You're knee-deep in the Nazi infested bunkers of Omaha Beach.
Your squad's been decimated by a particularly obstinate machine gun nest.
Reaching for a grenade, you lunge out over your trench- and are immediately cut down.
That's alright, you picked up a health kit in the last Nazi bunker.
You reach for the digital health and see that familiar... green gross?
Wait a minute, why don't video games use the actual red cross on health packs?
Turns out it's a matter of international law.
The Geneva Conventions actually forbids anyone or anything that is not part of the international
red cross from displaying the prominent symbol.
That's so that in war time, warring states don't try to deceive the other by using the
red cross symbol as camouflage, as red cross personnel are meant to be neutral so they
can access the sick and dying anywhere on earth, even a battlefield.
The red cross symbol has actually been removed from everything ranging from Halo 2 to the
original Doom.
While everyone who has good taste in video games remembers that the original game shipped
with the red cross symbol on health packs, it was later changed in subsequent releases.
Officially, the red cross symbol is not supposed to be used for any commercial aim, and while
the red cross on health packs isn't an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the symbol
for commercial gain, it's use in a commercial product is still something the red cross itself
isn't too hot about.
But while the red cross symbol has in effect been banned from games, what full-on games
have ended up getting the real-life ban hammer?
Custer's Revenge got the ban hammer- in only one state, when honestly it probably should've
been banned everywhere.
Developed in 1982 for the Atari 2600, the game features the player as a naked Colonel
Custer, who has to move from one end of the screen to the other while dodging flying arrows.
What's the big deal?
Well, other than being naked, Custer's march across the screen is fueled by his desire
to get to a tied-up native american woman.
Extremely offensive, even in 1982.
Oklahoma would go on to ban the game from being sold in the state.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 not only has distinction as a solid shooter
and unnecessarily long title length, but also as one of the few video games to immediately
get the ban hammer in Mexico.
Up until TCGRAW2’s release- see, we told you the title needs to be shorter- Mexico
had never before banned a video game, and that’s quite the accomplishment considering
many of the titles in this video were available for sale there as well.
But when the mayor of the city of Juarez sat down to play his own copy of GRAW2 he was
less than pleased with the opening mission, which sees the player gunning down guerillas
in a digital copy of Juarez.
Less than pleased with how GRAW2 had painted his city as a lawless purge-fest, the mayor
managed to convince the governor of Chihuahua to ban the game’s sale.
He even went so far as to form a task force that hunted down copies of the game in stores
and seized them to prevent their being sold.
EverQuest is basically one of the grand daddies of the MMO genre, and you aren't playing an
MMO today that wasn't in some way influenced by the legendary game.
However, the country of Brazil thought that EverQuest posed a significant public risk-
and banned it from being sold in the country.
Citing the psychological burden of having to undertake both “good” and “evil”
quests, the game was believed to pose risks of permanent mental harm.
Don't worry though, because that's not the only game banned by Brazil for crazy reasons.
Popular arena shooter Counter-Strike was also banned in Brazil, this time for subverting
public order, and for being a quote- “attack against the democratic state and the law and
against public security”.
Our next video game didn't get outright banned, but it might as well have been.
Devotion was a critically acclaimed slow-burn horror game developed by a Taiwanese studio.
When a meme of Xi Jinping, the Chinese President and leader of the Chinese Communist Party
being compared to Winnie the Pooh appeared in the game, China got extremely upset.
That's because memes comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie The Pooh are very popular in Asia,
despite an outright ban of Winnie the Pooh altogether by Xi Jinping.
Red Candle Games, the Taiwanese developer, responded by apologizing and patching out
the offending content- but Valve eventually pulled the game for sale from its Chinese
Steam platform.
Unexpectedly, Red Candle Games then went ahead and pulled the game off Steam globally after
its two publishers cut ties with them.
In response to the controversy, Taiwan’s Vice Premier responded by saying, "Only in
countries with democracy and freedom can creation be free from restrictions."
The Chinese government responded by revoking the licenses of the game’s publishers, and
removing millions of posts off social media with the Devotion hashtag.
Super Seducer would take a while to get banned, but justice eventually came with the release
of Super Seducer 3.
For those lucky enough to not know what Super Seducer is, prepare to have that ruined.
In the game, self-proclaimed pickup artist Richard La Ruina tries to teach players how
to pick up women in various scenarios.
The game has a player play out different scenes, and is able to pick from several different
options what to do next.
La Ruina will then faithfully play out whatever the selected choice was, in full motion video
glory- like this scene: While the game should have been immediately
banned for being the epitome of cringe, it wasn't- until Steam refused to carry the third
iteration of the game where you could- unsurprisingly- unlock nude options for the objects- I mean,
human women- in the various scenarios.
Valve definitely couldn't stand up for the universal right of free speech against a world
dictator, but at least it stood up for our right to not buy garbage video games and La
Ruina was left without a major distributor for his game.
Fortnite may be one of the most popular games in the world, but in China the game is banned-
only a heavily censored version is available for play.
But China's ban of Command & Conquer Generals is for far crazier reasons- while you can
spot American landmarks getting blown up in video games and movies all the time, pull
the same stunt with a Chinese landmark and your game gets the people's banhammer.
For a scene showing the destruction of the Three Gorges Dam and the Hong Kong Convention
and Exhibition Centre, Command & Conquer remains unplayable to Chinese citizens.
