Germany To Relax Nazi Symbolism Ban In Games And Media

Germany To Relax Nazi Symbolism Ban

Despite Nazi’s being a rather popular theme of antagonist in films and games, as you can imagine, Germany is quite sensitive to the past. It’s not that they ignore it if anything, quite the contrary. They are very keen to ensure that Nazi symbolism is never promoted in any way within the country again. This has, however, led to a few instances where the decision has just been weird.

For example, in the Wolfenstein 2 game, Hitler was given a shave (no, I’m not joking) and all swastikas were replaced. In a relaxing of this stance though, a report via GameIndustry has found that the German classification board will now consider ratings for films or games that include Nazi-related content.

A Big Shift We Suspected Was Coming

We had suspected for a while that Germany was about to soften its terse stance on this matter. This is a matter that was currently in the hands of German law stating that any “unconstitutional organisations” could only be represented if “[the] symbols serve an artistic or scientific purpose, or depict current or historical events.”

For games and films which depict alternative history or fictional plots, this proved to be quite a difficult hurdle to bypass and as can be seen in the video below, when they did, it just looked silly.

What Will This Mean Moving Forward?

Well, put simply the use of such imagery will now be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Put simply, a blanket ban no longer exists. That still doesn’t necessarily mean to say that Nazi imagery will still be allowed. If it is, however, within a reasonable context, the German censorship board will likely allow it to pass, albeit under perhaps a stronger age rating. That doesn’t, however, mean that a free reign will exist either, but I think it is a sensible move.

What do you think? Is this a sensible move? – Let us know in the comments!