Killergames

The German government is planning to ban paintball and laser shooting games in a knee jerk reaction to the recent school massacre in which 15 people died.

Under legislation agreed by the ruling coalition of the chancellor, Angela ­Merkel, using air rifles to shoot paint-filled pellets at opponents is likely to be made illegal, and would be punishable with fines of up to €5,000 (£4,480).

The decision, which is expected to be fast-tracked through the Bundestag before the summer recess, comes two months after 17-year-old Tim Kretschmar shot dead 15 people at his former school in Winnenden. Kretschmar's love of paintball as well as violent video and computer games was widely publicised.

This so-called game plays down violence, leading to the danger that people have fewer inhibitions about shooting each other, claimed Dieter Wiefelsputz, of the Social Democrats.

Owners of paintball arenas, which are already out of bounds for under-18s, said they felt they were easy targets in what opposition politicians have referred to as populistic placebo politics.

The new law is also expected to forbid under-18s access to high-calibre guns and to make it easier for police to carry out random controls at the homes of registered gun owners.

Germany’s government wants to rush a new gun control law through parliament, but has apparently ditched unpopular plans to ban paintball.

Deputy head of the Christian Democrats’ parliamentary group Wolfgang Bosbach told daily Bild that the rushed law would be made possible by tying it to legislation on explosives already under deliberation.

The law has been motivated by a school shooting in March that left 16 people dead when a 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer attacked his former school with his father's gun in the southwestern German town of Winnenden. The gun was not secured and the massacre has stirred up debate about whether the country needs stronger gun laws or a ban on violent video games.

Criticism from relatives of Winnenden victims has intensified. Head of the action group Amoklouf Winnenden, Hardy Schober, told daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that the new law would be simply cosmetic . His group wants a general ban on high-calibre weapons and handguns in private households. Gun owners would also have to store their weapons in gun clubs.

Initial reports on the new gun law said that the ruling coalition had agreed to ban simulated killing games such as paintball, where players use air rifles to shoot ammunition filled with paint at opponents, and laser tag, a game where players attempt to score points by shooting each other with an infrared-emitting gun.

But Dieter Wiefelsptz, an expert on domestic affairs for the Social Democrats, on Wednesday said lawmakers had abandoned the idea of making paintball illegal.

The government, however, plans to conduct an enquiry to assess whether paintball regulations should be tightened by increasing age limits and other measures, Wiefelsptz said. The sport is banned for those younger than 18, and is generally not played in military fatigues like in other countries. A report commissioned by the government in 2000 concluded it did not make people more likely to engage in violence.

Gamed Politics is reporting that Germany's 16 Interior Ministers seem to have banded together to ask the Bundestag to ban the production and distribution of violent video games.

Moreover, the ministers hope to see this accomplished before Germany's new elections take place on September 27th.

The move comes during a scheduled conference of interior ministers. School shootings, in particular the March 11th rampage committed by a 17-year-old in Winnenden, were prominently mentioned in relation to the group's demand for a ban on violent games.

If passed, such a move would affect not only German game consumers, but German game developers such as Crytek (Far Cry, Crysis). Under the proposed law, Crytek would apparently need to outsource development of violent games or even relocate its operations to another country.

A Earlier this month GamePolitics reported that German Interior Ministers were seeking a complete ban on the production and sale of violent video games within Germany.

Although the Bundestag has not yet acted on the ministers' ban request, an online video game retailer based in Austria claims that the German state of Bavaria has moved to blocked access by German customers.

VideoGamesZone.de reports that the Bavarian Commission for the Protection of Children Against Media Abuse filed a lawsuit to shut down Austrian online retailer Gameware.at. [GamePolitics suggest that this is being done by the newly created internet blocking law but it sounds more like the 'indexing' method that bans German companies from marketing or advertising the product].

Company spokesman Chris Veber told VGZ: We've called our lawyer and are appealing, of course... this is violating the freedom of expression and wrong specifications from the [German ratings body], since we are not sending our products out to minors and do not have videos showing violence at [our site]. We are not breaking any Austrian laws...

The economic consequence of the indexing of Gameware.at is that no one would be able to find us on Google, the advertisements would be gone, no magazine would be allowed to mention our name...

Veber conceded that violent games are big sellers for his company and that 80% of his customers live in Germany.

Germany has banned any public display of the immensely popular game CounterStrike .

As a result, tournaments have been cancelled - including the Convention-X-Treme tournament, as well as several Friday night game events. LAN parties are no longer permitted to play the game. Of course, in private dwellings, people are still able to play for now.

The move has come as a response to a wave of school shootings that the government has blamed squarely on violent video games. In fact, ministers have proposed that the production and distribution of all violent video games should be banned.

It remains to be seen whether the minister's requests will be granted, and that video games will be subject to further censorship. This is clearly a first step along that path.

Update: Violent Games Protests

9th July 2009.  See article from gamepolitics.com

While information to that effect is sketchy so far, talk of a ban would be consistent with our May report on the forced cancellation of a LAN event in Stuttgart which featured Counter-Strike and Warcraft III competitions.

