WarMachine’s parody visual novel, Genius! NAZI-GIRL GoePPels had a difficult time making it onto the Steam store. The game was held up in review by Valve for some time before finally launching on Steam near the end of March. Well, months later the property managed to catch the attention of YouTube, who promptly terminated the game’s channel and videos for “hate speech”.
The news comes courtesy of a tweet that links over to the Mindy Power website for Goeppels.
「ゲッペルスちゃんねる」Youtube側から削除されてしまいました。詳細はこちらに↓https://t.co/AfDIQRgVqs
— 眠田直（ゲッペルスちゃん公式） (@goeppels) September 1, 2019
Over on the website it briefly discusses how on August 10th, 2019 YouTube sent an e-mail notification indicating that the Goeppels YouTube channel had been terminated for promoting and inciting “violence against others”.
In the blog post they shared the e-mail from YouTube, which reads…
“[#ftl] [#assign para1] YouTube doesn’t allow content that would promote or incite violence against others or groups. Content that encourages discrimination against others or groups is also not permitted. [/ # assign] [#assign para2] Educational, documentary, art, and science content will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. There will be a limited exception for content that contains sufficient and appropriate context and is clearly intended for posting. [/ # assign]
“Please note that access to other YouTube accounts, and ownership and creation of new accounts are prohibited. For more information on account suspension and community guidelines enforcement, please visit our Help Center.”
They promptly appealed the decision but as of September 2nd, 2019, they haven’t received a response from YouTube about restoring the channel.
It’s true that the channel is gone. If you attempt to watch videos from the channel you’re met with the following message.
If you visit the Genius! NAZI-GIRL GoePPels Chan Facebook page, you’ll also note that all of the videos from the previous YouTube channel have been terminated and are inaccessible.
They made a good point on the blog post about the channel termination, asking how could YouTube find the GoePPels content in violation of their terms of service but not trailers for movies like Iron Sky? As pointed out in the blog post, the Iron Sky trailer is still up and available for viewing.
The developers asked if there are “double standards”? The answer is obviously yes!
However, we just reported on YouTube CEO Susan Wojcick reiterating the company’s stance that even content that doesn’t violate their policies will be reduced or removed from the platform. YouTube is definitely holding true to their word on that.
In this case, the visual novel Genius! NAZI GIRL GoePPels Chan is the recipient of said censorship. On the bright side, there’s still the と学会チャンネル channel, which still has a couple of GoePPels’ videos on YouTube, but there’s no telling how long the channel will last at the current rate of terminations that the video hosting site is handing out.
Alternatively, you can still purchase the visual novel from the Steam store (for now) for only $2.99.
As for YouTube’s censorship… it looks like international users are finally starting to feel the pinch of the corporate vice, as it further crushes the freedoms of content creators each and every day.
(Thanks for the news tip Doraggon)
