The influence of Tencent on game content.

Jacques d'Orleans

Banned
Jacques d'Orleans
Mole HD said:
You obviously don't play IL2 BoS or historical military games, do you?

In IL2 BoS for example, we have to mod the game ourselves if we prefer historical markings on the German aircraft since the image and portrayal of the hakenkreuz is forbidden in Germany.
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Historical military games? No game, maybe except the IL2 series comes even near historical accuracy, specially not games like CoD and Blunderfield.
The Hakenkreuz and also all other insignia of that nasty historical group are illegal in Germany in video games. There also are similar laws in Austria, France, Ukraine, Hungary, Russia. Albeit contrary to popular believe showing and usage of
Insignia (e.g. in video games) is legal in Israel.

The german law itself is quite full of loopholes, e.g. If you have an original BF 109 in a museum you can show it in a historical Luftwaffe colorscheme including the Hakenkreuz, if you have a replica (e.g. a Hispano Aviación HA-1112 rebuilt into a BF 109G-2) you can't show the Hakenkreuz. There is a reform of that law in sight but it will still take a few years to get done and to be quite frank there are more pressing issues in Germany right now than the historical feelings of some Luftwaffles. :p

[heart] MC.202[heart]
 

Backer42

B
sleutelbos said:
LOL. Good to hear there is no censorship in germany, as long as you bring the right message in the right format as determined by the government. Glad we got this misunderstanding out of the way.
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This is essentially how it works, if you want to touch delicate subjects. And what is considered "delicate" is subject to regional customs.

You get in the exact same kind of trouble, if you touch subjects considered inappropriate in the US. And even if its not the government intervening, having your game banned from retail chains, Steam, Apple App Store and Google Play nets the same end result: your product ends up as commercial failure.

In fact the government rarely intervenes in Austria, France, Germany etc. as well. It's usually the stores which simply don't sell your games, if you happen to put insignia on the front of the box (extreme example). So publishers edit their games preemptively (without being forced by a censorship authority), because in the end sales matter more for them than "fighting censorship".
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Backer42 said:
This is essentially how it works, if you want to touch delicate subjects. And what is considered "delicate" is subject to regional customs.

You get in the exact same kind of trouble, if you touch subjects considered inappropriate in the US. And even if its not the government intervening, having your game banned from retail chains, Steam, Apple App Store and Google Play nets the same end result: your product ends up as commercial failure.

In fact the government rarely intervenes in Austria, France, Germany etc. as well. It's usually the stores which simply don't sell your games, if you happen to put insignia on the front of the box (extreme example). So publishers edit their games preemptively (without being forced by a censorship authority), because in the end sales matter more for them than "fighting censorship".
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Except that the government explicitly banning certain icons, pictures or themes is censorship, regardless of how often they intervene, whereas corporations choosing not to do something based on a profit/loss analysis is not.
 

who?

who?
Kaocraft said:
A language filter is censorship. That's not debatable. My question is why are they doing it? We got on fine without it until now, and suddenly it's being forced into the game. I'm wondering if these strict controls on speech in-game are also one of those "one size fits all" implementations designed to appease the requirements of a particular government, but imposed on everyone and everything just because it's easier to implement that way. I don't claim to know the answer I'm wondering what other people think about it.
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If you're talking about ED - it's probably because from 3.3 onwards we have system-wide chat (i.e. cross-instance chat). That means your chat will likely be filled with more chat from complete strangers, and if that's invective-filled, it'll start ing people off pretty quickly. Being able to turn the filter off - on incoming messages - would be a nice option.
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
who? said:
If you're talking about ED - it's probably because from 3.3 onwards we have system-wide chat (i.e. cross-instance chat). That means your chat will likely be filled with more chat from complete strangers, and if that's invective-filled, it'll start ing people off pretty quickly. Being able to turn the filter off - on incoming messages - would be a nice option.
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You can hide system wide chat...
 

Kaocraft

Kaocraft
who? said:
If you're talking about ED - it's probably because from 3.3 onwards we have system-wide chat (i.e. cross-instance chat). That means your chat will likely be filled with more chat from complete strangers, and if that's invective-filled, it'll start ing people off pretty quickly. Being able to turn the filter off - on incoming messages - would be a nice option.
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Could be.
Still, the filter is applied to everything not just system wide chat.
 

Riverside

Riverside
Kaocraft said:
Could be.
Still, the filter is applied to everything not just system wide chat.
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For the sake of argument and to avoid going down the political route this thread has so far managed to avoid, perhaps someone could lay down a reasoned argument why there should not be a swear filter. I can see justification for it not being OTT, but no compelling reason not to have one at all. That doesn't mean there isn't one ;)
 

Shinji Ikari

Shinji Ikari
Riverside said:
For the sake of argument and to avoid going down the political route this thread has so far managed to avoid, perhaps someone could lay down a reasoned argument why there should not be a swear filter. I can see justification for it not being OTT, but no compelling reason not to have one at all. That doesn't mean there isn't one ;)
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Why not have a switch? You get the best of both worlds.
 
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