Phosphor_Games [developer] Jan 21 @ 2:01pm
Hey guys, Phosphor here. We had to reduce blood and made minor adjustments to ensure we passed certification standards for Germany. It's not a prominent part of the game in any way and shouldn't affect gameplay or your overall experience.
It seems to be nearly identical to the ROW version of the game, except for removing the German region restriction. So noone [in or out of Germany] ought have a diminished experience with the game being the 'cut' version, since nothing is technically 'cut' this time around.
I think it's nice continuing to try and direct them toward Germans, though, if only for the fact that they can't enter the GAs for the ROW versions; it keeps things balanced, this way. :)
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Traits that are characteristic of a minority of games are made into tags. There's nothing especially special about that specific tag, in that context.
That being said, there's no reason that people who are sympathetic to playing male characters shouldn't be able to search by that trait- but then, Valve originally indicated you'd be able to filter out tags, so that was likely originally intended as a reverse-side of the Female Protagonist tag [especially since active tagging of games with 'male protagonist' simply wouldn't happen reliably enough, given its commonness and low valuation].
As usual for Valve, things have been left a bit less complete than we'd prefer :P
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I would like to enter. This whole region lock is a damn mess.
I've seen people from outside Germany using up both keys effectively censoring
their game, just because they didn't know what to do with the keys. So thanks for doing the
right thing and trying to find someone in Germany for those keys.
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At least, as these things go, the censoring is nearly unnoticeable this time around.
I'm not sure about 'right thing' [even ignoring the loftier association that comes with such phrasing, with an equal number of ROW and German keys, Germans would have the advantage by far if all German keys were offered to Germans only], but the current [minority of German keys being offered to Germans] does seem to offer imbalanced odds for those Germans interested in the game [and can't enter for the ROW copies]. :/
This whole region lock is a damn mess.
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Germans would have the advantage by far if all German keys were offered to Germans only
I don't quite agree with that. We're effectively getting a product that's worse, maybe unnoticeably
worse, but still worse. So I think it's only fair that, if there can't be just one version of the game
for everyone (which would have been possible, if the devs had put a little more effort into legal
issues and age evaluation for selling their game in Germany), that German keys would work only
in Germany.
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Germans would have the advantage by far if all German keys were offered to Germans only
I don't quite agree with that. We're effectively getting a product that's worse, maybe unnoticeably
worse, but still worse.
The bundle is dispersing keys into the public that are 50% ROW keys and 50% German keys.
If you give all German keys only to Germans, that would be an incredible advantage, given that Germans do not comprise 50% of the world's digital gaming population.
..last I heard, anyway :P
I then moved on to note that, contrary to that potential advantage, Germans seem to actually be at a disadvantage this go-around, as not only can they not enter ROW giveaways, but also not enough German giveaways are being directed toward them to make up for it- thus, rather than getting much better odds than other nationalities, they're theoretically getting noticeably worse ones.
Ergo, giveaways as per this thread are a nice gesture towards balancing things out. :)
(which would have been possible, if the devs had put a little more effort into legal
issues and age evaluation for selling their game in Germany)
The current German release is 16+. The developer noted that without reducing blood, they couldn't keep from getting an adult rating, which they didn't want.
Some developers are terrible at navigating the German legal landscape- or, as per the case of Capcom actually overzealously further the censorship- but in this case I can't see what the developer could have done differently.
Also...
I don't quite agree with that. We're effectively getting a product that's worse, maybe unnoticeably
worse, but still worse.
Reduced blood is not worse. It's different, that's all.
Some people will actually prefer the change [social and personal preferencsqueamishness aside, I mean it's less visual clutter.]
No actual content is affected, and many people wouldn't even have a preference on the matter of displays of gore worth noting- or which would affect their purchasing decision.
Censoring content is basically impossible to validate, but a difference in art direction.. that's far more subjective, and often helps cater to different tastes more than detracting from the gameplay experience.
[Well, assuming you could freely pick between versions, which right now only Non-Germans can do.]
(And obviously, ignoring that it'd just be easier to add gore settings to the game menu. -.-)
German censorship is in many ways ridiculous and nonsensical, but aside from not allowing the non-German version to be activated on Steam at all, this game isn't a good example of the usual overstrictness of the matter.
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Yup, I understand your argument, that concerning giveaways and this bundle, Germans might have an advantage if they had keys of their own. But still I'd say, that if German keys were only usable for Germans it would at least even out the fact that we pay the same price for a product that's inferior and that we can't choose, concerning regular sales. And no, it's not just different, it's inferior. A censored version is always inferior (because censoring, by definition, means the devs couldn't keep their game as intended), if it were just different, you could simply put a configuration option for "less blood" or similar in the main menu.
Some developers are terrible at navigating the German legal landscape- or, as per the case of Capcom actually overzealously further the > censorship- but in this case I can't see what the developer could have done differently.
Well, they could've taken an adult rating, it's not the end of the world. Tomb Raider, Doom and countless others are doing just fine with 18+ and one type of key for everyone. And they could've allowed us in Germany to activate ROW keys bought or gifted from other countries. Since you mentioned Capcom and their overzealous censoring. At least with most (dunno if all) Capcom products you have the choice to buy a key from an somewhere else and activate it on a German account. Last, but not least, they could have added a warning for Germans on their Steam Store page, that they're selling you a censored version. Of all those censored games in Germany, this is the only that I know of, where they don't even tell you that you're buying a different game than your friends outside Germany. It's nothing short of scam and they've been doing it for months now. You can check the discussion in the Steam forums, they promised to look into it, but simply do not seem to care.
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