If amazon.co.uk was in German (language) or could be seen in any way as targeting German customers, they'd be in trouble too. It's not about where you are but what you do.

Let's hope it works out better for them than "regional pricing will get new games".

Angela Merkel considers the internet "Neuland" (yet unknown territory), and you expect our politicians to treat videogames as a serious medium, let alone grasp what a videogame even is? ;)

They should take some lessons in the everyday reality of their minions anyway....

All this would never have happened, if all the non-voters would have voted for the "Piratenpartei" at the same time.

There is indeed a double standard in effect. According to German law, video games are not recognized as "art". Movies and books are.
That's why Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade can be shown at prime time on TV without any censorship, while the graphic adventure game based on the film had to have all the swastikas replaced with large black squares.
Similarly, all ads, posters and DVD covers for "Inglourious Basterds" were censored, whereas the film wasn't.

Hell, they even banned the sale of anti-nazi t-shirts, because they depicted a swastika being smashed into pieces by a fist. Apparently, the words "AGAINST NAZIS" above that picture were too subtle.

It's all about the pure usage of the "anti-constitutional" symbols. Context is irrelevant to them, because it's not officially "art" and so far, no developer or publisher of video games went to court to fight this.

^This, as much as i hate it. You can't have the cake and eat it...

If you fail your mission, the Nazis could win. Because of this it is propaganda material in the eyes of german judges.

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/296/f/4/dashie_table_flip_by_tomdantherock-d5e46om.gif
http://iambrony.steeph.tp-radio.de/mlp/gif/132918251043.gif
(Good for IKEA, they will sell more tables ;))

Or I'll just abandon ship. I'm in the US after all, and thus have the luxury of being indifferent to the rest of the world if I so choose. (Though not for much longer...)


By that point it will be the same list, since I expect the region-locked games will all fall into that category.

The one that really looms as a potential next list are "games for sale which have a censored version in some countries". I can totally see this happening as a mitigating move from GOG. "Would you rather we didn't offer the game at all in that country?" Which, to be fair to them, is a situation they can't win regardless of what they do.

Meanwhile, at Eidos Corporate Offices.

Oh! It’s just GOG being GOG again….

Regional pricing (I'm still waiting for releases that justify and are really dependent of this pricing method, Fair Price Package isn’t the same as Flat Worldwide Price btw), regional discount (I understand this one, but I don’t agree with it), broken website, slow support, lack of updates (already available on Steam for months) for certain games, removal of goodies from users accounts and now…

…regional locked games. If this is enforced by the German law, how have they been able to sell those games to Germans this whole time? Is this the result of some new law? If they are only abiding the Germans laws because they now have a German version of the website, I'm sure Germans would be happier without it and if this was the case then it’s just another stupid decision by GOG's part.

Since GOG likes to sugarcoat every statement:

Next time they will probably force us to use GOG Galaxy to download games because "the vast majority of our users already use GOG Galaxy and we feel like supporting downloads via website is not necessary anymore, oh! and have we already said it's faster and more convenient this way? Btw, here’s a freebie to you!"
And them BAM! DRM, because "the vast majority of our users is always online so it makes no difference if we use DRM or not and Good news!, this way you can have more games like 'Insert here titles that everyone wants but are only available with DRM' ".

The old, awesome, GOG is long dead, the more they grow, the more they will become identical to Steam, because they need to have a bigger catalogue and all the new games available day one to appeal to the Steam audience and gain market share and this brings shortcomings like regional prices/locks, more rubbish DLCs and seasons passes, etc. (sometimes they will have to abide the law, others they will follow the market already implemented nonsenses instead of fighting for what is right, etc).

And it's a matter of time until they (probably) start selling huge quantities of shovel ware like Steam, since we already have broken games like Interstate '76, Vertical Drop Heroes(Halloween version), Omerta(until recently), etc and some in alpha stage/buggy like Dead State and Caribbean.

Oh. I totally forgot that Condemned is owned by Sega. I was under the impression that it's an IP of Warner Bros., because it was developed by Monolith.

The problem with The Suffering, however, is that it also contains swastikas, at least in the US release. The EU releases edited them out, but I think they accidentally left on in (a tattoo on one of the characters), so that would cause troubles as well.
Yeah, I absolutely love that game. Unfortunately, the UK copy that I own is infested with a particularly nasty piece of malware commonly known as "Starforce Copy Protection".

Those aspects were, what got me here. Then GOG outed me, by arbitrarily changing the country displayed beside forum posts without notifying me - an information I never wanted to disclose on this site, I suddenly realized this when somebody pointed it out on the forum.

What cake? The cake is a ... ahem. Sadly, I don't think there is a great future for GOG in trying to be one of the big boys, as their USP used to be precisely that they weren't. I'd have no use for a GOG that's like all the other stores.

Those are very good images to illustrate a sane person's reaction to such logic.

Honestly I think it's just hipocrisy. From the outside it gives the impression that a lot of old people in the fatherland would be content with sweeping everything under the rug while whistling and looking the other way as if it never happened. That's the same attitude many politicians have towards civil war crimes over here. A position they defend while giving the most morose explanations with a straight face that makes me want to choke them with their own ties.

Knowing this attitude about nazi imagery, I'm surprised the downfall ever got made. It's a brutal movie, one that pulls no punches and shows Hitler, both as a human being and as an insane deluded monster. There are times during the movie you even pity him.

I'm betting it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.