German gamers aren't taking these repressive measures lying down, however. An estimated 400 gamers assembled for a June protest march in Karlsruhe. German gamer Matthias Dittmayer e-mailed GamePolitics to let us know that more gamer demonstrations are planned for later this month:

Because of this [censorship] there was the (as far as I know) first demonstration of gamers in Germany with up to 400 gamers. The next 3 demonstration in Cologne, Karlsruhe and Berlin are announced for the 25th of July.

A German nutter group has organized an event designed to get participants to bring their violent video games, tagged killer games, to in order to dispose of them in a trash can.

Aktionsbndnis Amoklauf Winnenden, or Action Alliance (loosely translated), has setup the event for this Saturday, October 17 in front of the Stuttgart State Opera. One game tosser will win a signed jersey from the German national soccer team.

The Action Alliance is made up, at least partially, of the parents of children slain earlier this year at the awful school shooting incident in Winnenden, Germany, which claimed 16 lives.

Update: Rubbish Idea

20th October 2009. Based on article from gamepolitics.com

The Killer Game Drive put on by Aktionsbndnis Amoklauf Winnenden over this past weekend appears to have been a failure.

The group was attempting to get people to come and toss killer games into a dumpster, and, well, while the Action Alliance did have a huge, graffiti-laden repository, let's just say that it probably didn't take them hours to empty it.

From pictures posted online of the event, it appears that just three games made it into the dumpster: a copy of Grand Theft Auto , Small Soldiers for the Game Boy Advance and one other unknown title.

A skip has been put here to collect videogames: Killerspiele , the name given to violent games by Germany's tabloid press.

Midway through the day, a cameraman from a local television station clambers over the skip's side. He needs a compelling shot for the piece that will run tonight, a story about how swathes of Germany's youths have seen the error of their hobby and brought their perilous playthings to this public burning. Crouching on its floor, he angles the camera upwards, while a young boy in a beanie and a puffer jacket leans over and hurls a copy of Grand Theft Auto in with an echoic clack.

The cameraman captures the premeditated moment from this particular angle because any other would reveal the truth of the situation: the skip is otherwise empty. By the end of the day, that sealed copy of San Andreas will be joined by Def Jam: Fight for New York , OpenArena and Small Soldiers , a sorry clutch of ageing titles that represent the full extent of German gamers' ambivalence to this most uncomfortable stunt.

...Read the full article

A group of Interior Ministers have been asking for a total ban on the production and distribution of violent videogames in Germany. 

Thanks in large part to a petition, such a ban will not be enacted in the near future. German website Game Captain reports that the 73,000 signatures captured on a petition against banning such games allowed the matter to be taken up in front of the Committee on Petitions. The petitioner was allowed to speak, and apparently asked more education on media be provided in place of the ban.

Parliament State Secretary Dr. Herman Kues, of the Federal Ministry for Home Affairs must have been swayed, as he announced that no changes to the current criminal code would be enacted. Instead the government will push for more public education of the PEGI ratings system.

The computer game Dead Island has been banned in Germany.

Speaking to GameIndustry.biz Germany, a Techland spokesperson said that they expected this to happen:

This isn't unexpected. Germany has its unique regulations regarding video games and violence and the industry can only comply.

Germany's Federal Department of Media Harmful to Young Persons (BPJM) classified Dead Island as List B. Such games cannot be sold anywhere in Germany, and anyone caught doing so can face legal action. Importing retailers run the risk of cargo being seized at German customs if they attempt to bring the game into the country.

The BPJM also didn't explain why Dead Island was banned in the country, but that is the norm for most bans.

Publisher Koch Media avoided German restrictions to some extent by distributing the German language version of the game in Austria.

Iran has banned the computer game Battlefield 3 because it depicts a U.S. military assault against the city of Tehran using tanks and aircraft.

All computer stores are prohibited from selling this illegal game, said an unnamed deputy with the security and intelligence division of Iran's police in a statement carried by the Asr-e Ertebat weekly.

An unnamed shop owner told the Associated Press. that Iranian police have raided (shops) and arrested owners for selling the game secretly even before the ban became public.

The Fars news agency reports on an online petition with 5000 signatures which claims a US conspiracy. The petition reads

We understand that the story of a videogame is hypothetical ... (but) we believe the game is purposely released at a time when the US is pushing the international community into fearing Iran.

It looks like the Spring 2013 follow-up to the Zombie-themed action-RPG Dead Island has been banned in Germany. In a recent interview with PCGamesN, Dead Island: Riptide creative producer Sebastian Reichert said this was due to the country's strict guidelines on the sale of violent media:

We have no censored version of the game so we cannot release it in Germany. It feels fucking awkward to have one of the most successful games in years and nobody in your country knows it.

German rules on violent media say that it cannot contain violence against human-like characters and mutilation of corpses. Games often have to be censored so as to be made acceptable for release in the country.