Ubisoft Printed The Wrong Versions Of South Park Game For Germany, Forgetting To Remove The Swastikas

from the wait,-we're-still-doing-this? dept

With the release of the latest South Park video game, titled The Stick Of Truth, we recently remarked on how silly the attempted censorship of the game will be for releases outside of North America. The reason, of course, is that the full version of the game is and will be available for download outside of the approved channels. While most of the censorship stories revolve around some of the more sophomoric jokes in the game, which I of course love, leave it to Germany to teach us how fickle the sensibilities of some governments are.

Apparently the game was supposed to be released in the land whose motto is "Unity and Justice and Freedom" this week, but that's been delayed because the game's publisher, Ubisoft, accidentally produced copies of the game for Germany that still include images of the Nazi swastika. Such images, as you might be aware, are verboten.

Users are posting on Steam's forums that the German (and Austrian) versions of the game have been hit with an 11th-hour delay. The reason? That those versions contain "an unconstitutional symbol", and mean the game's release in those two markets is TBA.

Let me say this first: I get you, Germany. The embarrassment over the systematic murder of an enormous Jewish, homosexual, and gypsy population isn't the kind of sting that goes away easily. But here's a piece of advice: limiting symbols and speech in this manner isn't productive and certainly isn't in the spirit of the 86a section of the Strafgesetzbuch. Attempting to limit humor regards to your own past won't get you anywhere. Open dialogue is what admonishes fascism.

Take Americans, for example. We straight up murdered tens of thousands of Native Americans and then had the balls to refer to our policy as our "Manifest Destiny." Now we have football teams filled with the decendents of African slaves playing under the moniker of our Native American victims so we can sell beer to everyone else. And, sure, when you really think about it that way, it isn't funny.

But South Park is funny, and anyone that really wants to see a swastika enough to put forth a little effort in Germany can do so via a myriad of avenues, including downloading illegal copies of The Stick Of Truth. A constitutional requirement to omit parts of your history won't do you any good and may no longer be useful to your society.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, germany, south park, stick of truth, video game
Companies: ubisoft