In what appears to be the dumbest thing you and I have ever heard, the Nintendo Wii U eShop in Europe currently only allows its customers to buy 18+ restricted content between the hours of 11pm and 3am, presumably because anybody underaged wishing to buy games with blood and violence and swearing absolutely wouldn’t be prepared to stay up past 11pm to do so.
Granted that the rest of Europe are pretty peeved about this whole thing, Nintendo recently responded to the claims that this is, you know, madness, blaming German youth laws as the reason why such a bizarre rule has been put into place. You can read what they said below:
“At Nintendo we always aim to provide a safe gaming experience for fans of all ages and ensure that we comply with applicable legal age restriction requirements across Europe.”
“Legal age restriction requirements vary across a number of European countries. Since Nintendo of Europe is based in Germany, Nintendo eShop is complying with German youth protection regulation which therefore applies to all our European markets. Under German law, content rated 18+ must be made available only at night. Therefore the accessibility of 18+ content in Nintendo eShop is limited to [USK: 22:00 UTC until 4:00 UTC] [PEGI: 23:00 UTC until 3:00 UTC].”
Can’t we have region specific laws put in place for each European country or something? Must we all suffer from Germany’s wrath? Whether or not the Wii U eShop restriction will change anytime soon is anybody’s guess, but for now all we can say is: Thanks, Germany. Thanks a bunch.
Source: Eurogamer
