Get Woke, Go Broke Thread

[Guest]

It's no Sonic for Hire.

[Moe Bitches]

Which is the only decent thing Mashed has ever done.

[Guest]

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

I hope you will all get a good taste of vintage German video game censorship (aka "Everyone's a robot now").

[Jiangshi]

I heard the german version of Saints Row 2 just showed a black screen with some apology written on it during every single even slightly violent cutscene. Kind of like a newspaper from the russian empire with everything the tsar doesn't like inked out.

[Kugelfisch]

Was there even a German version? I'm pretty sure I imported it back then.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

They did more than just censor the cutscenes. They gutted it so much you can't play multiplayer with any other version.

• no ragdoll effects
• no blood
• no using people as human shields (even if that screws with a few missions)
• no katana finishers
• people can't burn
• dead people don't leave behind cash
• no flamethrowers or chainsaws
• almost all mini-games removed

This is probably the most ridiculous censorship I've ever seen in a GTA-like, especially the bits that remove actual content / gameplay features. Was 2008 the year of Germany's last school shooting or something ?

[Jiangshi]

Apparently they even censored the cover so you don't see any guns on it. And they still sold the butchered game only to adults, lol

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

They just zoomed in the picture so you don't see the guns, apparently
And is the eternal irony that this censorship meant to protect kiddies from getting traumatized into committing the next Columbine only really affects games never meant for them.
In fact the only diminishing effect it has on the age rating is moving it from "About as evil as a Mein Kampf audiobook read by Hitler himself" down to "Actually allowed to be displayed in stores".

[Kugelfisch]

Not quite. A "Not rated" game isn't automatically on the index. A complaint has to be formally filed first. So you can gamble and have a time frame of about two weeks to sell it normally.

It's what they did with John Rambo. If nobody bothers to file that complaint or request or whatever the hell you want to call it, it just remains on the shelves.