No offense to Germans, but I still think it's hilarious that the original command and conquer generals RTS was censored in Germany by replacing all of the characters with robots. The game takes place in modern day middle east, and has a middle eastern "rebel" faction that has a "terrorist" unit that blows himself up. They replaced this infantry unit with basically an oil barrel on wheels lol. Well at least the game isn't banned haha
It wasn't about censorship on its own. We got in Germany the USK, something similar like PEGI but with a harder focus on child protection. The original generals got an age 16 age clearance but after some "concerns" (primarily because of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan) from Politicians it got reevaluated and got an 18+ rating or it got blacklisted because of the "suicide bomber"(and yes a rolling washing machine with detonation west is less scary than a human with one 🤷) . That means no marketing and no public show space in the stores.
So it was self "censorship" from the publisher to get the Game sold.
There are some hard censor rules in Germany (the got lifted in the 2020 years) about nazi simbols. And every one nows why Except for some nazis in German.
Overall the USK is sometime very in transparent :(
It didn’t get blacklisted. Just age restricted to 18+ which also made it more difficult to be marketed.
Also Nazi symbols are not censored in Germany in a historical/educational context. So basically you can only show Nazi symbolism when you teach about their crimes in some way. It’s to prevent them from becoming mainstream without any remembrance attached to it.
Global version of New Vegas cant be bought in Poland as well instead we have PCR which is the same but with less languages and incompatible with some mods lol. I actually bought global version from gamesplanet US and it activated without problem so I guess only store page on Steam is blocked.
That isn't quite correct. CD Projekt were originally game distributers in Poland and since piracy was rampant they would localize the games and provide localised manuals as well to be competitive and they transitioned to being solely developers after realising they had the ability to make their own games. However they saw opportunity when online distribution was rising in the 2000s, how many people were against DRM and their own experience with localisation, modifying games and distribution so they founded gog as a subsidiary in early 2008.
GOG was built under the main CD Projekt parent company rather than CDPR the dev studio, and they sold it to Michał Kiciński in late 2025 (who co-founded CD Projekt). Only real difference is CD Projekt didn't just own it for a bit, they actually created GOG in-house back in 2008.
If you do a bit of digging you will see this guy’s name everywhere. So it’s one and the same really, and traded hands internally.
No it always was separate version but it was renamed as RU at some point and in 2022 because of Russia attack on Ukraine it was renamed again as PCR. Aside for some code changes in exe files both global and PCR are the same just with less languages and mod conflict because of different exe files.
on Steam its you need an IP from the country you want to be in, and then change your adress/store location (and the payment method needs to be supported in the location)
Cooldown of 3 months, and using VPN to do this is against TOS
on GoG its
use VPN on the website,
Clear cookies so it takes effect
log in and purchase
bam, done
was able to get dying light, sleeping dogs, FEAR and one or two others this way, which are banned in Germany otherwise
GOG is actually consumer friendly with its politics and trust you. They have 30 days refund and they dont care about in game hours, no DRM, offline installers etc. Its easy to cheat on them but they simply hope you will be fair and not exploit it.
Yeah, i just use this to bypass region restrictions because it just sucks that lots of horror games and some basic ass shooters and fighting games are just not available or heavily cut
and not for stuff like "go to a region where i get it much cheaper"
u/Extreme996RTX 4070 Ti Super | Ryzen 7 9800X3D | 32GB DDR5 6000mhz16d agoedited 16d ago
I have GOG but some mods(most from Wabbajack) are incompatible with GOG version too. Basically if you want to have no problems with mods or modlists at all you need Fallout New Vegas Ultimate Edition global version on Steam.
Depends if keys are region locked too or not. Fallout New Vegas global cant be bought in Poland, Ukraine, Czech, Russia etc. but only store page on Steam is blocked. These countries have PCR version which is the same but have less languages and is incompatible with some mods. I bought global version on gamesplanet US and it activated without problem. It downloads and plays fine and only thing I cant see is store page and cant write review too.
