Dead Island: Riptide will not be available to buy in stores in Germany – the country in which it is partly developed – because of the country's strict rules on violent media, and the creative producer of the game is none too happy about it. In an interview with PC Games N, Sebastian Reichert said:
It feels fucking awkward to have one of the most successful games in years and nobody in your country knows it.
The problem, apparently, is in portraying the kind of drastic violence towards “human-like” characters that features in the game. Specifically with Dead Island: Riptide, the authorities behind the decision have a problem with the fact that the player can attack the corpses when they're dead, which counts as “mutilation of corpses”, despite Reichert's protestation that the game punishes players for doing that by causing her weapon to deteriorate.
Adding salt to the wound is the fact that Gears of War 3, also a game in which the player commits violence against “human-like” characters, is freely available in the country. “At the moment I'm really confused that you can buy Gears of War 3 in stores in Germany, but not Dead Island,” Reichert said, “Because where's the difference?”
Reichert said he hopes players in Germany will be able to get hold of a copy of the game anyway after it launches in April next year. But as long as the development team refuses to produce a censored version of the game, the decision to prevent that happening through the normal means will be final.
