Germany says \"nein\" to C&C Generals

Link from Blues to Gamestar.de

Doesn't this look slightly suspicious given Generals' T rating? Maybe the German government objects to certain themes and ideas in the game...

The German censors are really weird about games. Virtually all shooters (and any other game with blood) cannot have red blood but instead green blood.Hence UT being on that list too.

Mind you with the Iraq dispute in the UN they might not want the populace playing armchair General with scenarios that are maybe a bit too close to reality for their liking.(Look I can destroy Baghdad with almost no casualties, therefore the real thing should present no problem, lets go to war! )

Maybe the German government objects to certain themes and ideas in the game...

You''re obviously not aware of the fact that the previous C&C games were kinda modified in Germany to make sure they don''t make their way onto the ''index''? C&C and RA featured ''bots'' (how believable) and their blood ...er I mean oil was green.

this game is not censored. What they did is put it on an index. All games in this index may only be sold to adults, due to their content that violates child protection laws (glorification of war, playing down violence and torture, advertising degrading behaviour, etc). This has nothing to do with the current political situation.

In Germany the system works as follows: As long as a game is not indexed it may be sold freely to anyone. A game can be indexed by a comittee of ~12 ppl who decide if this game violates child protection laws. The comittee may only judge over a game if it has been reported to them by one of the ""child care"" instutions in every major city (Judgendamt). If the game is not reported by these institutions it may not be indexed. As the interest in games grew over the last years, the amount of games reported grew with it.

But even now that the game is indexed, it still may be sold to adults. What hurts the sellers is that you may not advertise it openly or sell it by mail order. Because of this many developers censored their games beforehand. But there is no such thing as censorship in germany from the government side. But the rules to protect children from the content above are quite strict, so it is no wonder almost all shooters are indexed. Those are not indexed simply did not get reported. The downside of this system is that for example UT got indexed 2 years after it was released to the stores. By that time indexing is obviously useless. But since the ruleset for indexing a game is clearly defined it had to be put on the index.

The only game I know of that managed avoid the index even though it had explicit content was CounterStrike.

Thanks for the insight, chrisg. That''s good info, and it''s nice to get it a little closer to the source.

You are now our official Germany fact-checker. Please monitor all forum posts and verify the accuracy.

Ouch,... this restriction to certain thing just serve as a promotion for the children(teen), because if they are restricted to play that game or drink for example, they will find a way to get their hands on it, just to be rebellious...

...been there, done that! The good old days

PS.: Chrisg that was a great info....

Me, being a (former) avid Gamestar reader myself, have a tiny bit of info to add myself: Counterstrike actually avoided indexing because the jury felt that the game was more about tactics and communication than killing, thus being a game suitable for younger people as it teaches more good things than it does harm

"Koesj" wrote:

the jury felt that the game was more about tactics and communication than killing, thus being a game suitable for younger people as it teaches more good things than it does harm :!:

Now thats funny... plus i don''t think I learned much playing that game, except seeing everyone run like crazy with guns blazing, ...then again that could be seen as tactics.