Gamer Contraband (Games Banned in this and other countries)

[Kaebora]

The strange but true fact is that numerous countries ban games for various censorship reasons. Violence, cruelty, sexual content, and even portraying a country as the antagonist can trigger such a ban. Take a look at this list, and lets discuss.

List of Banned Video Games

One that they failed to list in there is that Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and every Zelda game after it, has been banned from Iran. This is said to be true by IMDB. The reason? I still can't site any sources saying why.

Some of the more interesting bans involve Pokemon being banned from Saudi Arabia for "promoting Zionism and concerns regarding to gambling", and Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction bannd from South Korea for "plausible future civil war with North Korea". In 2002 the Greek government passed the ambiguous and controversial law which effectively banned all electronic games, including those running on home computers. The law is currently suspended as unconstitutional; therefore, it is not being enforced. Wow.

[Grey]

I can picture a comic with Mario in a Greek Jail in handcuffs.

[W'rkncacnter]

Has anyone ever heard of Michael Atkninson?

This is the guy who makes buying any game more mature than Psychonauts nearly impossible in Australia. He is probably one of the most hated people by gamers in the world (of those who know about him) and Yahtzee Croshaw probably hates him with a fiery passion.

I do too; who else does?

[Grey]

Yes it doe's. Some people just are total thought police.


Give me a break on some of the titles.

[Wselfwulf]

I do too; who else does?

Yep, I certainly do.

[JoshuaMadoc]

You should prolly come to Indonesia some time. I've seen little kids play Resident Evil Arcade with their nannies once.

[Grey]

Poke'mon is banned in the middle east because it is belived to demonstate gambling. And because some of the characters you play against are female.

[Aki]

On a related note, some games evade bans by censoring their content so the game can at least be sold.

The most recent example of this is "Left 4 Dead". The game for North America, UK, most of the world, etc is very gorey. Powerful gun blasts (hunting rifle, shotgun, etc.) will blow limbs or heads off the Infected who hound the four survivors, one Infected exists solely to explode messily (and leaves behind his bottom torso, eck) etc.

Gorey game.

German version? The Box Art itself is censored (the box art depicts a rotting hand with the thumb bitten off, the German version is simply a bit green and the thumb is folded behind the palm, lol) and the game more so. Green blood, no decapitation or amputation via gunshot, bodies vanish the instant they hit the ground, etc.

Very silly.

[Terastas]

Poke'mon is banned in the middle east because it is belived to demonstate gambling. And because some of the characters you play against are female.

I think the "promoting zionism" might stem from the fact that the many legendary pokemon come with. . . Well, legends attached to them. Pokemon has its own sort of mythology, and Saudi Arabia tries to discourage as much free thinking as possible.

Another one I remember hearing was that Pokemon was banned in Turkey because some dumb kids allegedly were pretending to be flying types and jumped off a balcony or something like that.

Has anyone ever heard of Michael Atkninson?

My understanding is that he's the Australian equivalent of Jack Thompson.

If it's any consolidation to the Aussies here, I looked at that list of games banned in Australia, and not counting the ones that were listed as "censored" instead of banned, I think you're only really missing out on one decent title (Silent Hill: Homecoming). All the others listed as banned were. . . Well, in my personal opinion, they range anywhere between "meh" and "bleh."

[W'rkncacnter]

Has anyone ever heard of Michael Atkninson?

My understanding is that he's the Australian equivalent of Jack Thompson.

Not exactly; he's a senator in the Aussie govt. Imagine Jack Thompson (or 'Wacko Jacko', as some of my friends call him), not disbarred, with legislative power. Scary.

[Kaebora]

It must be infuriating that Aussies have to deal with that. Well, on the brighter side, they can just mod their system and download the games off the internet. Then, BOOM! You own contraband!

[Noir-Okami]

Banning games is stupid. Now, why bother, if you look at other actually dangerous stuff? People marketed beer and tobacco to the underaged, considering that you could die in a crash from drunk driving, or get lung cancer, ect. So why?

By the way, speaking of Jack Thompson...

My brother has a friend. This friend apparently emailed Jack and ended up recieving a reply. This reply included calling him a stoner, even though he isn't...

So, if you freak out over violent games, maybe we should ban:

The Bible, any murder mystery, just about every horror movie, ect. to where we were only left with Barney and Teletubbies. That would really change their tune. (And I'd die from lack of mysteries and werewolf movies...) That, and it wouldn't be plausible unless we go all 1984.

That's my two cents.

[Vagrant]

1984

The year, or the Orwell dystopia? To be honest, I think that were we to ban most forms of expression and escapism, then we'd arrive at a dystopia pretty quickly. So that was cleverly double-edged, intended or not.

[Kaebora]

The United States, Canada, and United Kingdom have been gracious enough to allow the sale and ownership of any kind of media. However, there is only the requirement of regulating who it is sold to. No games were banned from these countries, but rather became limited in their sale by increasing the rating to Adults Only. Freedom of speech is still limited in that regards, but is a lot better than the rest of the world. All attempts by lawyers to ban games turns into a circus in the Supreme Court, who give it the big red stamp... "UNCONSTITUTIONAL".

Lead by example, unfortunately isn't the case on planet Earth.

[Midnight]

.

[Vagrant]

I read up on the CBLDF out of curiousity, along with their background and why they were formed, it was quite interesting. It seems the basis on why they were formed revolves around the ex post facto problem, wherein a store was victimised and bullied for the sales of an item. But that item must have passed censorship somewhere in the US to even reach those shelves, surely?

There have been many cases of ex post facto censorship and that's something I really don't like. I even remember an instance where a game had to be pulled back in for a different rating (a much more mature rating) simply because modders could add things to the game that weren't originally part of the game. Now the developers of that game are afraid to release development tools for their new games out of the fear that they may see this reoccur.

And the problem is, when bullying like this does occur, people feel less free to be expressive in the future, as I've detailed above. And that's regardless of what the laws may currently be.

[Kaebora]

Speaking as someone in "the rest of the world", you'd have an uphill battle trying to convince me that the American system is in any way superior. Here, in the exceptional case when something is prohibited, its rating and the reason for it is down there in black and white from a neutral body that dispassionately looks at the questionable material. (In at least one of the three examples given it seems possible that the game has been caught by a part of the law that is aimed at extremely perverse sexual practices.) I'd count that as far superior to the American system where creators or retailers can be victimised for publishing or selling something that is legal in some circumstances but not in others. I suggest you do some reading up on the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund to see how the American censorship system isn't quite as rosy as you thought it was.

The subject at hand is video games, and the point I was making is that we get off easy in the USA as far as censorship is concerned. Even in the comic industry, if a comic cant make it to shelves, the artists can still legally sell copies via an internet publishing source. That's actually the only way I ever bought comics due to my liking of the independant artists, but I degress. Games are fairly uncensored, but are rated like movies. The only censorship in video games is by the hand of the game creators so they can drop their rating from M to T, or to make it sellable in other countries.