The censor screen for South Park: The Stick of Truth has been revealed.
The game’s Associate Producer has explained there are separate versions due to regional limitations, which has led to different edits and levels of censorship. There are five versions for America, Europe, Germany, Australia and Russia.
Noteworthily, the German version has been censored for very specific reasons. They took out a scene of anal probing, as well as depictions of swastikas, the infamous Nazi arm salute, etc.
We’ll take a moment here to explain this special case in Germany. As a consequence of denazification following the 2nd World War, Germany enacted laws that disallowed the use of symbols of Nazism, as well as other depictions of Nazis or Nazi Germany. Germans are actually banned from using these symbols, or for that matter, using the salute, under criminal law.
Of course, if you are a South Park fan who lives outside Germany, you would have been taking their use of Nazi references, always pejoratively, for granted. However, this is something German authorities still take seriously. Considering how Nazism overtook the country for an entire generation all those years ago, these are well-founded considerations.
So, this is a pretty extreme example, but it’s representative of why regional restrictions exist. Suffice to say Ubisoft made the best of the situation, but fans complaining of censorship need to understand that Ubi’s choices were either to release it censored, or not release the game at all.
South Park: The Stick of Truth is still coming to Windows, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.