"Games in which players are required to destroy humans or humanoid beings, and which represent these actions in gory detail and depict them such that the killing procedures must be classified as particularly brutal, have always been categorized as malicious and therefore socio-ethically disorientating in accordance with the practice of the Federal Review Board," the BPjM wrote.
In its official decision, which THQ Nordic provided to Polygon, it acknowledged that the extensive localization work the developer, Volition, did greatly reduce the visualization of the violence, but it still felt justified in placing the game on the Index. The publisher also argued that Red Faction’s futuristic Mars setting helped players distance themselves from the game.
The company had omitted all traces of blood, scaled back animations when enemies were hit by a flamethrower, removed certain sound effects and made dead enemy bodies vanish after a few seconds. "The BPjM examined Red Faction in 2003 and deemed it harmful to minors because of the violence shown in the game," says Petra Meier, vice chairwoman of the BPjM.Īt the time, THQ disagreed with the indexing and argued that it had extensively toned down the game for the German market. They also can’t sell, rent or advertise it in public. Once a piece of media appears on the Index, distributors cannot allow children under the age of 18 to purchase it. According to its website, the government agency seeks to protect minors from content it feels could "endanger their process of developing a socially responsible and self-reliant personality." This includes media that contains extreme violence, discrimination, anti-Semitism or racism, as well as the glorification of National Socialism, drugs, alcohol abuse, self-inflicted injury or suicide. The Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors, known by its German initials as the BPjM, manages the Index.
Publisher THQ Nordic, which bought the rights to the THQ trademark and some of its properties in 2014, recently announced that Germany will soon remove Red Faction from its list of media considered harmful to young people, also known as "the Index." Sci-fi shooter Red Faction launched 15 years ago, and for the first time ever many German gamers are getting a chance to play it.
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