Germany has a pretty large amount of gamers, and unfortunately, those gamers often get the short end of the stick when it comes to having the violence censored out of their video games. There is a long history of video game censorship in Germany including the editing of the opening cut scene of Fallout, to the much more recent censoring of all Nazi iconography and references throughout Wolfenstein: The New Order. This pattern looks like it may be beginning to change, however, as the German branch of Bethesda took to twitter to announce that id’s new game DOOM would be released in Germany in its fully uncut and hyper-violent glory.
This will be the first time that any title in the Doom franchise will be sold in the country in its unedited, original form. Doom and Doom 2 were first made available in Germany in their complete form in 2011 (madness!). This was due to a decision made by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons, whose initial indexing of these games resulted in a 10-year commercial ban. The ban was dropped after Bethesda, who acquired the franchise in 2009, successfully made an appeal on the issue.
Are you so excited for the new DOOM that you have been practicing ripping the spines out of chicken carcasses? We would be very interested in hearing you opinions in the comments section.