The German low violence version only supports German language and has violence turned way down (e.g. no severed body parts, no exploding humans, no blood and no hit textures).
If you own the Ultimate Edition the game is not cut. Something about the USK rating the ultimate edition much later and letting it pass. Whomever runs the Steam page probably recons that almost nobody is interested into the base version of the game and decided not to ask for a new rating of the original.
Not quite true. When FNV was first released it released as a censored version that you can buy in germany. If you buy the ultimate edition in germany its also the full uncensored version.
What sucks is that if you owned the standard version you are forever stuck with the censored version and if you want to mod it you need to jump through some serious hoops.
Both are pretty damn easy to buy in germany. Sleeping Dogs or the Prototype games on the other hand are actually pretty difficult to obtain legally.
Edit.: I just looked those games up again just to be sure and ended up buying Sleeping Dogs DE on gog just normally. Lol. So it's really just the prototype games that are hard to get now.
Yeah but that did not apply for games as games weren't treated as art in Germany till like 2018. And the usage of swastikas in games (and movies) is still not allowed if nazism is glorified in any way. The institutions that decide the age restrictions on games and movies in Germany still take that into consideration.
No that is not correct. They were considered art there were even court rulings that confirmed that. The problem was that the USK just outright denied testing any game with nazi symbols in it. Had any company sued they likely would have won but nobody wanted to do it because there was little to gain from it. So legally speaking nothing changed since arguably their previous refusal could be seen as unlawful.
For our non-german friends:
Neuland translates, in this case, when being verbose, "A whole new, unknow land!"
THat is what Chancellor Merkel famously called the Internet. In 2013.
I believe this was the case for art. Video games were (or are, I’m not sure) not considered art so it actually was not allowed to distribute video games depicting swastikas etc.
In germany swastikas are only allowed to be shown in historical and educational contexts or in art if its not glorifying the nazis
Self censorship in that regard was always safer as games werent seen as an legit form of art like movies for example for a very long time. Only since 2018 videogames are officially also seen as art and can now show these symbols no problem
They DID have to censor them for quite a while, back when they made a distinction between "art" (meaning high art) and "entertainment" (being perceived as 'for fun').
And having FUN with it was by definition seen as trivialising, and that was just as bad as glorifying.
Hence Indiana Jones and Wolfenstein back then being in trouble. It was the shift of pushing "entertaining art is still art" that changed what and what not is ok.
Depiction of nazi Symbols and Hitler are illegal in Germany unless it is for historic purposes or in art. So movies and books were allowed to display them video games were not. Now video games have the same standing as other artforms so technically hoi could just put a picture of Hitler in.
Yep, it is more complicated. I can still recall a publisher getting raided (and recalling from sellers the comic) for "Maus". A state attorney was a little zealous as it had a swastika on the frontcover (ok, not a little small but still overreaction). Did not help much that it was targeted to discredit Nazi Germany and even won a pulitzer price.
Sadly yes. And I don’t mean that ironic. I like that we actually keep this up unlike countries like the US or Japan and a gazillion more who acitvely try to make their people forget about bad history.
We cannot make it correct anyways. If we choose to go full ignore mode, the world would call us Nazis.
So as long as a couple game restrictions and delayed trains are our biggest problems I’ll happily take that 😂
Nah its not that exreme anymore like until 2015 there was quite some censorship for violent games but these days i have not seen any new games that get censored.
That is luckily a thing of the past. We do have strict regulations when it comes to porn and stuff, and Steam would need to adjust to it, which they don't want to do, so they just make the games unavailable.
Edit: I misunderstood your question. Yes, Steam would need to include a lot of new security measures and stuff exclusively for the German market, with an ID check or some stuff, to allow unrated/x-rated games to be available in Germany.
