Fallout 4 - Uncut Release in Germany @ PC Gamer

Oh, and of course there is the real "censorship". But that is only be done if the game contains elements which are against law. E.g. if they are promoting genocide, and in the case of Germany that is also denying the holocaust or using Swastikas.

And the swastika thing is an especially problematic topic as it is allowed in movies, because these are seen as "art" (which comes with more liberties) while games aren't in these instances.

Ripper said:

But surely working with the USK is essentially sitting down and discussing what will and won't be allowed within the commercially feasible ratings. Doesn't that amount to same thing?

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That's actually precisely what the USK and the BPjM don't do. The German constitution says "Censorship does not happen." Giving advice to cut this or that to achieve a certain rating would be considered censorship, which is strictly prohibited.

The thing in the last sentence is what the British movie certification board does. Thanks to them everybody has many censored Bond movies and fans in that country haven't seen Pulp Fiction the way it was meant to be seen. If you apply German standards, England is indeed a heavily censored country.

There are very few strict rules, so you really have to understand what you can get away with in your game's context. What you want is an USK 18 or one of the lower ratings because it prevents any action by the BPjM.
If the USK considers your game potentially harmful to the youth, meaning it's too violent or the last couple of games in the series were sacked, the USK has to refuse a rating and forward the game to the BPjM. They decide whether to put it on The Index or not. The latter happened to Mortal Kombat X. Everybody was surprised it survived the process. Then the game returned to the USK, which was then allowed to rate it.

This process seems like censorship without calling it censorship. Technically avoids the word but effectively accomplishes the same thing.

Wisdom said:

This process seems like censorship without calling it censorship. Technically avoids the word but effectively accomplishes the same thing.

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Yes, that's exactly what it seems to me.

And, of course, every country has censorship to some degree - there are red lines for extreme material involving children, actual harm, animals, and so on.

What I'm more interested in here is why an arbitrarily different standard is being applied to games, whereas films are shown far more tolerance by the censors as 'art'.

Well, I guess it's matter of perspective.

But I guess that is the case in every "western" country. As there is no other way to handle it.
I mean you also don't see full clips of ISIS executions in German TV, or Porn during daytime on public channels. And it probably would give some good rates of people watching. So you might call that censorship as well. Others might call it common sense.
That might be different in the us - don't know.

Kordanor said:

Well, I guess it's matter of perspective.

But I guess that is the case in every "western" country. As there is no other way to handle it.
I mean you also don't see full clips of ISIS executions in German TV, or Porn during daytime on public channels. And it probably would give some good rates of people watching. So you might call that censorship as well. Others might call it common sense.
That might be different in the us - don't know.

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Yes, I would call the management of broadcast standards to protect minors common sense, too.

It's more this business of applying a different standard to games, and saying, "Yes, of course, you can release what you like because we don't do censorship, but we'll just utterly crush your commercial chances using the law if we don't approve of it."

To me, applying the 18+ certificate should be where their job ends, and then it's down to parents and merchants to deal with how it's purchased.

So you would be ok with it still being openly advertised.
I mean that's a legitimate perspective. There are arguments for and against that.

Yes. In a case where, let's say, you have a game with Nazi symbolism and extreme violence, like Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, I would not expect it to be banned from shelves and advertisments because it is held to a different standard than the movie, and put on "the index". I would expect it to get a restrictive rating to prevent it being sold to minors, just like the film.

As I said, all countries have censorship to some degree - and if holocaust denial is a crime in Germany, one cannot say they do not - and to some degree it may be justified.
I just think it is arbitrary to treat games differently, and disingenous for them to say the commericial suicide of the index does not have a restrictive effect on creative freedom in games. That simply must be the case, when different versions of games have been made solely for the German market.