Age Rating needed for Steam games in Germany starting next month

Back in March, Valve announced that German laws, alongside Brazilian ones, required games to have a content rating. German authorities prove to be more strict, and the regulatory authority BZKJ claimed that this requirement would apply to games that were added to Steam before the law came into effect. However, there was no deadline involved back then. Now, the smoke has been cleared, as Valve has announced that all games added to Steam before 2020 need to comply with the German requirements before November 15th.

Developers need to complete a content questionnaire that's built into Steam and publish the results by mid-November. If they fail to do so, their games will no longer show up to Steam customers in Germany. Even when filling out the questionnaire, the game might still be hidden from German users. According to Valve's Steamworks documentation, "There are certain kinds of content that are not allowed for sale to customers in Germany." 

In addition to the above, it should also be mentioned that for games that have received a USK rating, the information can be entered via the store page editor, thus allowing the developer to skip the questionnaire mentioned earlier. In the end, there might be a problem with games that are still on Steam, but no longer being maintained since their developers have passed away or the studios went bankrupt. This is definitely a side of the story that needs more attention from Valve and, in the longer run, from the German authorities as well.

While today's story shows that digital games can often become unavailable from certain markets for various reasons, a hardcover-form history of video games is not going anywhere. Those interested can take advantage of a 32% discount on Simon Parkin's An Illustrated History of 151 Video Games, which now goes for $20.30 instead of $29.99.