64K signature petition delays German govt's game-banning bill

by Majed Athab on Jul 28th 2009 2:00AM

There has been a string of unrest in Germany over violence in video games as of late, which is why the government there is working on a bill to ban violent games from the country. While the man in the Bundestag has plans of censorship, German gamers are fighting back with a petition. And not just any old petition, mind you; the one already submitted contains 64,824 signatures, which means there's enough cause (by German law) for the government to open a public hearing.

In specifics, the government is looking to ban any software "where the main part is to realistically play the killing of people or other cruel or un-human acts of violence against humans or manlike characters." Basically, kiss all those lovely shooters goodbye -- that is, if the delay spurred by the petition won't change the government's mind.

Considering Germany is a place that enjoys the sound of the banhammer falling (examples: coked up Red Bull, genetically modified corn products and even 26 years of its own history have all been outlawed), there's no guarantee the bill will be deterred. In fact, the source Gamezine notes Germany passed the internet censorship bill (which was a similar case that had double the petitioners) earlier this year.

[Via Game Politics]

Source

Tags: ban, banhammer, game-politics, germany, government, politics

Reader Comments (90)

Crap, and I thought China was bad.

I feel sorry for anyone in both Germany or Australia right now, and any other country with censorship like this for that matter. AFAIK there are no plans for anything like this in the UK, and I hope it stays that way. I don't think we have ever technically had freedom of speech (it is illigal to incite racial hatred etc which while I agree with in principle is a removal of freedom to express opinion. Probably for the best in that case though) but that is as far as I wish to see it going. Basically, discrimination bad, freedom of expression good.

This doesn't just extend to FPS's
RPG's are all out, quite a few Action n platformers.
Heck it could possibly stretch to Super Mario.

I wonder if someone made a historically accurate game about the Warsaw ghetto (which would have potential to be awesome) How would Germany would react?

Would it make them Holocaust deniers to ban it?

would it cause a logic vortex that would rip the fabric of space and time, thus endong the world?

Why would such a game be awesome? I think it would be pretty sad and depressing.

Whether it would be banned depends on what style of game it is. Is it a shooter that uses the ghetto as background? It would be heavily criticized as tasteless in the media and spark a new debate about "evil" games, and the swastikas would have to be removed from textures. NOT because Germany denies Swastikas existed, we don't want to have them in entertainment media.

If the game was a well made educational adventure that treats the topic with the neccassary respect, it would probably adopted by schools as educational material and be generally well received.

Because the story is inspiring and could be epic. Outnumbered, illequipped people holding off a larger invasion force, refusing to just give up and go peacefully to their doom, an evil, nigh unstoppable enemy?

That's the stuff legend is made of, unfortunately unless they made you the guy who escapes and resists the nazis or something, it wouldn't have a very good ending, but still the concept is there, someone could make it incredible.

And not having swastikas in entertainment media is a little ridiculous, especially when portraying a real and historical event. Does making Nazis without the symbology make them any less horrible? Does the German Gov't really think that someone is going to buy a game where the point is to kill Nazis so they can pause and heil hitler when they see a symbol?

The warsaw ghetto though is one of the most inspiring stories of WW2, I would say it's more so than Normandy, it wasn't Governments sending waves of soldiers against a beach, it was regular people defending their homes and lives.

Well there are exceptions, the Indiana Jones Movies (the two good ones) are shown here, and they show swastikas.
While to us young people this may seem silly, the law is a bit older- from a time when most people living here experienced the Third Reich first hand. They lived in horror seeing those symbols every day, or they served under the symbol, and that was the shame of their live. Of course they wanted to ban them from everything except history books afterward.

Well the young people would be the ones to change the laws on the books then. I understand the shame, America has the slavery issue in our past, and Jim Crow laws and civil rights, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't allow movies like amistaad, or try to hide it. In fact it should be brought to the forefront and made public so that we never forget and allow something like that to happen again.

I agree, and films like Schindler's List (who died like 100 meters away from where I live btw) and The White Rose and Anne Frank's Diary are always very prominently featured in German media.

Just to clarify some things:
Swastikas are generally NOT forbidden in Movies or in Television. There are exceptions when the Nazi-regime is glorified or something like that.
The reason Nazi-symbols are forbidden in games is just that games are not considered art in Germany at the moment.

