According to Gamefront.de, Sega has announced that Rise of Nightmare and House of the Dead Overkill: Extended cut will not be released in Germany. This isn’t really surprising, since Sega already chose to not release the Wii version of the latter one either. Sega gave no comment on why they did this, but it’s pretty safe to assume that both games would be banned if they were to be released in Germany.
It’s weird that some countries still ban games like House of the Dead. I wonder what isn’t banned over there that is a bit eyebrow raising?
Though I heard that violence in Euro countries and others is more taboo than other racy subjects; understandable with the histories involved
Germany is pretty much the only country in Europe where games are actively banned. However, this only happens rarely and it’s mostly the publishers who just don’t put the game out. On the other hand, Germany is way more open when it comes to nudity or adult themes in games, so it’s somewhat a counterpart to the U.S. in that way.
It seems like I remember that Condemned was actually banned in Germany. It’s too bad as that’s one of my favorite games this generation and I personally find it hard to see what would be offensive in that game. At least, in terms of violence that’s seen in the majority of other games.
@Sven – Do you know if it’s easy for German citizens to get their hands on games that were banned? If it is then I imagine its not a huge deal to games in Germany if a game gets banned or not.
@Alex
It is quite a complex situation actually. Many people say banned but there are actually two different things in Germany. The ‘Keine Jugendfreigabe’ (no access for the youth) means that a game only be sold to adult persons. If the store keepers do sell the game to non-adults, that’s actually punishable, as far as I know.
If it is completely ‘banned’, which happens very rarely, it gets on a so-called ‘Index’, a list of items not deemed fit for non-adults. This means there can’t be advertisement for it and it can’t just be visible in the store. It is also illegal to make it possible for minors to get or see the game. It very often means online retailers can’t sell those games because they can’t find out if the buyer is actually 18. However it is possible to buy it in stores on demand or to gain access to such games via Austria, even with a German language dub in some cases. If that is not possible, other sources in Europe are accessible without any problem.
Another quirk of the system is that if a game is rated by the USK, the German counterpart to the ESRB, it can’t be banned.
I hope that little rundown helps, it is, as I said quite complex and it is possible I did a few mistakes in my description.
Sad that we still live in a world where art of any kind is banned. Sad that we ever lived in such a world, I guess…
Germany…Why do you ban games? I don’t understand this. I know of a tonne of movies there that are even gorier than these games, and yet they ban the games anyway. This is mind-boggling…