The simpler and cheaper solution is to just block those games for German IPs.
games need an age rating. even more so if they're targeted at adults.
if a game has adult tags on steam, but the developers/publisher have not bothered adding an age rating, the game is automatically getting restricted because steam does not want to risk breaking german law.
all that needs to be done for 99% of restricted games is to fill out a little form that says your game is 18+. that's it. that's all that is needed for german users to enjoy games that feature gore, sex, nudity, you name it.
german users just need to pick a date from a dropdown to confirm they're really totally over 18 years old to view a game's steam page.
there's no real age verification, just one that prevents kids from accidentally or unintentionally viewing adult stuff.
the exceptions are porn games and a tiny handful of ancient games. distributing pornography requires a more strict age verification and steam doesn't want to bother implementing that.
germany used to be way more strict when it comes to allowing gore and sex and stuff in non-art media and games weren't considered art. so a few games that are older than fifteen years might still be on that ban list. postal is, for example.
I'm sure the devs could re-release it easily though.
99.9% of non-porn games that are restricted in germany could be unrestricted by next week if only their devs/publishers knew and cared.
Or if they were still around. Many Indie Game developers who had a game on Steam are not even around any more. So no one who will sign this. Which I always find funny because where does the revenue end?
Both of those titles where in the Index iirc. Then there is something with other games that never got an age rating, so you can only buy them if you're 18. Valves way to comply was to simply not sell those games in Germany.
How do they block you? I am in Germany and could add those 2 to my basket and get to the payment screen. Do they actually let you buy them and then block you from playing or how does it work?
Both games don't even show up for me in the search bar. If I go to their store page via google, it tells me: This item is currently unavailable in your region.
nobody really knows. Germany doesn't really ban games anymore because of gore or nazi immagery, but sometimes at seemingly random some games have trouble with the rating board.
A lot of games are unavailable in Germany unless there's an official age rating, and I think adult only games are entirely blocked (at least I think that's what happened)
Germany has made age ratings mandatory some two years ago. The process is pretty easy, as afaik PEGI and self-declared ratings through the official Steam process would be enough, instead of just Germany's USK ratings, though a lot of old games and indie games still haven't filled out that form for Germany.
In germany, it's important that every piece of media has an age rating. If it contains certain adult things but the developers didn't bother adding an age rating, it can't be distributed, which is why these games get automatically restricted.
There are plenty of games that show nudity, sex, gore, nazi stuff etc etc. and they're available without issues because those devs took their time adding an appropriate age rating!
Most people in this thread are quite uninformed and immediately jump to censorship. This might be because twenty years ago things were handled different and some pieces of media were actually banned. This is not being done anymore.
Some ancient games like Postal remained on that old ban list since the devs never bothered re-submitting it for review, so it's still banned. I can't view its steam page.
However, I can view steam pages of games with nudity, sex, gore and nazi imagery without issues. I just need to pick a birth date from a drop down.
In 99.9% of cases, a game being restricted on steam in germany is on the developers and publishers.
Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is STILL blacklisted for German users after more than 10 years. We only have access to the censored default game that hasn't received any updates or DLCs since its release. Square Enix are too lazy to get the game rated again. There is no reason for harsh measures like a blacklist which even prevents German users from receiving the game as a gift. We have access to all kinds of messed up games but this. LOL.
Isn't it a publisher issue I don't know how brutal the game is but games like Mortal Kombat are available uncensored here, a lot of older games from the more heavily censored era just simply never got resubmitted to our ratings board and have therefore remained censored
Why do you assume "them" is the devs? Telling censors to fuck themselves by obtaining and spreading around the censored content is a standard response to censorship.
Completely unrelated to games but, as a new German, it's crazy to me how much censorship there is and how the Germans will just defend it as a good thing. Like sure, it's rude to be mean to politicians but having this be a straight up law that is regularly enforced is just leaving the door wide open for abuse, especially when a black-blue government is all but inevitable. This is also literally already happening: People on Facebook wish death on Die Grünen all the time but you call a nazi a nazi and suddenly they're going to bust down your door and take all of your electronics. But yeah fine and cool Meinungsfreiheit still abstractly exists on a piece of paper and total freedom of speech like in the US is too dangerous for Germany.
