Wolfenstein Being Recalled In Germany

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Wolfenstein Being Recalled In Germany

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday September 23, 2009 @03:25AM from the ach-mein-leben dept.

D1gital_Prob3 tips news that Activision's recently-released shooter, Wolfenstein, is being recalled in Germany due to the appearance of swastikas in the game. Such symbols are banned in Germany, and the German version of the game went through heavy editing to remove them. Apparently, they missed some. Activision said, "Although it is not a conspicuous element in the normal game ... we have decided to take this game immediately from the German market." Reader eldavojohn points out a review that has screenshot comparisons between the two versions of the game.

34 of 625 comments (clear)

Differences between versions by sopssa · 2009-09-23 03:25 · Score: 5, Informative

Here's a huge list of screenshots of differences between uncensored and german version
Some of the changes I found a little fun too, like the hand.
It's also interesting that the game is 18+ and germans are still not allowed to see any blood.
Here's the texture they apparently forgot to modify.
Seeing how many changes to the game and to the textures they've had to do, I'm not that surprised something that small slipped in.
The interesting thing now is if they're gonna remove that texture, remaster, repackage and send the new ones to all stores again, even more so because the game is over an month old now and the best sales are already gone.
1. Re:Differences between versions by Anonymous Coward · 2009-09-23 03:33 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Beyond the obvious problems with censorship in general, this kind of "censorship" where superficial elements are removed while keeping the overall spirit and subject matter of the game (come on, who wouldn't figure out looking at those obfuscated Nazi banners what the REAL symbol is supposed to mean) is abous as ridiculous as Japanese censorship laws, where you can make the most perverted porn than any other country in the world, but must superficially pixelate certain parts.
  If you are not willing to forgo censorship alltogether, at least do it "right". What's done here detracts from immersion while serving absolutely no purpose towards whatever your censorship laws are trying to serve (unless their purpose is to ruin immersion, that is)
2. Re:Differences between versions by eldavojohn · 2009-09-23 03:40 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Here's a huge list of screenshots of differences between uncensored and german version
  Wow how did you ever find that link? Did you actually read the summary or something?
  
  The interesting thing now is if they're gonna remove that texture, remaster, repackage and send the new ones to all stores again, even more so because the game is over an month old now and the best sales are already gone.
  German law Strafgesetzbuch Section 86:
  
  Dissemination of Means of Propaganda of Unconstitutional Organizations (1) Whoever domestically disseminates or produces, stocks, imports or exports or makes publicly accessible through data storage media for dissemination domestically or abroad, means of propaganda: 1. of a party which has been declared to be unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court or a party or organization, as to which it has been determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a substitute organization of such a party; [...] 4. means of propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization, shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine. [...] (3) Subsection (1) shall not be applicable if the means of propaganda or the act serves to further civil enlightenment, to avert unconstitutional aims, to promote art or science, research or teaching, reporting about current historical events or similar purposes. [...] Section 86a StGB Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations (1) Whoever: 1. domestically distributes or publicly uses, in a meeting or in writings (Â 11 subsection (3)) disseminated by him, symbols of one of the parties or organizations indicated in Section 86 subsection (1), nos. 1, 2 and 4; or 2. produces, stocks, imports or exports objects which depict or contain such symbols for distribution or use domestically or abroad, in the manner indicated in number 1, shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine. (2) Symbols, within the meaning of subsection (1), shall be, in particular, flags, insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting. Symbols which are so similar as to be mistaken for those named in sentence 1 shall be deemed to be equivalent thereto.
  
  Note: I do not agree with the German governments staunch policy against symbols but they're free to govern as they see fit (pending the EU's approval). If they want to keep selling the game in Germany, they might want to uphold German laws. I don't know how many gamers are in Germany but they have a population of about 82 million and I think that it's a safe bet some "texture, remaster, repackage" can be afforded for that market.
  
