German Ban On Doom Finally Lifted

An anonymous reader writes "18 years after its debut, Doom, the game that almost single-handedly popularized the FPS genre (remember when we just called them Doom clones?) is finally seeing the light of legality in the nation of Germany. The lifting of the ban also applies to the beloved sequel Doom II. A release date has yet to be set. I recommend that Germans who have not found some way to play this game over the last 18 years, please do so upon its release. Despite its age, it's still fun as hell. (Pun very much intended.)"

No

[Anonymous Coward]

It was never "banned". It was not allowed to sell it to a person under the age of 18 (which was enough to discourage publishers from even trying). This was now reduced to 16. Apparently id filed a request to reexamine the old rating.

Captcha: massacre. How fitting.

Summary is misleading

[JoshuaZ]

Doom was on the index of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Department_for_Media_Harmful_to_Young_Persons [wikipedia.org]. When something is on the index is can be bought and sold but cannot be sold to a minor and cannot be sold in a shop that frequently has minors. This sort of law was originally intended to apply to porn but as a matter of implementation is a bit more difficult for videogames since minors are likely to go to videogame stores. Similarly, restrictions on how indexed media can be advertised make it difficult to advertise videogames. So the de facto result is that very few copies of games on the index are sold. But saying that the game was banned is incorrect. Prior to this appeal it was legal to buy and sell copies of Doom.

Re:Er- why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Play a bit harder and you'll find out, or idclev31 and idclev32 if you're impatient.

Not banned... but "indexed"

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom was not banned, but put on the "index", meaning you needed to be 18+ to buy it (and it was not allowed to be advertised). The information regarding the consequence of indexing is even linked in the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Department_for_Media_Harmful_to_Young_Persons#Legal_consequences

Re:First

[nemasu]

*sigh* it's just.....not the same anymore....

Re:Er- why?

[bigstrat2003]

That's Doom 2, not Doom.

Switzerland

[DrYak]

I believe wolfenstein was banned in Switzerland

For your information, Switzerland didn't even take part in World War II and never had a real Nazi party. Thus, there are no Nazi-hunt/anti Swastika laws similar to these in Germany.

The absence of Wolfenstein 3D on iPhone in Switzerland might be due to other reasons, like localization: ~75% of the population speaks German (actually local Swiss-german dialects, but they most can understand standard German too). As Switzerland is a to small market, you seldom see Swiss-specific localizations of software. Very often, the software company will simply market the Germany localization (and piss the 25% remaining of the population) or sometime the France version too (in the rare occurrence when they notice that more than 1 language is spoken in Switzerland).

As no localization of Wolfenstein 3D exists for Germany because of the Swastikas laws, and because Switzerland alone is a to small market to bother doing localization for it, there are no localization which could be sold in Switzerland.

Re:Er- why?

[ge7]

It was the allies, including Americans, that put those bans in place. So much for "the American way".

Re:Er- why?

[dunkelfalke]

The law was actually imposed by Americans together with the rest of the Allies after the occupation of Germany.