Dead Island: Riptide dev slams German Censorship Board

By: Moses Abaortae

  |   December 5th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

The game’s creative producer, Sebastian Reichert, has a go for the inconsistencies of the institution comparing Dead Island’s ban to Gears of War being allowed to be sold in German retail outlets.

The German Censorship Board is one of the stricter ones in the world. It does not allow games to be released in the country that do not pass their extensive policies. Blood needs to be coloured green and excessive violence is rarely permitted. In fact, anything that is human like and ends up being killed in one way or the other in the game is a strict no-no.

Many publishers have their developers alter much of their games if they want to stand a chance for approval to be sold in Germany. However, one member of the video game industry, Sebastian Reichert, who happens to be the creative producer of the upcoming Dead Island: Riptide, has called out the institution on its double-standards and inconsistent policies.

He argues that the likes of Gears of War 3 are sold in the country, despite their enemies being rather human like and with the game even having a sequence involving a flamethrower and flames coming out of the victim’s every body part being allowed in stores while a game with zombies isn’t.

Reichert began by announcing that there would only be one version of the game and that too would not hold back on the gore, “We have no censored version of the game so we cannot release it in Germany.”

He went on to vent his frustrations as well, “It feels ******* awkward to have one of the most successful games in years and nobody in your country know it.”

The creative producer explained where there were and were not any issues when it came to passing the censorship board, “It doesn’t matter what (the enemies) are, as long as they’re human-like then you have a problem.”

He conceded that the first game had issues that meant the German board would never approve of it, “For Dead Island in particular it was a problem that you could attack the zombies when they are dead, because that’s mutilation of corpses.”  Before comparing that to the excessive violence in Gears of War 3 and how that game was not banned as well, “At the moment I’m really confused that you can buy Gears of War 3 in stores in Germany but not Dead Island.”

The creative producer argues that the enemies in both games are human like. But what about the readers; is the German censorship board being a bit too harsh on the matter or is there enough sense behind the policy to warrant your support on the matter?

Let us know in the comments section below.