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  My work here is dung.
3. Re:Differences between versions by The+Ultimate+Fartkno · 2009-09-23 03:48 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Official notice. From this day forward, right angles are verboten. Enjoy your ellipses, damen und herren.
4. Re:Differences between versions by MightyMartian · 2009-09-23 03:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I think the anti-Nazi laws made sense in the first decade or two after the end of WWII, and maybe an argument can be made right through the Cold War, but come on. Is there anybody out there who seriously still has a Thatcheristic fear that they'll be burning the Reichstag again?
  Yes, there are some neo-Brown Shirt skin heads out there, and all the anti-Nazi symbolism laws in Germany and Austria haven't seemed to put much of a dent in them. Short of shooting anyone who looks remotely like a Hitler lover, I think the time has come and gone when the laws could be justified.
  
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5. Re:Differences between versions by discogravy · 2009-09-23 04:18 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  You forgot to capitalize "Damen" and "Herren". Yeah I know I'm being nitpicky. ;-)
  I think you mean that you're being a "Grammar [REDACTED IN GERMANY]"
  
  --
  FreeBSD for the impatient.
6. Re:Differences between versions by SoVeryTired · 2009-09-23 04:24 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The trouble is, laws like this are incredibly difficult to get rid of. What politician wants to stand up and denounce such a law, at the risk of looking like a Nazi sympathiser?
  
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7. Re:Differences between versions by Dayze!Confused · 2009-09-23 04:34 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Umm, I live in Taiwan and I can let you know that they still use a reversed swastika. I see it on every Buddhist temple (which is quite a lot) and on some of the more traditional residences. It's only a religious symbol to them here, most people don't even know that the Nazi party used it.
  Of course, these are the same people that think the word playboy means rabbit and have no idea of the brand's link to the porn industry. Gotta love Asian culture.
  
  --
  "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." [Thomas Jefferson]
8. Re:Differences between versions by gnasher719 · 2009-09-23 04:39 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I think the issue is with where to draw the line. Obviously, someone shouldn't be allowed to fly the flag of Nazi Germany outside their house, as that would be extremely intimidating to anyone living nearby who belongs to any of the groups Nazis don't like. By banning the swastika nearly outright, they avoid situations where someone could claim it was there for some artistic, ironic reason.
  Actually, it wouldn't be intimidating. If you tried this (and it was legal), I can guarantee that the flag, the flagpole, the garden fence, your windows and many other things would be gone very soon.
9. Re:Differences between versions by harks · 2009-09-23 04:41 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Jean Plantureux, the political cartoonist from France's Le Monde newspaper, came to talk to my college a few years back and explained that due to anti-Nazi laws they couldn't draw any swastikas on anyone. So what they do if they want to say somebody's a Nazi is they draw them with an armband with a white circle on it. Everyone knows exactly what the white circle means.
10. Re:Differences between versions by MightyMartian · 2009-09-23 05:00 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Immediately after the war, Germany was essentially under military occupation by the victorious powers. In effect, most of the normal liberties that the citizens could have hoped to enjoy (not that they actually had enjoyed said liberties since the Nazi rise to power) were suspended. The logic at the time was they did not want the provisional military government(s) undermined by an aggressive push by remnants of the Nazi party. It was the same justification used by the occupying military government in Japan to terminate all religious rituals and notions of divinity that the Emperor had enjoyed.
  In short, for better or for worse (and I think history indicates that in both Germany and Japan, for the better), these were moves to disestablish the regimes in question, not only to remove them (or at least in the case of Japan to castrate) but to discredit them.
  You won't find a bigger proponent of free speech than me, but if I was the military governor of, say, the British Sector in 1946, you're damned straight I wouldn't want any Nazis coming out of the woodwork to try to mount some sort of revolution. Six hard and bloody years had been spent toppling these bastards.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
11. Re:Differences between versions by Golddess · 2009-09-23 06:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Displaying the confederate flag doesn't generally imply a threat of violence.
  Maybe not to you...
  
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  "I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
12. Re:Differences between versions by Dogtanian · 2009-09-23 08:07 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  That way the neighbors can remind them what happens to nazis in the end.
  You mean by giving them a free trip to South America?
  
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censorship by Shakrai · 2009-09-23 03:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

Apparently this is the reason that it has to be pulled from the market. I don't know about you but I find the rationale for this type of censorship to be utterly absurd. So much for free speech.....

--
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
1. Re:censorship by Hatta · 2009-09-23 03:40 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  No kidding. Seems like Germans would have learned a thing or two about the negative aspects of authoritarianism. Censorship, even well intentioned, can easily turn into repression. Freedom of expression protects everyone.
  