Plague Inc doesn't take place in any one particular country, and is as apolitical as a game could
get- but when the Covid 19 pandemic hit the world, China immediately banned the very popular
doomsday simulator.
Football Manager 2005 however got super-banned for recognizing Taiwan and Tibet as independent
countries- something that traditionally makes the Chinese Communist Party extremely upset.
Manhunt was developed by Rockstar Studios- no strangers to controversy- in the early
2000s, and its success led to the development of Manhunt 2.
Both games focused on stealth gameplay where the player would carry out 'executions' of
increasing violence against people trying to hunt the player down.
The original game flirted with the banhammer back in the day, but the UK and various other
countries around the world outright forbade release of the game.
Rockstar had to make special edits for these countries which dramatically toned down the
violence.
Even then the UK barely approved the game for sale.
In Ukraine Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon got banned for touching on a rather sore spot for the
nation.
In the game, Russian ultranationalists- the same type Ukraine is actively at war against
right now- and communists come together to recreate the Soviet Union, and promptly sweep
Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan back into the fold.
This was unacceptable to the Ukranian government, which has historically been extremely frowny
face about ever having been a part of the Soviet Union in the first place- let alone
Russia's modern-day's intentions to force them back into a new Russian union.
Now we move to the United Arab Emirates, which might ban more games than any other country
aside from North Korea.
The UAE is famously brutally conservative, much to the shocking discovery of many foreigners
doing such outrageous things as kissing a girlfriend or wife in public in the wrong
place.
The UAE has banned a whole smorgasbord of games, but our favorites from that list are
the following:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 got banned when quotes from the Qur'an were found in
some of the in-game picture frames.
The developer probably thought nothing of it, seeing as how popular inscribing bible
verses in various items is in the west- but the UAE found it offensive to the point of
banning.
A patched version of the game was later approved for sale.
Dragon Age: Origins was not just one of the best rpgs of the 2000s, it was the best Dragon
Age period.
And I swear to YouTube that if any of you disagree you can leave your address in the
comments section and I'll come fight you.
Anyways, the critically-acclaimed RPG got the banhammer hard in the UAE over sexual
themes and homosexual relationships.
Recently, you're able to buy the game digitally but hard copies are still illegal.
Injustice: Gods Among Us got banned shortly before its release, despite purposefully changing
its Middle Eastern name to Injustice: The Mighty Amongst Us.
However, because the case packaging and software title still retained the word “God”, the
game was a no-go for the UAE.
Eventually the ban on the game was lifted, presumably when someone a lot less silly took
over the job of state censor.
Over in Iraq, both Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds are banned, allegedly for “negative
effects caused by some electronic games on the health, culture, and security of Iraq
society.”
For a nation reeling from two decades of war, perhaps the core concept of these games is
extremely unsettling.
While the UAE is fond of banning video games, Germany takes the absolute cake for video
game bannings.
It is important to note though that most of these video game bans simply keep the games
from being sold physically- the act of buying a game for a single user online, or of a player
owning a single copy is not actually illegal.
The act of selling the game is, so go figure.
Amongst the many, many banned titles in Germany are such masterpieces as 50 Cent: Bulletproof,
and the follow-up critically acclaimed 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.
Actually, we'll be honest, we have no idea which game came first, because video games
based on rappers are terrible as movies based on rappers- unless it's that one video game
where you got to street fight as the Wu-Tang clan.
Most games get banned in Germany for being too violent or gory, but Far Cry was banned
not just for being too violent, but for having too realistic ragdoll effects.
Once the effects were toned down, the game was allowed for sale at an 18+ rating.
Wolfenstein and the later Wolfenstein 3d however got the ban hammer for violence and Nazi references.
The original Wolfenstein was approved for release after going through extreme censorship,
which we'd love to find out how that works as the game is predicated on you murdering
tons and tons of Nazis, and then fighting a dual-machine gun wielding mecha-Hitler at
the end.
Wolfenstein 3d was only recently taken off the ban list, as the German government has
decided it's been long enough since the Nazis.
Moving on to our next game, we have to ask: who doesn’t love Pikachu, the adorable face
of the global Pokemon phenomenon?
Saudi Arabia, that’s who- or more precisely, they’re not big fans of the Pokemon Trading
Card Game, or any Pokemon title really, which have been banned in both digital and physical
forms.
It’s no normal ban either, Pokemon is banned on the basis of being a threat to national
security.
The Pokemon ban went so far as to have a formal fatwa issued against it.
What was so insidious about Pokemon that Saudi Arabia had to invoke clerical power to ban
it?
Turns out the game has a laundry list of offensive material to the deeply religious country,
including promoting Darwin’s theory of evolution, encouraging illegal gambling behavior by trading
pokemon or pokemon cards, and for promoting the Shinto and Christian religions through
symbolism, as well as the fact that the energy symbol in the trading card game kinda-sorta
looks like a low resolution Star of David, if you squint hard enough.
Sadly, real evolution doesn’t involve intense battles or power stones- though it’d be
more awesome if it did- but this isn’t changing Saudi Arabia’s mind anytime soon and the
ban holds.
Now go watch Why Do Games Cost $60?
Why Hasn't The Price of Video Games Changed?
Or click this other video instead!