German ministers attack "Killerspiele"

By Tom Bramwell Published 8 June, 2009

Want to ban them by September elections.

A group of German interior ministers plans to ask the Bundestag to ban the production and distribution of so-called "Killerspiele" - or violent videogames.

According to Welt Online (thanks Eurogamer.de), the interior ministers for Germany's 16 federal states believe the games reduce our inhibitions and therefore pose a risk.

The ministers were acting partly in response to the Albertville-Realschule massacre in Winnenden in March, in which a 17-year-old boy went on a shooting spree that claimed 16 lives. The perpetrator, Tim Kretschmer, reportedly played games like Counter-Strike and Far Cry 2.

Welt Online quotes the ministers' draft bill as saying, "the production and distribution of games in which a substantial part of the game consists of realistically portrayed killing or otherwise gruesome acts of violence against human or human-like creatures are to be forbidden" (thanks to Alex from EG.de for the translation). They hope to get it through the Bundestag before Germany's federal election in late September.

Whether they will or not remains to be seen, but Welt Online is clearly sceptical - pointing out that even Germany's reigning coalition government was forced to withdraw attempts to ban paintball in the aftermath of the Winnenden murders due to protests.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (39) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • JahB #1 3 years ago

    the Germans are nothing but reversed americans these days. they have no problem with pr0n for everyone, but try to ban anything violent...

  • Miths #2 3 years ago

    Actually I've been told that their porn laws are rather strict as well. While they don't go along with the US sillyness of "boobs corrupt the youth", they are reportedly rather strict when it comes to actual porn, with severe laws in place for age verification systems (which they can obviously only realistically apply to adult web sites hosted on German servers).

  • Olemak #3 3 years ago

    They should ban cars instead. Traffic causes thousands of deaths every year, but seems to be the elephant in the room. Same gos for the UK, or any other country of course. But let's not talk about that. Lets talk about those horrid games instead.

    I think they should ban 14 year olds from playing Call of Duty, though, because they pwn my ass in Modern Warfare, and that pisses me off to no end.

  • peteb #4 3 years ago

    Its amazing that even though the censorship here is one of the strictest in the world, that school shootings still happen.

    Could it be that the games aren't actually to blame and it might be something less straightforward?

    Oh God no.

    They try to ban paintball and games but not the gun clubs. Ridiculous.
    Edited by 1 at 08/06/09 @ 09:40

  • autogunner #5 3 years ago

    ah but you are forgetting german make a lot of money from guns, but not so mcuh from videogames. Its also election time so pointless vote grabbing is the order of the day. Makes me proud to live in a country with a government so corrupt and useless they are too busy protecting themselves to bother making pointless laws

  • kinky_mong #6 3 years ago

    Why address the real problems of why a person commits such atrocious acts and the media's glorifying of them for an interesting story, when instead you can scapegoat an easy target to drum up votes from a paranoid public?

  • AL7AIR #7 3 years ago

    So if the draft gets passed: Germany based game studios like Crytek are moving out of Germany (way to help the industry) and games beside shooters like World of Warcraft are a possible candidate for banning as well.

    Gun clubs are still allowed, and it's not like Tim got the weapons there, because his father was a member of one, who owned enough of them to supply a small army and kept them at home. It's gun laws and social environment / stability we should focus upon, not some games we play in our spare time.

  • Dural666 #8 3 years ago

    You have one of the most cutting-edge videogaming studios in the world and which you should be proud of (Crytek) and you force them to relocate in another country. The smart asses...

  • peteb #9 3 years ago

    Didn't Beckstein also want to put players of violent games in jail?

    Wheres he now? :)

    /imagines "gamer jails".

  • Svecke #10 3 years ago

    Thank gods I don't live in Germany.

  • mouthofyoureye #11 3 years ago

    politicians and corporations create a society where they don't have to work and can spend their time shooting pheasants off their yachts in san tropez, whilst we slave away in our cubicles/allocated-section-of-conveyor-belt. THEN, they take away all forms of venting the anger and frustration that this state of affairs injects into the vast majority of the world's population. Then, when we have no other method of venting frustration than actually killing people they blame us for our own predicament, citing genes/low-work-ethic/subversive-attitudes as the cause of our deprived seat at the back of this shitty bus to shit-town.

    but not to worry, the BNP and other euro-fascists are doing well - we'll all be dead by the time halo 5 gets banned!