And btw: Denying the holocaust is a criminal act in Germany and can be punished with up to 5 years of prison sentence.

well this time you didn't make sneering reference to Americans. :)

I understand why you don't like the idea of guns and don't see the need to own one, what I can't understand is why you think other law abiding honest people should be prevented from doing so. there are many sports (some even in the olympics) that use firearms, why should people be denied the chance to enjoy that?

UFC
Fight Night
NHL
Fifa
Madden

yep, that remark about 26 (???) years of banned history is false in several ways at once. In fact, education about the dreadful Nazi era is a focus in German highschool history classes. The Swastika and other nazi emblems are banned for good reason. Disgusting as it is, we still have to put up with a below 5 percentage of Germans who are fascist assholes.

Fellow Germans, please sign the petition against an action game ban here:
http://epetitionen.bundestag.de

I think that's quite a valid point raised by the board as it is promoting violence amongst the youngsters but news channels are doing the same as they are capturing the live moments to its viewers of a bomb blast in which a blood and human organs are spread all over the place......I suggest there should be a public vote for this reason and a majority would win the benefit of doubt...............
http://www.electrocomputerwarehouse.com

As a gamer and as a German, let me say something that will probably get me downvoted pretty fast:

While I don't support the outright banning of anything, I do understand with the general thought behind this legislative measure. Which is to protect kids from too realistic violence in media. Let me play the advocatus diaboli for a minute:

"I don't want my (If I ever have any) or any children to imitate the brutal and explicit killing of other human beings, with spraying blood and guts and severed limbs. Someone said "You can't hide reality from your people, Germany" earlier on, but - No, that is not reality. As a civilized society, we can be happy to live in an environment where violence is not a part of our lives. As for he "freedom of speech" argument, Freedom of speech should of course apply to the games writing and art design, but there are situation when freedom of speech does not apply, for example when you are standing at someones property and yell insults at him. In the same way, animating the possibility to cut humanoids in half with chainsaws should not be excusable.

he thing about games is that they should be fun to play. Blood and gore is not an aspect of fun. You can do amazing games, even shooters, without explicit violence, it has been proven countless times, so why make the world a less empathic and more brutal place by introducing gun violence and blood splattering to our living rooms?"

That being said I am still not agreeing with the outright banning of any games. It comes pretty close to censorship. Also, I am a gamer myself. I enjoyed, say, Fallout 3 tremendously. But on the other hand, I found the international version tasteless, which had the heads of killed NPCs flying around. It should definitely be an 18+ game.

As for the "Germany banned it's history" comment, that is far from accurate. In fact, it's still one of the top topics in school to educate about the horror that was the third reich, the generations of the 50s and 60s,and their children, appalled by their parents and their countries history, made Germany a progressive and anti- militaristic nation.

"[T]he thing about games is that they should be fun to play. Blood and gore is not an aspect of fun. "

The problem with that statement is that it's purely subjective. I think the sales figures prove that there is an aspect of fun to simulated blood and gore. A society can still remain perfectly civilized and functional even if it allows the depiction of simulated violence, or even simulated (or real) sexual situations.

A consenting adult in a truly free society should be allowed to partake in any of that without fear of government retribution.

What it comes down to is how much access minors should have to it. Me personally, I think it should be up to the parents to be responsible and determine that. Unfortunately, in the real world, parents around the world either don't pay enough attention to what their kids are getting into or they just don't care enough to bother keeping up with them.

Fortunately, most kids here in the states seem to turn out just fine regardless of what they play. Despite all the fear-mongering here in the states about violent video games (or violence on television, for that matter), we have yet to raise a nation of mass-murderers who grew up on games like Halo, Grand Theft Auto, etc.

So even though you refer to Germany as "progressive", the fact that they've already enacted restrictions on the internet and are now considering this ban makes them anything but "progressive". "Oppressive" or "restrictive" would be more apt.

The first things an authoritarian regime does is disarm the citizens and controll the media.

That aside, I think fallout is great, the bouncing body parts are funny, and amusing, and the game is rated mature, so no problems there.

The fact is once you start imposing your morals on somone else, you are no longer a righteous defender, but an oppressor.

