Long story short: the Commando games got removed from gog.com for their german customers.

I don't really like it, but I can definitly understand that they had to do if they were legally obliged to do so. I am by no means an expert when it comes to legal actions and laws, but why exactly did they have to take the games down? What exactly changed? Afaik gog's place of buisness is still in poland. I would love if somebody could explain me what exectly changed. :)

Gee maybe a thread or two will pop up about this. :P

Read this thread.

Since they're now offering a German version of the site, they can be considered specifically targeting German customers. As such, they are much more likely to get on the index and much more difficult to find (removed from German versions of search engines and whatnot).

(That's, at least, what I remember from the complaints and discussions that sprung up).

Then I would definitly prefere to NOT have a german version of a site. The loss is way higher in my opinion than the gain. In basicly most cases I could get a german language patch from somewhere that replaces the files in the game. But well I guess it opens a market for more customers to gog which is good too. Thanks for the explanation though :) I did. Atleast the post and the first pages. It didn't really gave me an anwer why exactly though.

These posts are the official answers given by the staff. So far, there is no other official explanation and everything else is just speculation.

Thanks for the link.

Glancing over the posts, it says it would be a criminal offense to sell certain games to the German audience, so they are simply removed as an option. However they should still be able to get the games if they bought them...

Although i'm curious if you switch your language from German to English if the games come back as an option? Something to test...

Too many games target sore wounds with other countries, Germany (and nazis) being a prime example. I wonder if more games are going to go the route where it's an alternate history or completely unrelated to earth so they can avoid this type of problem later?

Danke für den Link :) They don't come back when you switch. I already own them luckily. I guess you could use a VPN service to buy them since it is based on your IP adress. But I am not sure how possible or legal that would be.
My main question was not why they were removed but more why now and not earlier. ;)
Yeah since we have quite a past with Nazis our goverment is thin-skinned when it comes to Nazi symbols. But they are allowed in art like films or pictures or news. Not in games though. And, well you are not allowed to run around with a swastika on the streets while screaming Heil Hitler. That is also forbidden for obvious reasons. ^^

Because the site wasn't in german so German customers aren't turned away but not really supported either (like importing electronics from overseas that aren't intended for your power, yeah you can do it... but you're SOL if something goes wrong).

Or maybe it's now because of... ummm.... global warming?

From what I've read, It's allowed if it's in the context of art. So films are fair game, but since games aren't recognized as art by german law...

That's what a voltage converter is for ;)
But yes it seems that now they have a "german site" it caters more towards german users and they have to acknowledge german laws. I REALLY hope this doesn't happen woth many other games since being able to buy the uncut versions of old games was basicly the main reason I love gog. It would suck if they were going the steam route of things although I can definitly understand the reasons.


Yep that's the reason.

A bit related. There's some talk on steams discussion group Zombie Army Trilogy. It's a bundle with Nazi Zombie Army 1 - 2 ported to the new Sniper Elite 3 engine and the third in the series called just Zombie Army Trilogy.

From what I'm getting there, mind you it IS steam so take it with a bucket of salt, is that it wouldn't be really illegal to sell it uncensored in germany. For whatever this is worth and no I haven't read up on the threads here. just throwing this out here.

I feel I was a bit vague when I stated the German language site was proof that they did significant enough buisness in Germany and to Germans to have to follow that law. We don't know the order of these ideas. It's completely possible that the German site has been on the warming plate and was simply held up until they got some kind of equivalent to a C&D from Germany. That said the lack of a German web presence wasn't going to be a magic bullet forever either.