  • Fab4 #12 3 years ago

    Do they also ban violent movies?

    Why bother treating the causes of the disease when you can ban the symptoms, eh?

  • kipper #13 3 years ago

    Seems like the Germans, Belgians and Danes all value gun ownership over the lives of innocent victims.

    It makes me want to move back to the UK. At least we just banned guns after the Dunblane massacre.

  • peteb #14 3 years ago

    Still, at least the beer's good eh? Especially here in Munich.

    That's what I'm hanging onto at the minute. :)

  • bivith #15 3 years ago

    "The perpetrator, Tim Kretschmer, reportedly played games like Counter-Strike and Far Cry 2."

    What are the odds!?!?

  • lord_jamie #16 3 years ago

    News just in:

    As well as playing Far Cry 2 and Counter Strike, he has also been watching Kill Bill, The Terminator and Die Hard as well as reading American Psycho and Zodiac.

    It must be the games that are the cause though, movies and books have never influenced anyone.

    /sarcasm

  • Freek #17 3 years ago

    What happens when another school shooting takes place and there's no video games to blame anymore? What are you gonna do then for a cheap scapegoat?
    Think, politicians!! :-P

  • kipper #18 3 years ago

    @ Freek. If its not computer games, its violent films. If its not films, its heavy metal music. If its not heavy metal, its rock and roll. And so on and so on,m until we just blame it on the Devil like in the good old days.

  • des #19 3 years ago

    Germans lol

  • actionfitz #20 3 years ago

    @"The perpetrator, Tim Kretschmer, reportedly played games like Counter-Strike and Far Cry 2."

    What are the odds!?!?

    ---

    idd. If I was a self respecting gun toting psychopath with severe emotional issues, you'd hardly find me playing 'Hello Kitty Adventures'...
    plonks.
    Are the gonna burn violent books (crime fiction etc)? Violent TV, Movies?
    Having to talk to Call Center Help lines (esp SKY TV) makes me want to hurt small children and kick puppies... gonna ban them too? \o/

  • JahB #21 3 years ago

    Having to talk to Call Center Help lines (esp SKY TV) makes me want to hurt small children and kick puppies... gonna ban them too? \o/

    i'm so with you. every time i had to call BT, i wanted to go on a killing spree

  • Spekingur #22 3 years ago

    @actionfitz: If you were a gun-toting maniac and you were playing Hello Kitty Adventures... then people with any sense would be alot more scared of you. Because you would surely have to be mad.

  • Miths #23 3 years ago

    "Seems like the Germans, Belgians and Danes all value gun ownership over the lives of innocent victims."

    Guns here in Denmark? Seriously? And no, that was a legitimate question, not a sarcastic one :).
    It's true that the current "war" between Hells Angels support groups and gangs of 2nd generation immigrants over the drug market (or maybe they just like shooting at each other, unfortunately hitting innocent bystanders on occasion) has seemingly made shooting almost commonplace in certain parts of Copenhagen, and illegal guns apparently aren't too difficult to get hold of, but it's definitely not my impression that the average Dane go around longing for firearms for "personal protection", and unless I'm much mistaken you can't even buy guns legally here (outside of permits for gun clubs or whatever they're called, but I think we're talking about an extremely tiny minority of the population here).

  • Midnight_Raven #24 3 years ago

    Set an example for the world to follow... ban EVERYTHING in Germany!

    /is German, but lives abroad

  • kipper #25 3 years ago

    @ Miths, sorry I was confusing Denmark with Finland.
    [link url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/new sid_7080000/newsid_7083400/7083457.stm
    ]http://ne ws.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid...[/link]

    But it also happens in The Netherlands
    http://ne ws.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/339483...

  • lucky_jim #26 3 years ago

    If I ever make a game, I'm gonna call it Killerspiele.

  • Carpathian #27 3 years ago

    I was going to post a long rant about the crass hypocrisy of a law like this but really, when it comes down to it, what's the point.

    Anybody with half a brain can see the problem with tarring everybody playing 'violent' games with the 'potential killer' tag and yet time after time one party or another picks it up to gain political capital. That's all it is and it's blatantly so - they don't care about games or killers or victims or even if there's a link between any of those but just something to gain an extra percentage point on the polls. It's cynical, distasteful and sadly not a surprise in the slightest.......

