This is equally a question and a plea to Bethesda.

Please, please, please don't censor the game in Germany again.

The Ultimate Edition of New Vegas proved that we don't have such a problem with violence over here and that version went just fine.

And if you somehow feel the need to [censored] us germans over again, please don't be so needlessly strict about it like you were with Wolfenstein.

If a version of a game is illegal in germany, that means only that it is illegal to advertise that version in germany. It is however not illegal to own that version of the game.

So someone buying the game somewhere else and activating that key in Germany would be perfectly fine for our laws. There is no need for you to region-lock the game like you did with Wolfenstein, exspecially not in Austria and Switzerland as well!

It's also illegal to sell such a game.

Pretty sure it's got something to do with your consumer laws bud.

They have to abide the rules. They if they can't advertise it, they lose money. I'm not to familiar with it so I can't be crystal clear with what I say, but I'm sure someone here knows more on the topic. Just throwing in my two cents. I couldn't see a reason to region lock it unless they had to so I;m not for sure the deal with that either.

That is entirely out of Bethesda's hands. The people you should be complaining to are the ones in the German government who made the uncensored version illegal in the first place.

I can see why Wolfenstein gave Germany some trouble but I wasn't aware they had done the same with Fallout. Maybe they don't wanna give anybody ideas, but I think mostly they are ashamed of their past.

I'm sure a German modder will remedy that if in fact rolls out as such.

They don't do it for New Vegas. The ultimate edition of new vegas is uncut in Germany.

Depending. Fallout 3 was indixed. This means it's legal to sell them under the table. It's just not allowed to make it openly.

Maybe there wasn't anything in New Vegas that the German government found objectionable. Wolfenstein, OTOH, is filled with Nazi imagery.

Before Fallout 3 was released, Bethesda had to change the name of an in-game drug from "Morphine" to "Med-X" because it ran afoul of some country's drug laws (Australia's, IIRC). Child killing in the games was also removed for the same reason.

IIRC, games that feature Nazism heavily in any way are banned in Germany which is why Wolfenstein (a game set in a universe where the Nazis won World War II) ran into trouble.

I don't think you have to worry much about Fallout 4. From what we've seen thus far, there's little to no Nazi elements whatsoever.

That said, this is completely out of Bethesda's control. If they want to port games to Germany, they have to abide by the German laws or else they can't sell their games there.

I don't think bethesda would if they had the choice, but from what I can tell its really an issue with the german government's policies, it might be more effective to contact your local represenative and explain to them why you feel the censorship is not effective or neccesary.

A lot of you seem to be not aware how the german rating system actually works so i am going to explain it here:

It doesn't work the way that they test a game and then tell the developer what they have to change to get approved.

How it does work it that the developers cut parts of the game beforehand, because they are afraid of not getting approved by the german rating system.

So it IS completely in Bethesda's Hands whether or not a game gets cut or not, which is why i mentioned the ultimate edition of new vegas. With that edition they had enough courage to submit an uncut version of the game to the german rating system and lo-and-behold it got approved. Btw. It's also possible for developers to submit a new version of the Game to the German rating system if the previous one has not been approved. Although that takes a lot of time and it's understandable that they don't want to do this.

But why are developers afraid? Well, the german rating system also has the ability to not give a game any rating at all, which means it will land on the so-called index. Games on the index are illegal to advertise. The important part here is: Advertise. It means you can't run ads of the game in germany or display it on shelves. You can however sell it. I don't know were you got the idea that that was also illegal, Aoyagi, because that's simply not true.

In addendum, i do understand why they had to cut down the Wolfenstein game. Displays of the Swastika count as nazi propaganda in germany, which is the reason why that is illegal and it happens quite often that developers misunderstand that and think everything nazi related would be illegal in germany and cut all that out, which it isn't btw. But as i said, they had no reason to region-lock the game, because ownership of the uncut version of Wolfenstein would not have been illegal here.

So in conclusion: No this is not out of Bethesda's control, this is completely their decision if and how they cut their game. Region-locking their game is also completely their decision. And counting Austria and Switzerland as part of Germany is also completely their decision.

So you would rather Bethesda risked the German government keeping the game from being available for potentially months or even risk it being totally censored from all advertisemant media? I think you need to check with your countrymen to see if they mind waiting another 3-6 months to get the game before making these kind of demands.

