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In 6 Months, Australia Bans More Than 240 Games
dotarray writes with this snippet from (apropos) Player Attack: In the 20 years from 1995 to January 2015, there were 77 games Refused Classification in Australia. After January though, more than 240 games have been effectively banned by the Classification Board — an average of 40 per month. Most of these games are mobile- or digital-only releases you're unlikely to have ever heard of, with names like League Of Guessing, 'w21wdf AB test,' Sniper 3D Assault Zombie, Measure Bra Size Prank, and Virtual Marijuana Smoking showing up in just the first few pages. What games are banned in your country?
I agree, in US fewer and fewer games are banned (as a percent of all video games). This is because the number of avenues for games publishing is mushrooming, opening the door for many devs to publish games that wouldn't have gotten wide exposure before. At the same time, the costs of game development is dropping, creating a space for indie devs who aren't making the next AAA shooter.
This creates a vibrant scene where we're seeing games about topics that would have been unthinkable before, because they would have been considered unviable and not worth the investment. Games about censorship. Games about cancer. Games about all sorts of topics, including ones that would be banned under traditional media, either by a govt agency or through self-censorship.
It's the golden age of gaming!
The game Mino is banned in the U.S. because a district court ruled three years ago that The Tetris Company owns the exclusive right to make falling block video games using the seven one-sided tetrominoes. Tetris v. Xio . And I expect an eventual lawsuit against the Free Software Foundation over M-x tetris in GNU Emacs because Tetris co-founder Alexey Pajitnov believes that free software "should never have existed" because it "destroys the market".
the OP had it best. they can be effectively banned if they won't sell. the publishers will self censor and focus on games that will sell. if walmart, target, gamestop etc refuse to sell a game then that scares the publishers.
Note this is different than Australia, where if you are caught trying to import censored video games (or movies), you can be fined and the censored objects will be destroyed.
"People don't want to buy this game" is not the same as censorship.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You can have games with Nazis in it in Germany. But it has to be censored and all Nazi symbology has to be replaced or removed.
For example, the new Wolfenstein game from Bethesda is available, but the swastikas in the German version are replaced by the stylized "W" from "Wolfenstein", and "SS" symbols like the deathshead or the "SS" itself have been removed entirely.
Also, one scene where you wake up in a gas chamber surrounded by corpses has been altered and all corpses have been removed.
The original "Wolfenstein 3D" was completely banned in Germany, because there was no censored version available.
Personally, I think that is bullshit. Nazi symbols are generally illegal in Germany, but allowed under special circumstances such as for "artistic purposes". But then for some reason, they don't have to be removed from movies, such as Indiana Jones... I really don't see the justification for allowing it in movies but forbidding it in video games.
But that's not all. Extreme kinds of violence in videgames are almost always also banned in Germany unless softened for the German market. Fallout 3 for example, where you can blow up individual body parts, is also altered to be less violent.