Germany: violent video game ban?

pwd

http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/formats/xbox360/all-violent-video-games-be-banned-in-germany-$1301757.htm

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/143914

citizen_p

so what some kid went of his nut whle playing a game....how many others havnt.

edit: and btw did he tell people he was using moves out of counter strike????? NO so thats an assumption

K.O.Kiki

Man, I really should read Gamepolitics.com again...

Retr0gamer

It's ridiculous that the justification is that spree killers play videogames. Try to find a male in a spree killers age demograph that doesn't play violent videogames. It's like saying they are banning breakfast cereals because spree killers have breakfast before they go on their rampages. I feel sorry for the germans, I thought PC had gone mad over here. The legislation is being put through by politicions banning something they don't understand to try and get the 40+ scaremonger vote.

Amalgam

Hasn't Germany been at this for a while, along with Australia?

Certain games need to be hacked to get blood back into them (pardon the pun) in Germany, obviously, anything with 'that symbol' comes under scrutiny.

Manhunt, isn't that illegal there?

Morlar

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's ridiculous that the justification is that spree killers play videogames. Try to find a male in a spree killers age demograph that doesn't play violent videogames. It's like saying they are banning breakfast cereals because spree killers have breakfast before they go on their rampages. I feel sorry for the germans, I thought PC had gone mad over here. The legislation is being put through by politicions banning something they don't understand to try and get the 40+ scaremonger vote.

They have also made illegal (or are about to) the entire sport of paintball. For years they have been making blood green in Germany game releases so this is not entirely new. I imagine most German gamers will just download cracked versions & play offline. They also ban the swastika in ww2 games far as I remember.

Does anyone know does this :

"where the main part is to realistically play the killing of people or other cruel or unhuman acts of violence against humans or manlike characters."


include zombie /alien type games ?

drunkmonkey

PC gone nuts, I knew it was all starting to go wrong when conker fights were banned in schools....

Think i'm going to switch on gears and find some fritzes to chainsaw while I still can...

thealltimelow

i no that you cant get gears in germany because it was banned

Krieg

Thats pretty insane.

I imagine it will just mean they will order games online and the end result is less money in the German economy. They really haven't thought things through have they?

Retr0gamer

If the law is anything like their law they currently use to ban certain violent games then it will actually be illegal to own the violent videogame as well, not just sell it.

drunkmonkey

is it illegal to play cowboys and indians or own toy soldiers, same thing, no?

bizmark

Germans were such a peaceful easy going race before the nes :rolleyes:

thomond2006

Just leave to Germans to their own devices and don't mention the war!

smoke.me.a.kipper

Amalgam wrote: »

Hasn't Germany been at this for a while, along with Australia?

Certain games need to be hacked to get blood back into them (pardon the pun) in Germany, obviously, anything with 'that symbol' comes under scrutiny.

Manhunt, isn't that illegal there?

its illegal for me to have wolfenstein 3d on my ipod. but thats for obvious reasons. this new law is bollox.

dont know about manhunt...

5uspect

A lot of German politicans really have their minds made up about violence in games regardless of the evidence. Oddly enough Counter Strike gets a lot of flack.

My other half is German and she's also quite critical of violence in games.
A friend of hers who once volunteered in a Christain Orphanage once commented that if the kids there played Counter Strike they got aggressive when told to stop playing. She concluded from that experience that violent games are dangerous.

I pointed out that Counter Strike isn't a game for kids and what the hell was she doing letting kids play it. Would she let them watch a violent war movie like Saving Private Ryan?
I also pointed out that a kid getting aggressive when you take it's toys away is not the same as loading an assault rifle and shooting lots of people.

In the end she said that it wasn't Counter Strike at all but some other game and she was unsure of the name. FFS it might have been Sonic the ****ing Hedgehog.

AnCapaillMor

5uspect wrote: »

In the end she said that it wasn't Counter Strike at all but some other game and she was unsure of the name. FFS it might have been Sonic the ****ing Hedgehog.

Could'nt be sonic, the kids would be too busy having fits to get aggressive.

German general election soon, i think, so polititians have picked their bandwagon and have proceeded to jump on it. You'd the same when the US senate election was about to kick off and a few yank polititians started on about viloence in video games.

Pop music -> Rock\metal -> Rap -> now video games.

5uspect

Video games caused the recession cos Crysis was too system heavy and people didn't buy new PCs, bla bla.

citizen_p

smoke.me.a.kipper wrote: »

its illegal for me to have wolfenstein 3d on my ipod. but thats for obvious reasons. this new law is bollox.

dont know about manhunt...

it has been...in places,
a few "morally correct" shops in ireland did too i believe.
it was a crap game anyway.

The County Court in Munich decided to confiscate all versions of "Manhunt" in July 2004... Other games, including... "Dead Rising," were placed in the Index and confiscated by a Hamburg County Court decision of June 2007.

ohh and it seems the mental kid that they assumed "used moves from counter strike"... wasnt the first to go off his block like this.

In response to the [2006 Emsdetten school] shooting, the German states of Bavaria and Lower Saxony drafted legislation that would fine and possibly jail video game developers who create and market games containing ‘cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters...’

The Protection of Young Persons Act (PYPA) is a German legislation that protects youth... from the influence of inappropriate movies, games, and certain public places, including gaming places and those selling alcohol. The Act was enacted in 2002... establishes that video games or any other games cannot be publicly accessible to children or adolescents unless they are cleared and labeled for their appropriate age group by the supreme state authority...

i played counter strike and didnt shoot up the place (i would probly play it now ony for my graphics card is broke).....just like countless others.

K.O.Kiki

"Used moves from Counter-Strike."

You mean he was equipped with a knife?
Cos y'know.
Everyone runs faster with a knife!
*psshh*

TerrorFirmer

wasn't it germany where soldier of fortune 2, the times most gory game, replaced the actual human enemies with robots? not to mention the ghoul engine didn't work anymore.

citizen_p

they change enemys from...human or human like figures


ohh and they make blood green

Sierra Oscar

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

wasn't it germany where soldier of fortune 2, the times most gory game, replaced the actual human enemies with robots? not to mention the ghoul engine didn't work anymore.

In Germany, TF2 gibs are replaced with robot gibs. Valve took the piss, basically - because the laws are ridiculous.

http://clancya.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/low_v_gib1.jpg

thelordofcheese

Mousey- wrote: »

ohh and it seems the mental kid that they assumed "used moves from counter strike"... .

So he called everyone a gay fag then bitched about sniper rifles being overpowered?

Jazzy

Mousey- wrote: »

edit: and btw did he tell people he was using moves out of counter strike????? NO so thats an assumption

teabagging the victims of course