Yup, we didn't see anything like that in Steam. When it was banned you could not officially buy it. That means no vendor, no online shop had it for sale. You could only buy it from abroad (or 'illegally')

/e: Also, there's a difference between a BAN and being 'on the Index'. When a game gets banned, you just cannot sell it, because the government forbids it. Some games, however, just get 'indexed' and can still be sold but no publicly. That means you have to ask the guy behind the counter, if he's got it for sale. Furthermore the publisher or developer can create an additional low-gore version to sell at least that. That's why we have a lot of those 'censored' games here.

But luckily you just can buy from amazon.co.uk (mostly even cheaper than from local shops here).

And DooM was not banned but got on the index. So you could buy it in most Video Games Stores back when it was "new", but you had to ask for it and you definitely had to verify your age, else you could not buy it. But then there is Austria, where most of the games that are on the index or at least censored in GER can be bought legally.

Now they only need to take DooM II, Quake I, Quake II, Quake III and UT 99 from the index, after that all great games that are not available in GER would be back.

Being on index is effectively being banned. It's ~mostly semantics if you want to argue ti's not.

no, that is simply not true (atleast in regards to german law). i could always get every index'ed game i wanted, buying banned games/books/etc. would've been much more difficult.

i only skim-read it, but it seems to explain the situation well:
http://mag-murphy.net/2008-10-29/video-game-c...-it-doesnt

"anywhere is saying too much btw, i was 16 back then and simp"

that's all what has reached me:(

i pre-ordered everything i needed online, then realized that i must've used my parents credit cards or similar for the age-restriction, and deleted the post :)

most people did pre-order stuff back then, but that didn't change anything, so i thought i might aswell not comment. when i forgot, i had to visit those "weird" backroom stores aswell, fun times at 15-16 :\

No problem like that here:P Age 15-16 == Commodore times for me:D
(iirc, I already used a little PC as well, but it was shit compared to Amigas)

An indexed game is indexed for at least 10 years which means that its quite some time in UT99s case. IIRC UT99 got indexed pre BPjM when it was still BPjS and they only checked up on games when someone sent in a request for a specific game to be checked up on and it took people some years to send in a request for UT99.
Now they do it with every game that's being released and some games, like Quake 4 for example, wont be sent to the BPjM bureau beforehand which means they can't get their hands on it and index or ban it before it's released. I remember buying a copy of Quake 4 on the day it was released, it was indexed like 2 or 3 days later.

a problem with being indexed was even visible for me as an Austrian when there was no Internet - I never even heard about many of those games.....magazines didn't even risk mentioning the titles!

Yea, I know exactly what you mean, I had the same with TV series when I was a kid. I was near to the Austrian border, and we preferred to watch Austrian TVs most of the times. They didn't jam that for whatever reason. The news, the series and pretty much every program was something we never even heard about:)

Restrictions on Doom II - Hell on Earth have also been lifted.

thanks for both:)

I guess German guilt is starting to wear off.
Next fail.... THE EURO + GIPS

i remember buying quake 3 arena in 2000 in some dubious chinese store next to pantyhoses and fireworks :F

Now, thats strange. :D

But Q3 was "only" on the index, so you could buy it anywhere, didn't you?

with mom's agreement i guess yes, not sure if every big store had copies of indexed games.

e: afaik you'd need a written permission of your parents (not sure if adults in general) to buy an indexed game you somehow stumbled upon when you're under 18

Not if you've been through Soho.

this will solve all of id problems

I remember playing German version of Commandos. Worst gaming experience ever (lifting graves instead of bodies LOL).

WTF?

It's so strange to me, There is new generation grew up since they started this "green bold" thingy with the videogames (and the moves iirc). A new generation who probably all played videogames and know this shit. Why they don't change the law?

I think there is a similar "story" in Australia....

lol'd at fucking Germany. They have so little self steem and lack of confidence because of their past.

I hear this again and again, yet, there is absolutely zero proof that they have this law because of their past, or because of their low self esteem (for examplle, Australia has similar laws about videogames)

While the World War was horrible and some of the the things happened in it was inhuman indeed, If we would start digging up and rank "bad" things from the past, Germany wouldn't be even in the top 10 for sure.

I asked a question about how the ban/indexing was done, please don't make this thread about events happened 70 years ago:)

yeah the holocaust isnt in the top 10 worst things humanity has ever done to itself... right..

The holocaust was true horror and nightmare, something what's still unthinkable for me. I read so much about it since more than half million hungarian citizen were deported when we lost independence at the end of the war. A death like that for just one single human being is beyond my comprehension not even talking about the millions who had the same terrible fate, just because they were picked as the "enemies of the state" and they got blamed for everything.

But still:
-What stalin did in the goulag or in Ukraine (holomor) (or just about anywhere he had authority), was just as bad, and even worse by numbers (if that means anything at all when we are talking about millions).
- The colonization of America (both north and south) brought (almost 100%) extinction to the native races living there.
- The slavery as a whole is also something truly horrible by any means.
- The asian holocaust was also unthinkably evil in every way.
- etc..

There is violence somewhere in every day since humanity started counting time, there were not a single peaceful day on this planet, not in ancient Egypt, Greece, Roman times or in the dark medieval ages. There were crimes against humanity in every century.

Perhaps ranking it and saying it's not in the top 10 was stupid and please accept my apology, I hope it's clear I didn't mean it that way, but if they really ban games because of that, almost every country could find a reason to do the same.

edit: typo

Its pretty well known germany did a lot to forget about its past.
I believe when wolfy came out it was the first realistic gorey game and it just happened to feature nazis.

Would not surprise me if that set a big precedent for that stuff.

Who cares, its justice for most of them being cocks online.

props for germany correcting the worst thing they ever did

swag!

Poor children growing up in Germany not ever getting to experience doom :( freaking one of the best games ever made