The govenrment should not ban games for the whole population, if they want to try to enforce ratings, fine, they should do it across the board though, ratings should be an advisory to parents, not a legally enforced mandate, that is where the government crosses the line.

Actually I was referring to social topics like acceptance of minorities, gay rights, health care, anti-nationalism, anti-militarism and so on. But you are right, there are measures that go to far when it comes to media. The problem here being politicians not up to date with a culture of technology and media. But as I said, their intention is not a bad one. They don't want to oppress young people to be cruel, they want to protect them and have a less violence attuned society. The point where well intended paternalism becomes 1986 style oppression is not yet reached, imo. This is only about video games after all, nothing important. But it is a first step in a direction we need to be careful with.

@ John,

Is "All men are created equal" imposing my morals on someone else? What if I am a racist and disagree? The damn oppressive government takes away my right to hate black people, how dare they!

Now that is of course purely polemic and not a real argument, but it goes on to show that what laws are imposing on me is always a restriction, and whether I agree with it or not is always purely subjective and different to anyone else. Or to put it simple: All laws enforce morals on me. We just happen to agree with most of them.

I could argue with you about the "disarming people" comment, that is a deeply American mindset. The second amendment was written at a time when people were wanted to be able to overthrow it's government if it wouldn't be democratic enough. (While black people and women were not yet allowed to vote). I would argue that 2009, we live in a slightly different world were armed rebellion is neither a possible scenario nor would it be a good solution. (The governor of Texas might disagree, lol)

To come back to games - generally I agree with you. I want to be able to play games like Fallout 3 when I want to. I am an adult. And I believe that most young people playing games turn out perfectly fine.
While I do agree that we need age restrictions and that extreme violence (manhunt says hi) is not necessary,
I think educating parents about responsibility would be a far better step than to outright ban things you don't like.

the only thing I wanted to express with my extensive commentary is that the intention behind the proposed law is not a sinister one, and that Germany didn't ban it's history.

I am sure tho that this will not be a problem anymore when the younger generations grow up and "take control". As soon as the majority of voters and maybe even politicians themselves are people who played video games themselves, I think no one will ban anything. Let's just hope this law doesn't pass now. The backlash could be bigger than expected for the government. Many thousand young people could vote for a smaller party that offers an alternative (say the green party) instead of the great coalition that passed the law. Piracy and and illegal imports would surge. I somehow doubt EU law would allow the this whole stuff anyway.

Well I feel like I have typed enough.

The first reply was @ Reboot by the way.

I am kinda sad that I really got downvoted that fast. As I said, I oppose the outright banning of games, and I was playing the devil's advocate there. But Thanks at John and Reboot for showing that an adult and intelligent discussion is possible on a gaming blog.

Well, I have to say that I actually fully support a persons rights to be a racist piec of shit if that's the way they want to live. there should be no laws regarding you thinking and feeling any way you want.

I also think the ideas of hate crimes are reprehensible. All crime should be punished fairly and severely.

It is when a person acts on the racist thought and hurts another that I think the law should step in, but regulating thought is terrifying to me.

I think the warsaw ghetto we were describing before illustrates the reason that an armed populace is very important to freedom. All around the world we see today where governments are overstepping their bounds. An armed populace also secures a country from invasion from outside the borders as well, I just have a very individualist freedom oriented mindset and think it better to give people the opportunity to do whatever they want and trust they won't abuse it.

And if they do punishment needs to be swift, just, and severe.

Well people like you and me will probably never agree, but thanks for keeping it civil this time.

Libertarian paranoia tends to assume that A: governments will always abuse their powers and B: There is a strong domino effect when it comes to granting governments such powers. We've seen in Post WWII Europe that none of this is the case, that, despite certain controls that make us Americans blanch, Europe has not returned to Authoritarianism, and is still probably the better place to live on Earth for the average person (though somewhat restricting for the upwardly mobile)

Khan, it's not libertarian paranoia so much as love of freedom.

Were the founding fathers paranoid? no they had just fought a government that disarmed them, then attempted to trample their rights.

The Nazis Disarmed the Jews "for their safety"

The people in Darfur, and the Muslims in Bosnia would have liked to have been better armed if you'd like more recent examples.

And since most people would like to be upwardly mobile, by your definition, these european utopias are not well suited for them.

