Censorship and what to buy: 1C/Anton please help!!!

[Danny M NL]

Originally Posted by Widar

Before this post sidetracks into a `lets bash the German common man` for 1945 censorship laws which the German common man really has no way of changing or influencing, I must set something straight.

This post is just about a question to 1C/Anton about the difference between the Benelux and the FRG BOP version in terms of censorship that is all. I just want to know what I buy before I buy it. I just bought HOI3 and the FRG version has been thoroughly self-censored by the game developer to avoid official censorship and I want to avoid this with BOP should that also be the case.

So let´s not change this post into blaming a people for a government and the laws they have to live under and then state that that people is the cause for worldwide game censorship. People get born in a country and from day one they must obey laws they never drew up themselves and pay lifelong taxes on account of huge government debts they themselves had no part in making and that they will never be able to pay off. Let´s not blame the common man or a people for any of it.

The removing of symbols, names and other items in games worldwide generally has nothing to do with `youth health protection` censorship in the FRG specifically.

In the USA there is also a `youth health protection` scheme. The director of Battlefront games in the USA explained on his website forum a few years ago why he took certain symbols, names and other items out of his USA only release Combat Mission game because of the ´youth health protection´ measures in the USA. The fact is that under the guise, pretext or whatever you want to call it of rubber paragraph´youth health protection´, the censor can say that a game, book, cd or whatever is dangerous to the health of a child. Then that product may not be publicly advertised and not sold in public places (stores and the like). Which in effect means bankruptcy for a small or medium size game developer.

No game developer wants this to happen to his product obviously. So game developers censor themselves and leave stuff out of their game in advance to avoid getting hit by the `youth health protection´ censors worldwide. Some game developers are more brave than others in this respect or are almost immune to censorship like COD and GTA because of the big money and influence behind them.

I actually meant the german government instead of the people, my choice of words was a bit unfortunate...