Crytek president and co-founder Cevat Yerli has issued a very substantial threat to his home country, stating that Germany's biggest PC developer will be forced to relocated if the country's authorities ban action games. Germany's war on videogames has reached ridiculous levels, and Crytek isn't going to stick around for the genocide.
"A ban on action games in Germany is concerning us because it is essentially like banning the German artists that create them," he explains. "If the German creative community can’t effectively participate in one of the most important cultural mediums of our future, we will be forced to relocate to other countries.
"The current political discussion will deprive German talent of its place on the global game development stage, and deprive German consumers of entertainment that is considered safe and fun around the world."
This is a brilliant move by Crytek and I hope it's a threat they sincerely pursue. Germany's authorities are going too far, planning a nationwide ban on any game that it deems too violent. Such social control is outright disturbing, and it's my sincere hope that the games industry withdraws all support from the country until its economy is damaged by a lack of creative studios and videogame purchases.
The German government needs to know that it can't get away with such obnoxious trampling of freedom. I hope many more artists and consumers follow Crytek's lead and tell Germany to STFUAJPG.
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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Contest:
8:40 AM on 08.05.2009
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Cant wait for Crysis 2 on Xbox, Crysis (1) would be nice too, tnx!
Germany's lose, some other country's gain. I just pity the poor people in Germany who have a shred of common sense and have to put up with this nonsense.
Germany is really to start over reacting.
- Shut up about the Nazi past. This has not a thing to do with it and in the entire discussion of the matter in Germany it has NEVER come up. Don't claim you're over it and we aren't, the fact that it's the first thing you bring up without any connection to it being there proves that.
- The bias against games has been going on for a long long time, though it had died down for a while after the rating system was revamped (it's still in the hands of an independent committee and not government linked) and generally there have been reasonable approaches to things. The rating system even features an 18 rating and a "not rated" inofficial 18 rating which still allows the game to be sold (i.e. not banned) but not being advertised or openly displayed.
- In general Germany has always been of the opinion that violence is worse than sex, with America having the exact opposite opinion. Basically germans think it's normal for a kid to have seen a breast, but not some guy being beheaded. Sadly sometimes this leads to games simply being censored (and no, the government did not enforce this, usually developers just tend to do it on their own to make sure they get a low rating, it's done just the same with "too sexy" stuff in games released in the US. I only know a handful of cases where there was an actual intervention from someone else than the developers, and it usually was the rating committee, not the government) generally by having green blood, no blood or taking violence right out. (which is IMO a logical error since I think shooting someone and he looks fine is more "reality distorting" than shooting someone and he winces in pain)
- The latest wave of bias against said games comes from the fact that we've had several school shootings in the last few years, aswell as, and here's the kicker, an upcoming election with the conservatives far in the lead, which at the moment are trying to break an almost 50/50 tie with the big socialist party they had last time.
- Germany's games industry isn't about action games. It never was. Germany's top games were stuff like The Settlers, the X: Beyond the Frontier series by Egosoft, Ascaron's stuff including Sacred 1/2 and a lot of football games, even more RPGs like Divine Divinity which just released another sequel etc.
That said, no, CryTek isnt particularly influncial here, neither will the loss of those jobs really be noticed since right now we're struggling to keep far far bigger employers alive.
Right now videogames here are as much a media scapegoat and political leverage platform as they are in the US, but instead of allowing violence and prohibiting sex it's the other way around, and to me it seems the outrage mainly stems from everyone else being used to having as much violence as possible and just having sexy bits censored.
This definately seems like an awesome case to take to the ECJ.
You may not like Crytek but is a respected developer (at least of new technology). And hi-tech jobs are high tech-jobs, is not only one developer leaving the country, is the image that action does on the country record. Next time you wont get a developer to install or do anything in Germany.
Hey! They can come to Uruguay! they would have a lot of uruguayans who would love to work for a videogame company.
It's an election, it's been a media and political scapegoat for a while, so everyone tries to capitalize on it. If you read the link in Jim's article you'll see a petition went up and through and basically got the message across that "if you fuck with games you will lose the election". Democratic process prevailed.
It's these clauses and checks in the german laws and constitutions that will ALWAYS prevent bullshit like this. It was the same for every outrageous idea in my entire lifetime. Maybe people are scared because in the US it could actually work, I don't know.
The irony in all this is.... CryTek guy here is doing EXACTLY the same as these politicians here. No one in Germany (as opposed to the internet) cares about what he says, I'd be surprised to even see it in the newspapers. He's merely going for a cheap attention grab and PR, and it's working since you all are going "Yeah CryTek! Stick it to the man!". He had nothing to lose doing it, so he did.
I hope the government realize all the nice £ they are losing with this.
Movies, internet sights.....etc videogames are not decendants of the devil or anything....geez.
Being from the U.K, they'd try the same crap here too, given a chance, yet see fit to spend the money that the games industry brings in.
Stinging nostrils aside, go CryTek. I mean, it's reasonable, why stay in a place that censors you? It's like living at home with parents who insist you eat red meat when you're trying to go veg, it's just awkward and it doesn't belong.
CryTek is a disgruntled teenager who wants to be accepted for who he is in his parents' home, and we all know what happens when parents drop the whole "our house, our rules" stamp, the disgruntled teen is out of there.
...or he cuts some kind of deal and festers in their basement... hope this made any kind of sense, anyway, back to eating my oatmeal.
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