The simple point is i trust that people are generally good and don't need to be intruded upon in every aspect of their lives and what they own and do in their homes.

The need to take away access to something from people in case something bad happens stems from a fear and distrust of other people.

But don't worry, you can come to my house when the zombies invade, I'll have a spare piece for you ;)

Is it because of this kid?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2QxLpS3aIM

Looks like Crytek will have to move office from Germany if that law comes into play.

Yep. They stated as much the last time a ban like this was discussed 2 years ago.

I wonder if all this pent-up censorship is going to eventually blow up in Germany's face.

Hi, german governement?

Yeah, Hitler's on the phone for you.

Idiots.

Hey now. Don't say genetically-modified corn(and other foods with genetic modifications) aren't worth banning. Go see Food, Inc.
They're all generally unhealthy. Why do you think people buy organic?
"HURRRRR.... Because Dey're Hippees!" Doesn't it feel bad when you find out just HOW FUCKING WRONG you actually are?

Germany is in fact the most biological aware country in the world, measured by percentage of the population buying biological food. Although you know what Mark Twain said about statistics.

I have argued about food quality with an American before. He actually used the Hippie "argument." To which I replied "How many fat Hippies have you seen?"

Almost all foods have been genetically modified in some way.

Without it there would not be enough food and everyone on earth would die.

I was referring to the joke in poor taste the joystiq writer made. There are no real bans on Germany's history for those first two people and for Strabo, just a misunderstanding,

Let me take a moment to clarify exactly what I meant in the article. By 26 years, I was referring to the entirety of the Nazi party, including the time when it was known by another name and the years it was active but not in power. Now, I'm not trying to say Germany is trying to hide or tamper with its history (although I sincerely apologize if the wording alludes to it), but rather I am talking about the banning of related symbols for personal use and the ideology (which several commentors have already pointed out).

Just like the other examples, they're all highly debatable and I'm not trying to say which is right and which is wrong, but my only goal was to illustrate the extend to which the government was willing to take its ban policies. I hope this has clarified things for all.

Well this is just stupid .... I understand if the German government is trying to apprehend their youth from violence and their history but come on .... this is just ridiculous

The German government needs to grow some cojones

It just seems like the wrong direction to take this. They have the right idea of modifying culture in order to tackle the roots of violence (culture being more important than laws in determining violence in a lot of cases, as expressed by the similarity between American and Canadian gun laws, but America's radically higher incidents of gun violence), but there's never been any proof that violent games contribute to the culture that glorifies or otherwise encourages violence.

First they came for the swastikas, and I did nothing because I was not a Nazi,
Then they came for the corn, and I did nothing because I eat organic,
Then they came for the games, and I did nothing because violence is bad, mmmkay.
Then they came for me, but there was no one left to do anything,

The German government is a sad, sad institution.

As it's described here, it actually isn't that bad an idea. I've never really thought about the ethics of virtual killing. I have, however, felt that the World War I and II era shooters are very troubling to me in theory and concept. Haven't been able to bring myself to play them, though, so please accept my opinion as slightly "uneducated."

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! People once used that as an excuse. Ever seen Food, Inc. They've got more proof than what you and the people putting shit in foods have to back up their argument.
You can't genetically modify food if it doesn't exist. And what do you think organic foods are?

Previous 50 Comments

64K signature petition delays German govt's game-banning bill

Reader Comments (90)

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 3:30AM 4ham said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 3:30AM Alphathon said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 4:10AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 6:38AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 8:47AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 9:04AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 9:16AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 9:21AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 9:39AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 10:06AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 1:33PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 8:16AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 29th 2009 12:23AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 29th 2009 2:41AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 8:37AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 9:04AM Skruff said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 9:17AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 9:25AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 9:37AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 9:59AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 10:07AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 10:37AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 1:56PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 2:46PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 8:39AM LuTon James said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 8:48AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 10:59AM Gorehorn said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 8:54AM ShingoEX said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 10:16AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 12:22PM Tye El Czar said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 12:58PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 2:52PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 12:09PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 12:10PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 1:43PM BoBsS said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 2:01PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 2:40PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 2:53PM The Monarch said

Posted: Jul 28th 2009 6:34PM treeofmana said

Posted: Aug 2nd 2009 5:42PM Tye El Czar said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW