Told you that today would be just another day...
- First regionally-banned game on GOG
- First day-one DLC's on GOG

You were just one day too early, today was the historical one. :/

I had to go searching for the day-one DLC. Very interesting.

I've done plenty of day-one (i.e. actual release date, not just WB or Lucas) purchasing here, but the latest offerings sure aren't making me pull that trigger.

From MaGog's logs for 25 February:

GOG has added "USK Rating: Approved without age restriction" to 59 games.





NOTE! ADDED FILE Seven Kingdoms 2 HD, downloadables, Patch 2.10C (in-game) (patch_seven_kingdoms2_hd_2.1.1.10.exe; Wed, 25 Feb 2015 11:31:52 GMT; 17,490,600)







NOTE! CHANGED Republique Remastered [Upcoming], title_fr: ***TO*** République Remastered

NOTE! CHANGED Republique Remastered Deluxe Edition Upgrade [Upcoming] [DLC], title_fr: ***TO*** République Remastered Deluxe Edition Upgrade

[At least the French got the accent aigu back. Well, for two out of three items...]

NOTE! CHANGED Republique Remastered Deluxe Edition Upgrade [Upcoming] [DLC], bonuses: soundtrack, making of République Remastered, 2 prototypes ***TO*** soundtrack (FLAC), soundtrack (MP3), making of République Remastered, 2 prototypes (Mac), 2 prototypes (Windows)

NOTE! CHANGED Republique Remastered Deluxe Edition [Premium] [Upcoming], bonuses: soundtrack (FLAC), soundtrack (MP3), making of République Remastered, 2 prototypes ***TO*** soundtrack (FLAC), soundtrack (MP3), making of République Remastered, 2 prototypes (Mac), 2 prototypes (Windows)

NOTE! CHANGED Republique Remastered [Upcoming], file_size: ??? MB ***TO*** 2.5 GB






NOTE! CHANGED Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, age_req: ESRB Rating: Teen (with Violence, Blood, Crude Humor, Language, Use of Tobacco, Violence) ***TO*** [None]

NOTE! CHANGED Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, os: Windows (7, 8) and Mac OS X (10.8.5 or newer) and Linux (Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17) ***TO*** Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8) and Mac OS X (10.7.0 or newer) and Linux (Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17)

NOTE! CHANGED Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, languages: Audio and text: English. Text only: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish ***TO*** Audio and text: English. Text only: German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish

NOTE! CHANGED Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, file_size: ??? MB ***TO*** 4.4 GB

NOTE! CHANGED Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, sys_req_linux: Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17, Processor: AMD Athlon X4 750K, Memory: 4 GB RAM, Graphics: Radeon R7 200, Hard Drive: 10 GB available space, Recommended system requirements: Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17, Processor: AMD Athlon X4 750K, Memory: 4 GB RAM, Graphics: Radeon R7 200, Hard Drive: 10 GB available space ***TO*** Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17, Processor: AMD Athlon X4 750K, Memory: 4 GB RAM, Graphics: Radeon R7 200, Hard Drive: 10 GB available space, Requires the following packages to be installed: libc6:i386, libasound2:i386, libasound2-data:i386, libasound2-plugins:i386, libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 and dependencies, Notice: this game comes with a 32-bit binary only, Recommended system requirements: Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17, Processor: AMD Athlon X4 750K, Memory: 4 GB RAM, Graphics: Radeon R7 200, Hard Drive: 10 GB available space, Requires the following packages to be installed: libc6:i386, libasound2:i386, libasound2-data:i386, libasound2-plugins:i386, libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 and dependencies, Notice: this game comes with a 32-bit binary only






NOTE! NO WINDOWS SYS REQS SECTION for Alf's Escape [DLC]
NOTE! NO MAC SYS REQS SECTION for Alf's Escape [DLC]
NOTE! NO LINUX SYS REQS SECTION for Alf's Escape [DLC]
NOTE! NO WINDOWS SYS REQS SECTION for Scrub Abe [DLC]
NOTE! NO MAC SYS REQS SECTION for Scrub Abe [DLC]
NOTE! NO LINUX SYS REQS SECTION for Scrub Abe [DLC]






NOTE! NO RELEASE DATE SECTION for Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number - Digital Comics
NOTE! NO WINDOWS SYS REQS SECTION for Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number - Digital Comics

And there you can see why the German rating system is a piece of sh**. Yes, there has to be a "everybody is allowed to play this game" sticker on the game to make sure that no one else ... wait a moment. I still cannot believe how stupid (and naive) our politicians are.

@Politicians:
The dumbest sheep are leading the herd as it seems.

I'm not allowed to sell the UK imports of Zeus, Pharaoh and Trine on eBay, because they have no German rating on them....
They were taken down almost immediately.