Like every game thats slightly, minutely pornographic yes. Theres very few exceptions, quite frankly i was suprised dispatch released fully, i was certain itd be censored atleast.
There are 2 big restrictions that exist here in germany. I like to call them "soft" ban and "hard" ban.
The hard ban is 1 to 1 a complete ban. Its extremely rare.
The soft ban means its banned from puplic sale. Means it cant be advertised is ANY way. No steam page, no amazon link, nothing. You have to explicitly ask for it. Mean if you buy it and get a steam key you can use it.
Both happen rarly nowadays. I suspect in the last 10 years the guys responsible for the USK authority got replaced from 60 year dogmatic farts to younger staff and the evaluations got reworked.
The only banned games as of now are pure porn games where it is only about sex and censored old games that never got resubmitted for FSK review by the publisher cause they don't care enough
Don't know about the first and what ban they received since I am not in the mood to buy a key that is double the price it is on steam
They are not banned. Steam just refused to implement an age check that was a little more than just a simple yes/no prompt. Which is weird, even back then our ID cards were able to be anonymously pinged for that confirmation.
It's because the German system required Steam to retain age verification information for accounts, for auditing purposes, and Steam refused to retain that information for user profiles.Â
I am with steam that all the required laws around age verification are too much of a hassle.
Though I wish they would allow account age as age verification method since that is documented anyway and my account is 19 or 20 years old at this point.
Well, this isn't the whole picture. If a game doesn't have an USK rating, it cannot be sold in Germany, resulting in many Steam pages "excluding" Germany, because many indie devs might not bother. Everyone's a loser except the big publishers, just how they like it.
This isn't true. First of all, the FSK isn't responsible for games. Second of all, games without a USK rating can be sold in Germany with an age check (18+).
Multiple reasons, tho I never looked into it in depth so I don't know uf this us 100% accurate.
So first off we have a so called index that is a sort of soft ban.
Our age verification system for ganes named FSK was quite strict for a long time and games that were too brutal or what not could end up on the index, which meant that the game was not allowed to be openly advertised anywhere thus also not exactly sold, tho it wasn't a explicit ban either I think.
To avoid this outcome developers just removed, changed or drastically censored stuff back then. That's why some older games in particular had robots as enemies rather than humans like in their original version.
Iirc once a game is on the index it stays there indefinitely, but after some time has passed the publisher/developer can file or pay for the removal.
Things like Swastikas were inherently a difficult topic, because in Germany it's illigal to sympethize with Nazi idolagy, which includes showing a Swastika. This however does not apply to educational material and art for obvious reasons.
Problem is that games did not count as either, thus developers just avoided problem by not even adding them. Whether ir not this was ever neccissary is seemingly questionable based on other comments I have seen on this post.
This is not a issue anymore tho, since Videogames have been classified as art a few years ago.
Also it's important to note that the FSK in general has been become far far more chill since like 2018. As far as I am aware not a single game since tgen had any ussues getting a proper age rating without any need to censor anything.
That might exclude porn games tho, not entirely sure how it works with those.
However I would guess that 99% of the "banned" games here in Germany are nothing more than porn games on Steam that lack a proper age rating, mostly because the devs didn't bother to get one or d games that never left the index.
Might be a hot take but I do think the devs are at fault for not bothering with local laws. Espacially now the FSKs handling if of things is totally fine imo, but age ratings are still a requirement and if developers don't bother getting those then that's on them.
Some games with specific symbols like Swastikas are either likely censored or in very rare cases, completely banned. However, another commenter said that you can still buy them, it's just not allowed to be advertised. I don't know if that for pure 18+ games like porn games or other games with said symbols as well.Â
Edit: I just read the other comments. It could also be banned to due to extreme gore / violence.Â
What is infuriating is I don't even care about gore or symbols. I just want to play in English and have original voice, but noooooo the German version is only available in German. Looking at you fallout 3 😡
I canceled Amazon Prime the second time I picked a film and it only had dubbed as an option. Like what? Offer it in German I don't care but how is the original language not an option?
showing gore and sex and stuff with the general focus being something else (e.g. Dead Space, The Witcher, Cyberpunk) only requires setting an 18+ age rating. then, users just need to fill out the birth date drop down that prevents kids from accidentally or unintentionally seeing adult stuff.
if this age rating is missing, games with adult tags will automatically get restricted until the devs/publishers add an age rating.
distributing pornography however requires stronger age verification. steam doesn't want to bother implementing that.
