I'm German. Our ratings system for games is stupid and I've always hated it with a passion.
Having said that, it is what it is and developers/publishers know that. They have 3 options:
1 release the game uncensored but without a rating by the German rating agency (USK) (Sony and MS don't do it for image reasons and it can lead to less sales)
2 release a separate SKU for Germany (this prevents German laws being pushed on other European countries)
3 release one SKU for all of Europe (less work, more money)
Most devs/publishers have been going with the second option. Sony's decision to to go with option 3 is a monetary one. They want to sell as many copies in Europe as they can without spending more money than necessary. They did the same thing with the last God of War game.
I'd say that 90% of developers who need to make changes to their game go with the second option. Ten years ago, that meant: No blood, No mutilation, sometimes robots instead of human enemies, changed story-lines, etc. It's gotten a lot better since than, in most cases it's little nips and tucks and most "Mature" games are released uncensored nowadays.
Having said that, there are still 2 hot button issues. Nazi symbols and gruesome violence in multiplayer:
The Nazi thing is not meant to pretend like there never was a WW2 and "Germany is so great you guys"; it's actually meant to prevent kids from thinking of anything Nazi as "cool". This comes from a time when games were still considered toys and you might remember the outrage in America over the swastika on that Pokemon Card that actually was a Buddhist Temple sign. Games have gotten a lot more complex in the last 20 years and it's time that Germany politicians view games the same way they view movies, not toys. But right now, they don't. That's why Ubi/Obsidian removed the Nazi stuff from South Park (but only in the German version, not all of Europe => option2).
Violence in multiplayer games is another remnant of the past. I think the reasoning behind it comes from a time when people thought games might make you aggressive/violent and they were afraid of little Klaus killing little Fritz after loosing to him in Mortal Kombat. This issue will go away by itself, countless studies have disproved the link between violence and games.
You can argue for absolutely no censorship of art. I've been doing this for the better part of my life, especially when it comes to games which most Germans would now consider art right now. But sometimes, things are a bit more complicated and at the very least, the German ratings system has gotten a lot more reasonable over the last decade. Their ratings are less arbitrary than they used to be and the two remaining issues will sort themselves out over the next decade, I'm sure of it.
I always feel bad when I see stupid/archaic German laws affecting other countries. This brings me back to Sony: they know the current situation; they had 3 options; they chose to save money and go with option 3. simple as that.
I just meant that those are problems that can easily be avoided. There is no reason to buy the game twice so you won't have any save problems in the first place and just make sure to buy the correct DLC so there won't be any incompatibilities either.