That is because a game with no rating equals a game with an 18+ rating as you may know. It is a very funny system those dumbasses have thought of. But in my opinion the saddest thing is that it will never prevent anything. The whole system only costs money, leads to pirating and prevents not one single underage kid to get a game they want. Helllooooo...we have a thing called internet. But unfortunately we cannot change it and we have to live with it :(

That's both cool for people who haven't gotten it yet, and sucks for people who bought the pre-order already who didn't already own the first two games (to get the 20% discount) as now they are likely to feel slighted for buying the game early. I guess there's no winning the pre-order game for the consumer or the developer. ;)

Part of me still wants to pre-order to support CDPR as they rock, but it's things like this that make me leary of pre-ordering anything at all ever. Will there be a 25-30% off temporary promo for people who own the first two games between now and release for example? What are the consequences of waiting to find out before spending money? That's rhetorical of course, the consequence is that by waiting I might get a greater discount (pro) and the cons of waiting it out are... um.... money accumulating interest in my bank account? Damn, that sucks! :oP

Humour aside though, I guess a greater discount on something is always a good thing for those who can/do act upon it anyway. Still, I'm gonna wait until they include a current gen video card bundled with the game (that isn't a GTX 970 <grin>) and then we're really cookin! ;o) Now, I know what you're all thinking - don't hold my breath on that, they don't bundle video cards with video games so that'll never happen. That is true when worded that way, but they very much do bundle AAA video games with video cards to encourage people to buy the video card. Same end result even if conceptually it is the opposite. So hopefully they have a partnership deal set up with AMD or nVidia for bundling of the game with new GPUs. :)

Juicy!

But games without any ESRB rating can be, and I believe often are, still sold in stores, and are readily available via online retailers. From the sound of it, games without a USK rating are effectively blacklisted in Germany, including legitimate online retailers serving German customers.

I really, really don't like this move on GOG's part. I'm guessing most German users would much rather have to make do with using the English version of the site than have a German-language version (which I assume is coming) with some games censored, and others unavailable entirely.

From MaGog's logs for 25 February:

NOTE! CHANGED Alf's Escape [DLC], os: Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8) and Mac OS X (10.7.0 or newer) and Linux (Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17) ***TO*** Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8) and Mac OS X (10.8.5 or newer) and Linux (Ubuntu 14.04, Mint 17)
[Same for Scrub Abe]

NOTE! CHANGED Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, age_req: ***TO*** ESRB Rating: Teen (with Blood, Crude Humor, Language, Violence)

WINDOWS, MAC and LINUX SYS REQS added to Scrub Abe [DLC], but not to the Alf's Escape






NOTE! CHANGED FILE Tower of Guns, downloadables, Windows installer, English, dl_mod_time: Fri, 20 Feb 2015 15:47:45 GMT ***TO*** Tue, 24 Feb 2015 10:00:01 GMT
NOTE! CHANGED FILE Tower of Guns, downloadables, Windows installer, English, dl_size: 576,562,424 ***TO*** 576,562,456

[As far as I know, a silent update with no file name change]

10.8.5 pshaw

Half-silent, thought it was already posted.

My mistake. Silent in this thread.

I'm not going to claim to be an expert on the German system, but as far as I can tell, a German-language version does not necessarily require changes to the offerings.

Only games on the BPjM index have severe restrictions on the terms of their sale (no marketing, no public display); while all games on the index are also unrated, not all unrated games are on the index. Unrated games not on the index must necessarily be considered USK 18, and there's no inherent problems with selling or marketing these games (as long as the buyer is 18 or older).

Admittedly, GOG does have some titles on the index, such as Carmageddon. These titles are still allowed to be sold, however. There are restrictions on the display of such titles, but to the best of my knowledge, these restrictions do not apply to stores located outside of Germany. They certainly don't seem to apply to Steam (Carmageddon is readily available for German users on Steam, in its full uncensored version), so there's no reason to think it would cause problems for GOG.

There are also a handful of titles that are banned from sale entirely, such as Wolfenstein 3D or Harvester - individuals are still allowed to import them, though. Admittedly, this is where it gets tricky, because not all of these titles are available to Germans on Steam - so they might end up the same way on GOG. However, Harvester *is* actually available to Germans, suggesting that sales on GOG might count as imports, and that there would be no restrictions here either. If there are restrictions, it would currently affect two titles (Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines and Harvester). Given that both titles have been available to German users here for quite some time (and both are past the initial 10-year period of the ban), that's a decent reason to believe it doesn't *have* to be an issue - much like how several games on GOG are actually banned in Australia, but only Hotline Miami 2 has it enforced.

Of course, I cannot know for sure if there is something in German law that would require things to be re-interpreted if German language was added. I also cannot know what GOG is or is not planning to do. However, there are at least several indications that things don't have to become significantly different; only 2 games are at any risk of becoming unavailable to Germans, and if anything else is needed for unrated games, a simple age check should be sufficient.