  • UncleLou #28 3 years ago

    Seems like the Germans, Belgians and Danes all value gun ownership over the lives of innocent victims.

    Gun laws are pretty strict here in Germany (and get stricter). Not much use though if they aren't observed. The gun used in the Winnenden incident wasn't locked away, as it should have been.

    As for the planned law itself - meh. It'll never hold before the Supreme Constitutional Court. As long as there's someone who takes it that far.

  • sharky_ob #29 3 years ago

    @ peteb

    Beer also 'reduces you inhibitions', and should therefore be banned in Germany.

  • hulahoops #30 3 years ago

    "the Germans are nothing but reversed americans these days. they have no problem with pr0n for everyone, but try to ban anything violent..."

    Not that I condone the violent game knee jerk reaction but convincing people that youths go on the rampage beating people to death with dildos after watching porn seems a harder sell to me.

  • peteb #31 3 years ago

    @sharky_ob

    haha, methinks the folk that organise Oktoberfest wouldn't let that happen.

    Oh my god, imagine if it did get banned, what would i DO?!!?!

  • stephen #32 3 years ago

    TWATS.

    That is all.

  • bad09 #33 3 years ago

    "The ministers were acting partly in response to the Albertville-Realschule massacre in Winnenden in March, in which a 17-year-old boy went on a shooting spree that claimed 16 lives. The perpetrator, Tim Kretschmer, reportedly played games like Counter-Strike and Far Cry 2. "

    Christ, will our species ever be able to function without idiotic clueless fools running our countries. Killer plays games so must be games fault. Had a look at this guy on Wiki. Do these twats know he was actually firing REAL guns and was "a lonely and frustrated person who felt rejected by society"? Probably more to with it than Far Cry........

    I just love the Germans hate of violent VIDEOGAMES. The irony is of course, Germany was the cause of some of the worst REAL violence this world has ever seen (twice).

    Violent games - harmless "naughty" fun
    Genocide and mass invasion - VERY VERY bad


    Anyway I'm off, I played FFVII yesterday so I'm off to buy a REALLY big sword.

    "................"

  • Bleh #34 3 years ago

    Blame the games support the guns. If they want to ban games they should ban guns as well. Speaking of banning maybe they should ban violent movies as well just to be sure.

    Besides I don't really think banning games will work.

  • Sunyavadin #35 3 years ago

    "If thats the case I wonder when we can expect to see turtles being thrown from gokarts on the autobahns?"

    Oh man, that's a sport I'd pay good money to watch.



    But this is just ridiculous.

    I mean, has Bomberman been banned in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan yet? It's OBVIOUSLY the cause of their..... oh, wait...

  • KillerMonkey #36 3 years ago

    "Ban schools. No more school massacres."

    Here here!

  • feistycheese #37 3 years ago

    Got a step-brother in Germany, and he gets all his games from over here anyway (UK) as the FPS released over there have 'green paint' come out of the bodies when you shoot them. Its a fair deal, I get his X-rated games for him, he gets my decent porn for me . . . . win, win situation!
    Edited by 1 at 08/06/09 @ 23:24

  • YourMessageHere #38 3 years ago

    Do average voting people really harbour an unspoken desire to ban games with violence in? I honestly doubt many people care at all, any more than they care about other violent media. All a politician needs to do is look at sales figures to see that games that involve violence are actually kind of popular. Why is this perceived as being a vote-winner of an idea (because really, why else would this be happening)?

  • VMerken #39 3 years ago

    The main 3 reasons politicians orgasm about banning stuff like violence in video games or paintball, is because (1) paintball and video games are easily accessible to users of all ages (contrary to gun clubs, where there's a minimum age and other government imposed restrictions), hence also young and innocent children, (2) the existence of the powerful reflex of "monkey see, monkey do" as early as toddlerhood and (3) the scientifically extremely well supported proposition that the correlation between "plays violent video games" (or "plays paintball";) and "may kill" is equal to 1.

    Also, "Won't anyone think of the children?" and "I'm thinking of the children, can I get your votes now, worried parents"?
    Edited by 1 at 12/07/09 @ 14:02