you know its funny. i live in a pretty old fashioned conservative country, so lots of things are "banned". but our government is too understaffed, underfinanced and incompetent to actually enforce any "bans" other than what comes through customs in packages or what is shown on local state television. and even that is dodgy, not like all packages are opened. and online censorship? forget about it, my government could never achieve such a thing.

so i feel bad for countries like germany or places like australia which DO have the finances and competency to actually enforce bans or censorship on things like video games.

also you noted japan, thats such an odd one. because they have both "censored" and "uncensored" versions of some games (like resident evil 2 remake for example). but the "censored" version is considered the "standard" version for japanese audiences. and the places outside of japan usually always receive the "uncensored" version

i saw the cs source clip when i was a kid and i genuinely thought it was a meme or a mod, i dont remember any of my german friends saying they had it though

Originally posted by salamander:

you know its funny. i live in a pretty old fashioned conservative country, so lots of things are "banned". but our government is too understaffed, underfinanced and incompetent to actually enforce any "bans" other than what comes through customs in packages or what is shown on local state television. and even that is dodgy, not like all packages are opened. and online censorship? forget about it, my government could never achieve such a thing.

so i feel bad for countries like germany or places like australia which DO have the finances and competency to actually enforce bans or censorship on things like video games.

also you noted japan, thats such an odd one. because they have both "censored" and "uncensored" versions of some games (like resident evil 2 remake for example). but the "censored" version is considered the "standard" version for japanese audiences. and the places outside of japan usually always receive the "uncensored" version

That's.. a unique situation where it's lucky they're incompetent then lol, censored versions of games are hella unnecessary, and L4D2 German version is depressing (I think the law that censored these games was lifted, and many games were retroactively uncensored though!)

I didn't know about the RE2 thing. That's very odd, made in Japan, but Japan is the one that gets the censored version? Usually Japanese games tend to adopt more cartoony violence to sidestep that I think, but a domestic product being censored in its country of origin is very unique indeed lol

Originally posted by trash can:

i saw the cs source clip when i was a kid and i genuinely thought it was a meme or a mod, i dont remember any of my german friends saying they had it though

CSS seems to have had 2 versions:
(USK 16 version)
(USK 18 version)

The former having the funny animation, the latter merely removing blood splats. I dunno why there are two versions.

I remember in Runescape you couldn't even really type sentences, or anything too long because it got flagged as a phishing url. Parts of words would even trip up the censor and just block out the whole word. You could hardly even have a conversation. It was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying.

Originally posted by Midori's Ghost:

I didn't know about the RE2 thing. That's very odd, made in Japan, but Japan is the one that gets the censored version? Usually Japanese games tend to adopt more cartoony violence to sidestep that I think, but a domestic product being censored in its country of origin is very unique indeed lol

it is specifically violence that is often heavily censored in the japanese versions of games. like you know when you shoot a zombies head in resident evil it explodes? not so in the japanese versions. there is blood but things like gore, decapitations, limb loss etc are all often subject to heavy censorship.

it actually kind of makes the japanese versions of some games look "cheaper" than the international version, because they had to go in and get rid of animations or sloppily censor cutscenes.

at least its not chinese censorship of blood though...where they sometimes turn it white. you can probably imagine what that looks like.

Some people really cannot move on huh 🤔

people got weak... and perverse..

nudity was a much bigger no no in games (as it was in general society.. and should be)

violence was much more accepted
dungeon siege had enemies that exploded in visable chunks of flesh flying everywhere..
a game like carmageddon let you drive pedestrians and gave bonus points for hitting grannies and children..
no idiotic handhelding you wanted to kill children in an rpg you could nobody artificially made immortal..
morrowind had all that AND skooma (drugs) with litteral scooma pipes and spoons laying around... as well as a den of earthly delights thats just a brothel....

all this can excist and it is suited for 12 year and older players
but a boob : 18+ for sure..
yet there were brothels but all it was was ladies in bathing sude dancing a bit.. and if you took them to a room.. all you would see was a black screen than back in the bar with her complimenting you... as with movies.. suggestion not visuals was all you needed..

but you bet : woke propaganda crap not present in games...
sure some game allowed you to play as male or female.. and they even allowed marriages or flirting.. but only straight.. as it should be.

today games are full of woke crap..
but don't you dare squad a bug... or show some guts or blood...
the world on it's head..

not saying everything must be dark.. I dislike that every movie these days must be "dark" I liked the more optimistic classic hero vs enemy.. let heroes just be heroes...
and I never liked the whole zombie themse or postapocaliptic nonsence nor ever cared much for shooters... and there is no need for unneccecairy gore.. it does not have to become an torture glorification sm kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥..
but when you slay an ork or goblin or whatnot... with so much overkill in your shot.. the SPLASH sound with some blobs of red gelatin fling around and a red stain on the ground... is satisfactory especially if that only happens with massive overkill force and they normalluy just drop down...

but in today games when enemies just disapear (cant even show a corpse even one thats basicly just an uninjured looking npc on the ground) any more..

it is one step removed from replacing your sword or gun for a magic staf and have people you hit just be transported away on a magical rainbouw on a pink unicorns back... while chimes sound and gold glitter rains down...

it's the same nonsense as we see with those kids that not get a spanking when needed.
people grown soft..

TUNA DIVER
Don't be a tuna head!

I guess someone was hungry. And not for exploded hamster.

Originally posted by De Hollandse Ezel:

nudity was a much bigger no no in games (as it was in general society.. and should be) violence was much more accepted

this is one of the biggest differences in censorship between east vs west. in the east nudity/sexuality is often fine and not subject to much (if any) censorship, whereas violence is heavily censored.

meanwhile in the west nudity/sexuality is often censored, but gruesome levels of violence are often fine and rarely if ever subject to censorship.

Mortal Kombat got a SNES port without blood.

Originally posted by Pierce Dalton:

Mortal Kombat got a SNES port without blood.

AVGN did a good video about it, about all the many different versions of mortal kombat. including the censored ones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCUtXD27UyQ

back in the 90s there was a game called carmageddon which involved running people over. when it released all the humans were zombies with green blood but there was a "blood patch" that made all of the blood red.

Tell me you just found out that different countries have different cultures, and laws crafted around their histories and societal standards, without telling me.

Originally posted by salamander:

...

White blood... interesting choice. Speaking of which, I hear often that depictions of skulls altogether are forbidden in Chinese stuff and are thus often censored. Not sure how true that is or what examples there are though.

Originally posted by Chaosolous:

Tell me you just found out that different countries have different cultures, and laws crafted around their histories and societal standards, without telling me.

lol?