Dead Island 2 is finally out and of course the players in this country want to talk about one thing in particular: the cuts in the German version. Once again, the USK didn’t want to issue a license plate and forced the developers to cut around on their game. At least that’s the impression it gives when Dead Island 2 (buy now €59.99 ) or Dying Light 2 last year missed a game mechanic that is otherwise found everywhere in Europe: chopping up corpses. This doesn’t bring any advantage at all in terms of game mechanics, but it still disturbs the immersion when the weapon simply bounces off the bodies lying on the ground without causing any impact.
I can only speculate about the additional effort for developers, but in any case I feel sorry for the poor bastards who are forced to write new code shortly before release – and that exclusively for the German market. The rest of Europe is much more relaxed and almost all EU members rely on the PEGI system, which in the worst case gives an 18.
In Germany, however, an “18+” classification is not the strictest measure. If the developers had decided to leave the corpse mutilation feature in the game, they would have risked their game being indexed in this country. Indexed games are considered harmful to young people and may not be advertised or openly sold after such a classification. They are then not available in stores, nor can you simply get hold of them on Amazon or Ebay.
Of course I can buy the game from abroad, but if the customs happens to inspect my package, my game will be gone – not a good deal for me for a full-price title. Indexing sucks for both gamers and developers, so it’s hardly a free decision for manufacturers to scrap certain features from an economic point of view.
Indexing instead of USK 18
That’s interesting, because games from 18 young people and children shouldn’t really be accessible, so there are double standards here. One could almost think that the German state does not trust the established security systems consisting of parents, shop staff, postmen and theft protection.
What is not available as goods cannot be secretly packed by a young person either. If I first have to dig out an item from under the counter, I tend to ask for ID and parents are more likely to think about the suitability of games for young people if they are under special lock . At the same time, of course, adolescents are much less tempted to want the banned games if they don’t see any advertising about them.
On closer inspection, indexing is really just for people to think along before handing an adult game to someone in development. But that still doesn’t explain the reason why 18+ games aren’t handled in the same way, after all they aren’t suitable for youngsters either.
But while indexed games are considered youth-endangering, 18+ games only count as developmentally handicapped. It sounds the same at first, but the difference lies in the urgency with which adolescents should be protected from the content in question. The “please don’t” for 18+ titles becomes a “no way” when it comes to indexed games. And it’s not about the maturity of adults who look after themselves, but about not trusting adults to look out for the well-being of young people and children.
