutely fine as long as the publishers don't apply unnecessary region locks, which prevent me from playing with a german IP. so in most cases importing games works fine.
Youth protection is the parents' duty, not the government's duty.
so you don't have any laws for youth protection in your country? none at all?
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god dammit germany.
Germany is like the one white kid in the classroom that tries way too hard to be cool but just isn't
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Hehe, true. And I've heard that the same shit happen in Australia too. :/
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Well, I can wrap my head around banning violent media a lot easier that around banning nipples or swear words on TV ;)
AFAIK it's even allowed to show non-erect male genitalia on German TV.
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because they want you to make love instead of war, look legit after all lol
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Why is that even allowed? Who would like to see something like that on tv? xD
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There are enough guys who send girls pictures of their junk, so maybe the same people who think that this is a nice thing to look at also promote the depiction of those on TV...
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for most of these titles I rly see any reason for banning....
I hate to live in germany xD
Well at least there is only one game on my wishlist from that list, the other ones that are of interist to me I got allready.
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...... and are/ is there any investigation(s) to show IF this violence censoring in video games has had an impact on the level of violence in society ?
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Steam blocked today without notice 28 games in the German store. Almost all the locked files are already indexed and partially older than 20 years. As first noticed the "Steam group for UNCUT" the action and published a list of blocked connections:
In addition to individual games are also all bundles in which the games are available, have been removed. Now the title can of course no longer purchased on Steam. Already acquired Keys can partly not longer be activated.
Aliens versus Predator Classic
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold (also Key-activation)
Blood: One Unit Whole Blood (also Key-activation)
Blood II: The Chosen + Expansion (also Key-activation)
BloodRayne
BloodRayne 2
Carmageddon Max Pack (also Key-activation)
Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now (also Key-activation)
Harvester (also Key-activation)
Kingpin — Life of Crime
NAM (also Key-activation)
Painkiller: Black Edition
Painkiller Hell & Damnation
Painkiller Overdose
Postal
Postal 2
Postal 3
POSTAL Redux (also Key-activation)
Prototype
Rise of the Triad (also Key-activation)
Rise of the Triad: Dark War (also Key-activation)
Rune Classic
Shadow Warrior Classic Redux (also Key-activation)
SiN Episodes: Emergence
Star Wars Dark Forces
The Chaos Engine (also Key-activation)
TimeShift
UberSoldier II (also Key-activation)
Source
for UNCUT!
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