Germany will start allowing Nazi symbols in videogames

A long-standing German law that bans symbols of the Nazi party and other hate groups has been relaxed enough to allow the images to potentially appear in videogames sold in the country. German law has allowed for exceptions to the ban on Nazi imagery for educational and certain artistic purposes, but until now, that exception - called the social adequacy clause - only applied to film, literature, and other art. Games never qualified for the exception, because Germany did not legally recognize games as art. That seems to have changed, and now the USK, Germany’s software ratings body, can cite the social adequacy clause when making ratings decisions for games and potentially sign off on games that use previously banned imagery. A statement from the USK (translated from German by Google) explains that using symbols associated with “anti-constitutional organizations” can be allowed on a case-by-case basis, so long as the use “serves the arts or science, the representation of events of the day, or history.” The USK is careful to point out that the exception isn’t general and that the underlying criminal code hasn’t changed, and that each piece of software that uses Nazi (or neo-Nazi, or Ku Klux Klan, or other designated groups) imagery will be evaluated on its own merits.

from PCGamesN https://ift.tt/2nxfWMz