14 DAY TRIAL // The Steam platform is a great way of sharing and gifting games to your friends, but if you’re from a country like Germany, for example, there are some limitations, especially for games that have something to do with Nazis or that go overboard with violence.
The German gaming market has always been a weird one. They have a really drastic filtering system for games, and they actually have strange requests for developers to change their games. Stuff like green blood or German dubbing is something considered normal.
As you can imagine, they don’t like to be reminded of the Second World War, but there are a ton of games with this theme and the German gamers want to have access to them as well. From the looks of it, there is only a perceived problem with Nazis in games, but players don’t really care.
On the other hand, the censorship goes well beyond this, and gibbing, for example, is not allowed. German players quite often need to modify their games so that they can get the same experience as the rest of the planet.
Sending games to German friends
A Reddit user posted a very interesting screenshot from Steam that informed him that he’s sending the game to someone who can’t play it. In this case, it was about Wolfenstein: The New Order. The Steam message says that “This is restricted gift that cannot be played in these countries: Germany.”
The overall opinion is that it should matter either way, but it looks like Steam doesn’t even allow the activation of the game if you receive it as a gift. Some users have suggested that it could be possible to activate with VPN, but that’s actually against the Steam TOS (terms of service) and it can get you banned.
In any case, if you have German friends, you can’t send them gifts that don’t comply with the laws in Germany.