Rumor: Activision pulls Wolfenstein in Germany over swastika use

ummm.... patch?

There really are going to be people that don't realize this is slightly related to WWII events without the swastika's in it?.
So what's the point in taking them out? Not to mention this symbol has been around way before the Nazi's ever used it.

No reason to be a NAZI about it.

Oh wait.

But but the swastika means life and good luck. The swastika is the least evil thing related to Nazi's, silly guilt-filled Germans.

If someone tried to release a game about slavery or the slaughtering of millions of Native Americans here in the US it'd get shot down pretty quickly as well.

Should people thicken their skin and man-up? Yup. Will they? Nope.

I'm interested to see how the media handles the upcoming "Black College Football Experience" game.

The ban of Nazi imagery in entertainment products has nothing to do with Germany trying to pretend WWII and the Holocaust never happend. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, German children learn about the atrocities committed by their ancestor and the causes for the rise of the Nazi party throughout their entire school career.
The ban on Nazi symbols was enacted right after the war, to my knowledge by the Allied occupational forces. And to this day the average German is very touchy about the trivalization of their WWII history.

"Germany's no swastika rule in video games has existed for a long time"

Well, actually German law prohibits the display of a swastika in any form or fashion, they've just been lenient with usage of the swastika in teaching purposes in order to prevent it happening again.

Activision had little choice but to issue a recall. Blatantly breaking the law after knowing it had been broken would have resulted in steep fines, and potentially a ban from future access to the German market.

So, no, Activision didn't overreact, and I understand Germany's position of banning the swastika. However, I believe the ban should have been restricted to the swastika as a political symbol, thereby allowing it to be displayed in works of fiction and in religious imagery. (Amongst others, It's an important symbol to hindus and buddhists) The iron cross was also a symbol of the nazi party, but they didn't ban images of a cross...

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

George Santayana

Yep! It seems not many people noticed it in the first place, since the game was sold for almost one month in Germany without any official institutions intervening.

I wander if it was Angela Merkel who found it?

Never mind that the entire point of the game is to fight and defeat evil Nazis. The game isn't pro-Nazis and pro-swastika. It's anti-Nazi.

Their logic is a dumb as a Christian group calling Doom Satanic. The point of that game is to kill and defeat evil demons, not be buddies with them.

If anything, WWII games are passe, because of their safe moral cliches.

I suppose the hundreds of games where you go around killing anyone at will, such as Grand Theft Auto, are fine to these people?

for the love of God don't upset them...

Hahaha. So stupid.

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme"

-Mark Twain

I Thought that symbol was from the stone age and now is evil and banned by the same ppl that used to love it??

Why didn't they take it out in the first place knowing Germany's rules?

It had to be done:

http://tgip.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/activision-ceo-discovers-wolfenstein-pulled-from-german-stores/

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GT

Well... Germany. Government hates games. As done with Gears, Crackdown etc which are banned because they turn children into mindless killing machines. Wait, I'm an adult... Guess, I'll have to sacrifice my freedom to choose which games to enjoy and which not for the sake of our poor children (tm). Also we'll have to accept that the government thinks that banning symbols rather than proper education on the matter helps this generation, which has absolutely nothing to do with WW2, helps to deal with the past.

Nah, anyway I can still order the game from the UK and play it. Only the DLC is always a bitch to get, because you get a castrated xbox market place with a German IP.

Aaaah Germans. Trying to forget your Nazi past and being Nazis about it in the meantime.

Oh my, feels odd to read a lot of these totally misinformed posts of some ppl around here, well I can't really blame you can I, we Germans grow up learning all of it, all of what happened, of all those known who looked away and also about all the ppl who didn't and got killed because they tried to help, to stop the regime, while the rest of the world for a long time didn't want to know, looked as much away as some Germans did at that time. And still these things happen around the world, most just don't happen to be of much interest to the media or the uninformed regular guy who to his luck is just too far away from that kind of reality. And nowadays the usual German is especially this, not part of any of this, just what we know from History and feel bad about it, can hardly believe what mankind is able to, but it's the truth and it's not exclusive to Germany.

Germany just happend to be at one time in history a threat to too many interests and that basically forced the rest of the world to do something about it, the rumors and cruel indications at first sadly weren't enough.

One example in our modern world is that the Turks still deny the Armenian Genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide till today. I personally can't believe how someone can deny something like that. While it would be terrible to do so it's also just plain wrong, the facts speak for themselves, but Germany also got kind of condemned to be nazi about all that stuff which nowadays is just weird and draws attention to the ultra conservative right wing like if you command some simple-minded outsider to not push the button it get's even more interesting and it's not unlikely that he or she might go where he is allowed to.

Also u just can't touch certain topics, so if someone would commit a serious and cruel crime and he would happen to be Jewish you just can't comment or act on it, ppl would be forced to go easy on him or they might loose their jobs or be marked as nazi or racist, it's that deeply rooted in terms of guilt and shame, like to owe someone more than a favor, it's just not possible to leave it behind but deep down you just have to try and ppl can easily exploit it. It's not openly discussable in any way.

But like I mentioned on an older article, things slowly change, younger generations get more influence and more of their votes count (next one this sunday, hope we get some "change") it's just companies like Valve or Blizzard who go the easy way out and voluntarily remove things their customers don't mind but might get them into hassle with outdated and shady laws instead of helping us to pick up the fight. Actually today these things look really bad and ppl resent them for that because they don't support their German Communities/ Players with these decision making.

Whatever, hopefully they'll just ban the game forever so that no poor, uninformed Germans waste their money on this piece of shit game.

It wasn't just german people who joined the nazi regime...plenty of people from other nationalities, who believed in hitler's cause, were allowed to fight for nazi germany.

Only the purest german people who could prove their pure german (aryan) lineage were allowed to be among the elite soldiers, such as the Waffen SS.

Besides, the majority of the population of German during the 30's and 40's didn't hop on the nazi bandwagon so you can't just make generalizations about how 'germans are scum' or whatever.

There's nothing wrong or "uptight" (as one ignorant user commented) about Germany banning the use of the Swastika. This actually happened shortly after the end of WW II..it's not like it's sonething that just happened recently.

The swastika was a symbol from the country's darkest days. Germans are in fact great people and their country is beautiful.

There is nothing wrong with a swastika, this is just American/Jewish propaganda. It actually means peace and good luck, and has been used for thousands of years all over the world (even by Jews).

Thanks for posting links to Marketplace items. Very handy!