UT2004 Editor's Choice Edition and UT GOTY do not appear on the GOG catalog: searching for "unreal" only returns Unreal 2 and Unreal Gold. If you then select one of these two, you get suggestions to buy UT GOTY and UT2004, Their links however do not work, and simply redirect you to GOG main game page.

Is this a temporary glitch, or are the games not available anymore?

Thanks

They're still indexed in germany, thats why they cant be bought with a german IP adress.

Exactly. The good news is that games are usually made available as soon as they are de-indexed, unlike Steam, where many games are still not available in Germany even though they have been off the index for years.

It is working for me.

Maybe some content is localized and not available based on Region.

Once they get added to your account, they are yours to keep forever, so if you really want the games there are three options.

1. VPN
2. Gift codes (eg via trading)
3. Wait for them to be offered as newsletter discount codes. I've done this for an Australian region blocked game.

Does the german index never get updated? Why are these ages old games like Star Wars: Dark Forces or Unreal Tournament still there? I assume the rights holders would have to pay for re-evaluation? Otherwise I see absolutely no reason for them to still be on there.

If a given medium is indexed, it stays indexed for 25 years, unless there is a successful appeal.

Dark Forces got de-listed earlier this year, and GOG removed the region lock. Those 25 years were up.

Unreal Tournament, though....that's probably still gonna take a while. The game was released in 2000 and indexed in 2002. So...we're looking at 2027 here. That is, if the agency doesn't choose to renew the indexing. :(

Interesting, I didn't know of this medieval-style censorship. Fits into the current Zeitgeist quite well, though.

Thanks for the explanations, guys.

You should go to https://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_gog_community_gifting_thread/page1 and ask if someone there would be willing to give you Unreal Tournament GOTY and 2004 as a gift.

25 years? Damn that's a long time. The fact that an appeal has to be given pretty much guarantees that nothing will get out of it sooner than those 25 years... Really don't envy you guys :/

Thanks. Then again, things have been getting better over the last decade on that front. If anyone had told me ten years ago that games like the Resident Evil 2 remake or Mortal Kombat X and XI would be released here without any problems, I wouldn't have believed it, either. >_>

Appeals do happen, though. And they have a chance of succeeding. The problem, however, is this: applying for an appeal isn't free, and many license holders would rather avoid spending money than taking the risk of their appeal getting rejected (which certainly can happen).

This, ironically enough, is where Bethesda/Zenimax sets a good example. They obviously have a real interest in being able to sell their products here. On their initiative, formerly indexed games like Fallout 3, Quake and Quake 2 and several others were delisted before their time.

After an appeal from Activision in 2002 for example, the ultra violent war simulation "River Raid" was already released after 18 years.
The even more gruesome "Paratrooper" had to wait for 25 years before it went free in 2010.

Hey, we are making progress! After all, we can finally buy games with swastikas in them since last year. That means, the uncensored version of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", the adventure game, can now be bought in Germany, whereas the movie it is based on has always been rated the equivalent of PG-13 without any censorship. Well, it still cannot be bought on Steam.

It’s kind of ironic that I had to use my VPN to buy UT2004 on GOG while I was able to biy the physical copy easily in the PC games section of a major store back then when it came out in 2004, or UT GOTY back in 2000.

Government censorship is usually neither consistent or rational.