It's because Germany has some age verification laws and Steam used to implement the system. Not even anything obtrusive, they could have just used the official system which stores nothing besides the information "User above 18: yes", not some huge privacy issue.
It's a Steam issue. They don't wanna do proper age verification, so they're outright blocked for these kind of games. Generally it's totally fine to sell stuff like that, Steam just doesn't want to go with German legislation.
To counter all the misinformation: this has nothing to do with certain games being "banned" in Germany, and everything to do with stupid bureaucrats requiring age ratings on a platform that advertises to the public.
Up until a few years ago, National Socialist symbols were banned in games here. That ban was lifted because games were recognized as art, and you're allowed to display these symbols in a work of art. In the past, many violent games were censored in Germany and we only got severely cut versions. Nowadays, hyperviolent games rarely get censored anymore. Something as mild as Half Life 1 had blood splatters and gibbing removed for the German version back in the day, but newer games like Doom 2016 that have far more graphic violence easily pass inspection.
Game censorship in Germany has been almost entirely lifted. The reason we're still the country with the highest count of unavailable Steam games is due to some bureaucrats demanding a rigid age rating system for Steam in order to protect the children. The inciting cause was the large amount of anime porn games you'd see when casually browsing Steam. Regulators said you have to lock these behind a proper 18+ check which users have to confirm with a picture of their passport. Steam said no. Instead, they just IP-blocked all porn game pages in Germany. You can still get the games if a friend gifts them to you, but you can't browse the store page.
A year or two ago, this regulation was extended: any game that does not have an age rating cannot be seen from a German IP. Getting an age rating for your game is pretty simple, though: just fill in a survey Steam sends you and your game is fine.
The problem is that this ruling was applied retroactively to every game on Steam. If you released your game ten years ago and never gave it an age rating, its store page is not accessible from Germany now. This afflicts countless classic games, especially those published by indie studios or solo devs who are no longer active, or even deceased. Steam did send out emails to developers whose games were affected, but if you don't check that email anymore, or if the email account no longer exists, that's it for the game. I know several games where fans kept reminding the dev to add an age rating so Germans can access the store page again.
I have two old games in my library whose developers are dead, so their store pages will remain forever inaccessible to me unless I move countries. There are countless games on Steam that share this fate. There is no sex in them. There is no violence in them. They are simply an unfortunate victim of bureaucracy.
Thank you for a proper explanation. This needs to be the top comment. There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. A lot of people are talking about censorship and restricted free speech??? I get the frustration but that's simply not true.
There is plenty of free speech restriction in Germany tbh, but in this case it's something different and everyone just repeats outdated information from 10 to 30 years ago which no longer applies to how our regulators handle games these days.
Even Postal 2 would pass inspection today, as evidenced by Postal 4 being freely available to purchase in Germany. Postal 2 remains unavailable because it was "indexed" back in the day, and the bureaucrats don't remove games from the list unless the publisher explicitly files for re-evaluation.
The current issue on Steam in Germany isn't about censorship but about age verification for pornographic games, the implementation of which caught many innocent games in its crossfire.
I got my first PC in 1997, it was way more censored back then. there were robots instead of soldiers in half life and if you shot a scientist or barney they sat down on the floor and shaked their head.
Command and Conquer Generals is also very censored as well, Pretty much all humans in the game have been changed into robots and all factions have their names changed so that they don't reference any real countries, There's a unit called Terrorist (his in-game appearance is literally a guy with dynamite strapped into his chest) that's been turned into a robot carrying a barrel of dynamite, There's a lot more but it's just pretty crazy to how much of an extent they went so that the game could be released in germany.
