The Unfriendly Side of German Game Development

As hysterical as American media and politicians can get over 'violent' videogames, the folks making games in Germany have it a whole lot worse. Tim Partlett (a developer at Crytek) shared his experience with the Quarter to Three forums, describing what it's like to be raided for making a videogame. He describes what it's like to be hated for your job, and laments the attitude of the nation towards his chosen line of work. From the article: "At the time of the (2002 Erfurt school) shooting, we were already in development of Far Cry ... We were just across the state border from Erfurt in northern Bavaria. Tensions in the region were high ... In 2004 the Bavarian authorities sent in the state troopers... When the small tech team appeared to inspect our computers, they were accompanied by over one hundred flak-jacketed riot police, all armed with Heckler and Koch sub-machine guns. It was a total overreaction... They arrived first thing in the morning, and kicked down our doors. They even raided the nearby private residences ... I was caught just outside the office ... We were all shepherded into our Mo-Cap room, and there we were forced to remain until questioned, prevented from leaving by dozens of armed guards."

Re:Another Obliatory..

[BeeRockxs]

Haha, very funny, the only thing that's wrong is that you're wrong. Try 'flauschig'.

Re:The Nazi gene...

[henni16]

She'd queue up, and when she got to the front the store-keepers would just serve whoever was behind her. This happened frequently, in multiple shops (in Berlin).

Shenannigans.
I live in Berlin, have Turkish friends and have never seen or heard of something like that.
And the media and lawyers would be all over cases like that.
Did she shop at Nazis'R'Us or where?

Berlin is the largest Turkish city outside of Turkey.
Among the 3.4 million people (~14% foreigners) there are alone 120000 Turkish people registered as living in Berlin.
And those are only the ones without German passports. You can add several tens of thousands for 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant children or people who already obtained citizenship.

Chances aren't bad that the person in line behind you is also Turkish or of Turkish origin.
Depending on the district, that chance will be well above 50%.

What he fails to mention

[zerojoker]

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/46094 [heise.de] (it's german, you might want to put that into the google translator). It basically says that the police raided Crytek because the Business Software Alliance (BSA) got several evidence that Crytek was using unlicensed software

Now I'm not sure what came out of this, but I think if the police raids a whole company it's quite standard procedure to come up with some armed guys.

Re:What he fails to mention

[mabinogi]

He mentions exactly that. Did you actually read the article?

from the eight paragraph:

In 2004 the Bavarian authorities sent in the state troopers. Ostensibly it was as a response to a claim made by a former employee that we had illegal software installed on our machines.

operation Sun Devil

[madeye the younger]

Really? What about http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/SJG/ [eff.org] ? I'm sure Steve Jackson might have a word or two to share about armed law enforcement raiding a game company in the U.S.