The problems with game censorship are A) societies are stupid about this and B) the people who enforce the ratings are generally not in any way accountable for anything. As things stand, the US doesn't care a whole lot about cranioectomies, but slaps on an "M" rating (17+) at the barest hint of nipples (the only notable exception I can think of is the Simpsons movie, wherein Bart Simpson's penis barely warranted a PG-13 rating) whereas Europe and Japan have naked dudes all over the place but any wound larger than a paper cut gets you just shy of a "you can't advertise this" rating.
Also, there will be a non-violent version of Dredmor. You will HUG the Diggle. The Diggle will HUG you back. HUGS!
It's Ronnie's cousin Marcy, she's sort-of like a female Dilton but not. I took this pic from Betty & Veronica Spectacular #88, which is the "Geeks Rule" issue
Sweden here. Movies have age categories(any age, 13, 15), games don't even have that. We've had censorship in the past(the original mad max was banned for example), but the criteria got laxer and laxer, and as of 2011 there is no censorship at all in movies rated from 15. The only real censorship is for child pornography(the government keeps a ban list of sites/servers, these are blocked at the ISP level on a theoretically voluntary basis, but in practice under threat of introduction of law to make it compulsory). It has about 4600 addresses blocked according to official figures, though the list itself is classified.
Ah, here in Germany a banlist like that was proposed some years ago, but voted out because of protests because: -It could be abused -The plan was for the people doing the banning to not really be controlled -The stopping mechanism was a "STOP"-sign .gif that even idiots could maneuver around. Yes, our government has heard of the thing called "Internet", but does not know what to do with it...
We call our government the "Internet printers" for a reason. Some clever person actually created a javascript that prevented websites from being printed to piss politicians off, it was quite the rage for a few months.
I will answer in english so others can understand it as well To my knowledge the uncut Borderlands 1 is on the Index, which means by german law it is not allowed being advertised and sold below the age of 18 (its treated similar to porn, in a video store with restricted access to adults only it is completely legal). Normally, Steam could theoretically be selling such games in an uncut version if they can provide the technical precautions to assure only people with at least the age of 18 are able to purchase (and see advertisements for them, to be exact). To get the indexed status in germany, you will have to make an official petition for indexing a piece of media. No game automatically gets indexed, it is people that recognize the game, think it has to be indexed and then make a petition to the authorities to put it on the index. That explains why there is seemingly no connection between the level of goriness and which game is cut/uncut. Sequels dont get automatically indexed but it is more likely that a sequel to an already indexed game will also be indexed subsequently. Such was the case with Half Life 2 as you may remember that the first versions sold in germany actually were uncut. In fact, this is just "laziness" of Steam. They would have to put up a legally valid system of age verification which means passport validation or such a thing (asking for birthdate only of course is not sufficient). Otherwise they would risk serious legal problems which of course they wont do. It seems easier and less costly to them to put up low-violence versions of the game. Often developers calculate with the commercial impact an indexing can have on the german market and create low violence versions to circumvent indexing (not legally advertizing = commercial death). There is your reason why it seems arbiitrary and why steams policy seems so strict: The process of indexing a game in german law is not automatical but driven by individuals selecting the games to check and therefore games can be missed or judgements differ individually by the authority to rate its "danger potential" to youth (also i believe the game has to be rated "18" by the USK first, so if you have some guy at the USK that is very mild with his "16" rating he blocked the path for indexing already previously, but no guarantee on that). Second, Steam will risk legal difficulties by allowing indexed titles being distributed so they rather save their money by restricting access to indexed uncut titles regionally than creating the costly machinery to offer indexed titles legally correctly in germany. Supposedly they rather have non-adult users in steam (which is not exactly legal too by the "Fernabsatzgesetz" i believe, but not as harshly controlled as the indexing stuff.) ---- Fun fact: The binding of Isaac got a 16 rating. Not because of violence, the "comic-style takes a definite humorous look on it" but because of the religious imagery in it, that "may disturb some religious people". Thats it, these games often are rated by people from public organizations such as the church. And here you go - a humorous take on christianity seems more offending than popping heads of children to those ;D
Nicholas, is it bad I think a non-violent roguelike would be awesome to play? Maybe something like the original Toejam and Earl, which almost does technically classify as a roguelike in the first place.