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2. Re:censorship by Brian+Gordon · 2009-09-23 03:44 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Yeah, it's almost like Germany never ratified the United States Bill of Rights...
3. Re:censorship by DarkDust · 2009-09-23 04:01 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The law was done by the Allied Control Council and was then taken over into our "Grundgesetz" (constitution). So you can blame your politicians for our censorship, in a sense ;-) Still, most of us Germans regard the law to be a non-issue. It's meant to keep right-winged people from glorifying the Nazis. Normally, it's only an issue if you're right-winged or a game maker placing your game in WWII.
4. Re:censorship by VirginMary · 2009-09-23 05:36 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  You are incredibly naive! Not only was outlawing Naziism pretty much imposed on our government by your government and its allies, (so much for your "Freedom of Expression"), but you seem to think that putting some nice sounding principles into a constitution guarantees citizens rights. We have a saying in Germany: "Paper is patient." This means that you can write whatever you like down on paper but it doesn't necessarily mean anything! Communist East Germany had a beautiful constitution granting its citizens all kinds of rights which they didn't actually have in practice! Also it seems to me that what your constitution means changes with the composition of your Supreme Court judges. Furthermore it is extremely easy to ignore or misinterpret constitutions and countries ideals as witnessed by the many US citizens that firmly believe that the US started out and was intended to be a Christian state.
  
  --
  When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
5. Re:censorship by DancesWithBlowTorch · 2009-09-23 05:38 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Sorry, but you are ignorant.
  
  By quashing political dissent, you are becoming like the Nazis. Let the right wingers openly glorify the nazis, so reasonable moderate people can see just how awful they are. Here in the states we let the KKK march freely, and usually the protests over the march are bigger than the klan march itself. If you do not trust your populace to make the right choice when fully informed, how can you even pretend to be democratic?
  Freedom of Expression is guaranteed by the German Constitution. There are Nazi marches in Germany and the corresponding, much larger, counter-marches, just like those KKK marches in the state that you are referring to. Nobody suggested those were forbidden. The only "expression" that is expressively forbidden is denial of the Holocaust, and that law is simply a special, very strict case of legislation against libel.
  
  If you really want to prevent Nazis from gaining power again, don't outright ban them in your constitution. Codify principles incompatible with Naziism in your constitution. Freedom of religion, Freedom of Expression, etc. As long as Freedom of Expression is not protected by your constitution, it can be taken away from you. When (not if) that happens, do you really care if it was the Nazis or some other group?
  
  The German Constitution does not ban National Socialism. It codifies human and civic rights, like those that you mention, and several others (most importantly, the right to dignity). You have clearly never read it, otherwise you wouldn't lecture about it like this.
  
  German law strikes a different balance between Freedom of Expression and the Protection from Intimidation than the Anglo-American system, because of the country's history. Imagine living in what was arguably the world's most industrially advanced, culturally influential, progressive country. Then, one day, the houses of parliament are disbanded by armed paramilitaries. Your intellectual elite is driven into exile or killed. Almost all civic rights are abolished. About eight to ten Million Jews, politicial dissidents, Gays, Roma, mentally ill and others are killed. Finally, your country goes on to unleash the world's deadliest ever war, killing well above 30 Million people in the battlefields. I think you can be forgiven for outlawing the symbols of the movement that caused all this afterward.
  
  Jeez, people, everytime anything related to this law comes up, everyone starts crying censorship. There is one small bloody set of symbols that's forbidden. One stupid verse of a song, and one stupid greeting. That's it! It's not like Germany had a censorship agency. In most of the United States, you can't even take a piss in public! How's that for freedom of expression?
6. Re:censorship by dunkelfalke · 2009-09-23 08:16 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It doesn't even go that far. Nazi symbols are only forbidden when they aren't shown in a historical context.
  
  --
  "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Trotskydoom by Baldrson · 2009-09-23 03:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

So just release a modified version of Wolfenstein that focuses on commies rather than nazis called "Trotskydoom" wherein the objective is to blow away all of the Bolsheviks that are confiscating food from the farmers to impose the famine of 1921 on rural Russians. I mean, come on, there isn't anywhere in the world the hammer and sickle are outlawed and the commies killed far more than the nazis did so it should be even more fun than Wolfenstein!