Would you prefer to have a cutted version? New Vegas Ultimate was released uncut without problems.

And if it don't work they still can release a uncut version. But they should at least try to make an uncut version.

True however its in Bethesda's interest to get an legal backdoor, like that an game bought in another country will register with steam in Germany.

Console version will work that way, steam might be a bit different as it require activation.

The other options is that Germans uses illegally downloaded versions who is not in Bethesda's interest.

I'm curious as to why the NV release was uncut in Germany? A quick search about it didn't bring up anything.

it's not beth who censor the game.

it's the german fsk. they force them to do these changes or the game would be indexed for germany, and that's a pretty large market.

just buy your game in ANY neighbour country, fsk has no say in any of these. like, copies bought in austria are totally uncensored, as are french, danish etc...

Because Bethesda (the publisher) send the uncut version to the ranking. And the ranking said it was okay for a age ranking of 18. Really... the German ranking isn't that evil like many thing. The ranking was more strict some years ago.

Haha! You know nothing... FSK is for movies. Games use the USK. And the companies mostly censor the games on their own to get a lower ranking.

Technically both New Vegas and Fallout 3 were censored as well due to international laws. Med-X was originally stock Morphine. Nobody lies untouched thanks to the global economy and foolish laws. Banning of the Swastika in Germany definitely falls into that territory.

Do you know the history of censorship in the US? That history pretty much explains the attitude of US industries (and business) of censoring themselves rather than letting some thrice-damned government agency do it for them. It is why organizations like the MPAA and ESRB exist, a desire for self regulation rather than government regulation. Of course Bethesda is censoring itself, it is in its genes to do so.

True, but the ESRB and MPAA only came about because the government told them to regulate themselves or they'd do it for them. It wasn't like they just sprang up one day and decided that was good for business.

Basically the reason so many publishers are afraid of the USK is because it used to be very strict, back in the day when the whole video game violence, school shootings debate was happening and the video games were blamed for all kinds of [censored]. But that is long past and the USK is a LOT more lenient now. You can see it in so many examples with Games like The Witcher 3, Fallout New Vegas and Bioshock Infinite were you have brutal and bloody finishers just breezing through with an 18 rating. The problem is that many publishers are still afraid and would rather cut their games beforehand without trying to get through, even if it's really likely that they would get through the USK without any problems.

But that's not even the big problem. The big fear i have for Fallout 4 is that they may handle it as stupidly as the Wolfenstein games were german buyers are stuck with a truly terrible german voiceover and some cutout imagery. That wouldn't be so bad, but they actually region-locked the game, meaning that it's impossible to get an international copy activated in Germany, Austria or Switzerland. It was just the worst kind of censorship i had seen in a long time and i am so excited for Fallout 4 that i am afraid of it happening to F4.

Think it was Australia who generated problems here.

Anyway I'm happy about the change, lots of the drugs are magical (or advanced enough technology) stimpacks, rad-x, radaway mostly, some of the booster ones might have been real life drugs likes amphetamine.

This is another issue, its just that the ones selling the game locally assume everybody want the translated version.

It might also be idiot online systems who only automatically set the version to the localized one.

I honestly don't think it's going to be a big problem for Fallout 4 - Fallout never dealt with Nazism in any of the games, whereas everything about the Wolfenstein series is about Nazism. That's a bright red line that you do not cross in Germany, from what I've heard anyway.

The Japanese version of Fallout 3 was also censored. The name of the Fat Man was changed in that version, and Mr. Burke, the guy you meet in Megaton who wants you to detonate the bomb, was removed from the game, so you can't blow up the town. And you can thank America for the fact that in vanilla Fallout you'll never see a nvde body - NPCs that you kill and strip will have underwear on. People will let their kids play games where they chainsaw entire settlements into cutlets, with blood and gore and gibs flying everywhere, but let mom walk by the TV when a female NPC flashes a boob for two seconds, and shes screeching about it all over Facebook and Twitter, her friends are screeching about it all over Facebook and Twitter, and then congressmen are elbowing each other out of the way to get in front of the news cameras and announce hearings.

Unfortunately, censorship of games and other media is hardly restricted to Germany.