Quoting: CGullWhy is this kind of political censorship accepted for games?

It would be prudent to wait for confirmation on the exact types of prohibited content included in the questionnaire before knee-jerking about censorship. Any developer with a game on Steam should be able to check it out and report back. We've got several here on GOL.

Or someone fluent in German legalese can probably dig out the relevant laws and regulations. After all, that's what Valve has to comply with here.

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Quoting: grigi15 years! Wow, I remember when I discovered this site, it was just about when Happypuppy stopped posting things. Am I that old?

Yes, you're officially more than 15 years old now.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: EikeHow about setting all games that are not getting set anything by developers/publishers to 18, the maximum restriction age? Would be far from being unpurchaseable...

I suppose that still wouldn't fulfil the requirement of accurately identifying the "kinds of content" that are not legal in Germany. Steam would have to assume that every game contains such content and hide everything by default anyway.

Age restriction and actual illegal content are independent, and to the best of my knowledge (unlike AFAIK the USA?), they do not need to state reasons for the age restriction (like alcohol, drugs, violence, whatever). So I think this would fly.

According to the article, this questionnaire covers both, and the end result is the same. The age rating and content restrictions are two separate things, but both need to be actively confirmed by the seller. If a developer says that their game is appropriate for all ages, and it looks like it's a minimalistic puzzle game that isn't likely to break any laws, there still needs to be a formal disclosure from the devs before Valve is allowed to offer that game to customers in the German market. Just some classic red tape for you.

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Quoting: StellaIs this a joke or something? How can they force everyone to comply to this retroactively when many game studios are long since defunct? What the fuck? Do they have any idea how many old games would simply become unpurchaseable because of this?

Someone is getting paid for the games purchased on Steam, be it a third party publisher or whoever. There's no "abandonware" on Steam. Every product on there is supposed to have an active owner. But sure, this will probably hide a bunch of games from German Steam users simply because a developer/publisher/whoever is in charge of a game doesn't fill the questionnaire.

As to how they can do this, I suppose any sovereign nation is allowed to decide what is legal and what is not, and any business operating in that market will have to comply or get out. And seeing as it's a relatively large market in this case, most devs/publishers will find it in their best interest to go answer those questions.

Quoting: EikeHow about setting all games that are not getting set anything by developers/publishers to 18, the maximum restriction age? Would be far from being unpurchaseable...

I suppose that still wouldn't fulfil the requirement of accurately identifying the "kinds of content" that are not legal in Germany. Steam would have to assume that every game contains such content and hide everything by default anyway.

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Quoting: Cato-the-youngerI dont read German. Give me an English language source to verify.

Why would you even dispute the fact that even poor men had the right to vote in many democracies well before women? If you claim to have researched this and can't find any evidence, I can only conclude that you intentionally skip over any source that doesn't seem to back up your claims.

I'm no expert on history myself, but here's a neat timeline of women's suffrage worldwide, and it has some surprising outliers. The famously "direct" democracy Switzerland only gave women the right to vote in the seventies, with one of their cantons (states) resisting this until 1991, when they were forced to comply. Swiss males have been able to vote since 1848. (If you don't trust the source, all the dates are independently verifiable, and there are links to references at the end.)

Quoting: Cato-the-youngerThe blatant lies and misrepresentation of history by the woke crowd for their own political agendas is absolutely sickening and tiring.

Says the person whose "knowledge" of history seems to be based entirely on misinformation and talking points from manosphere influencers grifters.

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Quoting: mikosenigma

Quoting: DrNickHoly shit it worked!

Does your comment suggest that you were able to run The Crew 2 on Linux?

I think he's talking about the Stop Killing Games initiative having an effect.

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Quoting: chrThank you for that insight! For the record I'm apparently on Mesa 23.2.1.

If you're on Kubuntu like your PC info says (or any Ubuntu derivative) and want the latest stable Mesa from a reliable source, I recommend kisak's Mesa PPA. I've used it for years without any problems on multiple systems.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kisak/kisak-mesa
sudo apt update

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Quoting: slaapliedjeI grew up somewhat poor, inherited clothes from my older brother, father and brother are mentally ill. I still managed to turn my interest in computers into a well paid career. The USA is one of the few places where that is perfectly possible.

Would you believe this is actually even more likely in countries where education is free or at least very affordable? Saying this as a fellow professional nerd who grew up relatively poor.

Statistics on complex issues like this are tricky, but you might consider the social mobility index to be relevant.

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Quoting: KlaasThat's wrong. I enjoyed Quern very much.

And they are re-doing Myst every few years. And they've started to do the same with Riven (2024).

Quern was inspired by Myst based on their Kickstarter blurb.

I get that you're not a Cyan fan, but you'll be happy to learn that based on the first few minutes of gameplay, the puzzles in this game aren't very Myst-like.

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Quoting: Klaas

Quoting: tuubiA Myst-like with Day of the Tentacle style puzzles wouldn't be a Myst-like.

Why? What about Quern? And Obduction? What is a Myst-like?

Spoiler, click me

Does it have to have the exact same puzzles? Is that why Cyan keep remaking all their games all time?

Quern and Obduction are are clearly Myst-likes, and "inspired by Myst". One of them is even made by Cyan. I enjoyed both of them.

Referring to your spoiler, why do you think the puzzles are the same in all Cyan games? Because the mechanics are often similar? Are the puzzles in every classic Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure the exact same ones as well?


You know what? Don't answer. I don't think this discussion is going anywhere. You don't enjoy games in this particular genre and wish the developer had made a point-and-click adventure instead. I guess that's fair, but not very productive.

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