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Seastead this.
1. Re:Trotskydoom by DNS-and-BIND · 2009-09-23 03:34 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The nazis are loved by nobody. The commies, especially Trotsky, are still worshipped and respected in some parts of the world. And not only ignorant parts, either - highly educated people believe in it! That makes it pretty much a no-go as far as video game villains go. You need someone who nobody sympathizes with, like aliens or nazis or corporations.
  
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  Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
so long ago by Lord+Ender · 2009-09-23 03:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's been over 60 years, Germany. You don't have to worry about symbolism bringing back the Nazi party; most of them are dead. Your reasons for denying the existence of history are over now. It's time to give free speech a try.

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1. Re:so long ago by Shakrai · 2009-09-23 03:46 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Your reasons for denying the existence of history are over now.
  
  German denial of history has nothing on the Japanese. Bataan death march, what? Rape of Nanking, what? Death railway, what? Those weren't in my history books......
  
  --
  I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
  We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Re:Am I the Only One by Shakrai · 2009-09-23 03:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

but the invisible-to-my-eye Swastikas are not?
Don't you know that human beings are so impressionable that all they need is to see a small swastika and they will instantly volunteer to help load the boxcars? Clearly we need a benevolent government to protect us from such evil.

--
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Swastika by Spatial · 2009-09-23 03:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

If it's so bad, why the hell do they censor it when the point of the game is to lay waste to everything it stands for?

Of course, rationality is far too much to expect from a censorship board.
Re:While it's really just a game.... by darkwing_bmf · 2009-09-23 03:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Shame the anti-Nazi folk couldn't give you a break
I'm anti-Nazi. Everyone here is (hopefully) anti-Nazi. That doesn't mean we should censor their symbols out of existence or try to ignore history.
Well, ok.... by Chairboy · 2009-09-23 03:34 · Score: 4, Funny

As long as the game doesn't include a map to Poland, we should be ok.
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2009-09-23 03:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Re:While it's really just a game.... by gnick · 2009-09-23 03:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

Ignoring history (or hiding from it) seems to be the basis of these laws. It strikes me as hugely contradictory to outlaw both denying the holocaust and displaying a swastika. It's an unfortunate historical relic - Deal with it...

--
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Don't mention the war ! by BigJim.fr · 2009-09-23 03:51 · Score: 4, Funny

Basil Fawlty: Is something wrong ?
4th German: Will you please stop talking about the war ?
Basil Fawlty: Me ? You started it !
4th German: We did not start it.
Basil Fawlty: Yes you did, you invaded Poland.
Re:Socially progressive... by WankersRevenge · 2009-09-23 04:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

What the fuck are you talking about? Not allowing Swatiskas in birthplace of the Nazi regime is somehow part of a worldwide trend on reducing freedoms? I know shit about contemporary German culture, but I can imagine that the swatiska is a emotional lightning rod for people there. You know ... the regime was responsible for the deaths of millions and millions of people. Sure, they aren't really dealing with it by hiding it, but that's their choice. This is a uniquely German issue, not some liberal plot to filter words or ideas.
Also, equating video games with suffering because it doesn't have blood or swatiskas in it is like saying some dude is suffering because his fajita wasn't served with sour cream. It's not suffering. It's whining.
Jesus ... I don't know who is a bigger ass ... you or the people who modded you insightful.
Fuck you! by PontifexPrimus · 2009-09-23 04:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Seriously, fuck you. And get back to me when you can say that on American television; until then, continue denying that anyone in America ever fucked.

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-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Re:The paradox is evident... by psyeye · 2009-09-23 04:26 · Score: 5, Informative

It clearly shows that you have absolutely no clue of what you're talking about.

Being from Germany I can assure you that Nazi symbols are not banned from any history book or documentation or whatever. But presenting Nazi symbols in another context than education (or similar) is not allowed.

This ban helps keeping Nazis under control - you have a simple thing in your hands to kick their butts with this law and others. Additionally, regarding the well known history of Germany there is NO REASON to show, wear or use Nazi symbols other than for a) education (allowed) or b) propaganda for forces against the German democracy (disallowed).