In the end you can still buy keys from other countries and just activate them on your German account which works just fine even if it is restricted😅😂 at lease that’s what I did back in the cod days 2013-2018
Germany can go fuck itself with this stupid censorship policy bs. There are many games I want to buy, that have absolutely nothing to do with gore or it’s history, and they are still blocked, banned or censored.
Yea some games are not available which still sucks, as an adult i should be allowed to decide for myself what to play and not be prevented by a system to "protect the children" but its not like 99% of the games are not available here.
Judging by the comments from Germans,this seems like a German problem,and not a problem with Steam or game publishers.
No other countries seem to have the "YOU NEED AN AGE RANGE ASSIGNED TO ALL MEDIA" rule,especially if they're in the EU,which I thought was supposed to fix all of the weird laws like that!
Yeah, and it's going to get worse in Australia with the new Digital Duty of Care. More age restrictions about more things with an incredibly low barrier to calling something "harmful to children" and banning it.
Don't forget we're the reason a bunch of games had to rename ingame items lest someone think that painkillers stop you feeling pain.
Steam puts your account in a region depending on where your payment method and currency are from. Example: To switch to a Kazakhstan region you need to make a purchase from a Kazakhstan card
I have games in my library whose public shop sites aren't even accessible in Germany, e.g. Lust From Beyond and such. Solution: You buy game keys that are internationally redeemable.
When I bought premium for TF2 I was in Germany, which made the game censor itself. The blood was replaced with oil, and the gibs with nuts and bolts. I contacted Steam support and they did fuck all.
I ended up removing the "premium DLC" from my library, which was automatically readded and it was uncesored once again
They want to do this for the whole Europe, for all games, with the EU KIDS Act. Using kids as an excuse, enacting laws that won't actually help children, only destroy indie development, Stop Killing Games, and private game ownership and preservation, and making practically all old games illegal.
It is truly shocking that someone can live in a country with restricted free speech and censorship, yet blame Steam. Steam isn't preventing you from playing games, your government is. Vote for change or move somewhere with more freedoms.
there is no censorship happening here.
publishers are to blame because they can't be bothered filling out a form to get an age rating.
everything tagged as adult and without age rating gets automatically restricted here.
99% of this could immediately be resolved if the publishers cared.
this thread is full of misinformed gamers getting rage baited.
Germany is NOT cesoring these games.
Unrated Games are only able to be sold to Adults Only. The German Government provides an API to verify age by ID, Steam refuses to use it and allows publishers to refuse going through their self rating from.
As a matter of fact this is actually both on Steam and Game Publishers.
So... Of course it has free speech but also of course it has censorship. But that's still """"free speech"""" because censorship is everywhere anyway. Brilliantly argued good Sir.
TLDR: Steam blocking games in Germany because of problems with how age restrictions/verification works in Germany and games which were restricted before 2018 when video games weren't yet officially recognized as art and haven't been re-evaluated since.
This is a issue about Steam not complying with German law.
The affected games lack an age rating and therefore can not be sold without an age verification as users must be of age (18) to purchase them. Steam does not offer a law compliant way to verify the users age. Instead of adopting an approved system Steam simply geo blocks the games instead.
this is what i do since i moved here:
Get a vpn set it to france and change the store country to France (only needed once)
Make a paysafe card account in france ( no address proof needed just pick an adress from france) .
Charge the account the amount needed then pay for a game .
Buy game you want linking the paysafe account with steam. or just topup the steam wallet with it
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u/TYNAMITE14 16d ago edited 16d ago
No offense to Germans, but I still think it's hilarious that the original command and conquer generals RTS was censored in Germany by replacing all of the characters with robots. The game takes place in modern day middle east, and has a middle eastern "rebel" faction that has a "terrorist" unit that blows himself up. They replaced this infantry unit with basically an oil barrel on wheels lol. Well at least the game isn't banned haha