Google has banned the historical visual novel, Attentat 1942, from the Google Play Store in four countries: Germany, Russia, Austria, and France. The reason for the ban? Because it references.
The developer, Charles Games, took to Twitter to lament the ban, stating that Attentat 1942 was even approved by German regulators after being submitted for review. So despite getting the a-okay from USK, Google still decided to swoop in and ban the game form being available in the country, along with Austria, Russia, and France.
Google rejected Attentat 1942 due to references. After all the hard work, multiple e-mails, approval by German regulators, we’re frustrated. How we’re supposed to make an historically-accurate game about WW2 horrors without. We don’t know. A thread. #indiegame #gamedev pic.twitter.com/iurQOzpvZd
— Charles Games (@CharlesGames_cz) July 17, 2020
The relevant part of the message in the tweet reads…
“After further review, your app Attentat 1942 (com.CharlesGames.Attentat1942) is still not able to be available to Google Play users in the following countries: Germany, Russia, Austria or France.
“Your app includes content that is prohibited in the above locales.
“For example, your app contains reference to
“Thanks for your understanding.”
The explanation for the ban actually arrived shortly after they received a rejection notice that the software would not be available on Google Play following six months of the team porting the game to mobile devices.
We were surprised and filed an appeal. Quoting both the nature of our game, the fact it’s made with historians from Czech Academy of Sciences and most importantly – our USK (German authority) approval. Result was another rejection e-mail we quoted in the first tweet.
— Charles Games (@CharlesGames_cz) July 17, 2020
Essentially, it’s erasing history, since you’re no longer allowed to mention historical events that trigger the software curators at Google Play.
Worse yet is that this game is three years old.
It came out back in October of 2017 on Steam for PC. The developers are already working on a sequel due out at some point in the third quarter of 2020 on the Steam store titled Svoboda 1945. The game covers the atrocities of Communism and the horrors that Czechoslovakians faced at the borders during the tail end of World War II.
If Google doesn’t like word “Nazi” being mentioned, then I’m sure they’ll drop the hammer on Svoboda 1945 given their penchant for favoring Communist ideals.
But Attentat 1942 wasn’t the only historical game that ran into approval problems with the Google Play team.
Norwegian developer Sarepta Studio had their war-themed game, My Child Lebensborn, about a child born into the horrors of the Labenese war, banned from Google Play as well back in late 2019.
By the way, captivating Norwegian game @MyChildGame also faced the same problem https://t.co/brbGsfWNB3
— Charles Games (@CharlesGames_cz) July 17, 2020
As reported by Nordic Game…
“According to the original report from Gamer.no (in Norwegian), Google Norway press officer Helle Skjervold confirmed that the game was removed due to sensitive content. ‘Our policies relate to local laws in the many countries we operate in,’ said Skjervold. ‘This game does not violate our sensitive content policies in most countries, but it does so in a few markets.’”
We tried to warn you!
When they came for the H-games we tried to warn you that they wouldn’t stop there.
When they came for the anime tiddy games we tried to warn you that they wouldn’t stop there.
When they came for the fan-service games, and the dating sims, and the visual novels, we tried to warn you that the censorship wouldn’t stop there.
Eventually they would come for the games you do enjoy, and they would begin to censor the content that you do like. But at this point the censorship train has already left the station and is chugging full speed ahead.
We tried to warn you.
(Thanks for the news tip Cat)
