Topic: CIRCLE Entertainment about releasing games in Germany

Some days ago I contacted CIRCLE Entertainment about their last two games, Legend of Dark Witch and Fairune, both of which were released in the european eShop recently. Tough luck for the likes of me, since that didn't apply to germany. So, here's their response (their english is somewhat broken since they're from china, so please bear with that):

Hello Kaze_Memaryu (not gonna leave my real name here),

Many thanks for you supported our titles.
The situation is really harsh for us to publishing titles into German because of USK.
Usually we targeting a casual game rating as a digital download game, somehow USK still has not a channel to let all digital download games to be Casual game rating.
USK dont have any channel supported digital games like PEGI, therefore a digital game probably need to cost a lot, just like a normal game rating fee to proceed rating.
Consider about rating fee is so heavy and the German market situation, we feel sadly that we must give us some titles in German eShop. But it wont affect the other European eShop.
Also, that does not mean we will give up all titles in future, some of our games will still targeting USK for their casual game rating if that is possible.

Again, we are sorry games cant released into German, and we also want to say thanks for everyone who supported us, especially you.
I hope in near future we can solve this issue, or USK can making any flexible change to be like ESRB/PEGI, helping publishers to survive in the German market.
Thanks for your understanding.

Have a great day!
Best Regards,

======================

CIRCLE Entertainment LTD.

I was hoping the games were just delayed, but I'm not blaming them. It's really annoying to read this, since the troublesome rating process in germany is starting to scare away more and more small developers with their convoluted office language and ludicrous fees (Master Reboot was also never released in germany, for example), and numerous games get delayed because the USK jerks take their merry time - Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is probably having delays for the same reason, since PEGI is much quicker and cleaner about that.
Still, I don't know whether I wanna hate germany or Nintendo for it, since Nintendo themselves put up all these barriers on the eShop that prevent people not only from importing games that have no chance of localization, but even denies us games from our own region - at least when it comes to digital. Just try scanning the QR code of Fairune below with a 3DS that has a country setting where PEGI isn't the accepted rating standard.

This might not be terribly interesting to most people, but I think it's still something worth sharing.

Why doesn't Germany ditch USK and adopt PEGI like the rest of Europe (or better yet ESRB to try and trailblazer paving the way to unify to a single system)? Surely this causes an incentive to not release in this country.

From what I heard: isn't USK a government agency (thus ratings are law) whereas PEGI is not.
(I don't know about Germany, I just know that one distinction is why any laws making ESRB compliance required were shut down in America)

I don't know the exact policies, but it doesn't surprise me that Nintendo, like Steam, doesn't sell games on the German eShop without USK rating.
Every media without USK or FSK rating, is by default 18+.
However, I assume, that like banned media, it's forbidden to openly advertise them as well, meaning, that you can't put them in an online Shop, where they're automatically advertised.
It's not forbidden to import them, or to purchase them, or to own them (obviously), but you can't sell it openly - someone has to ask for it and you have to store it out of sight of your customers - something that's impossible for an Online Shop.
In other words: Nintendo could get legal problems if they'd allow games on their eShop without USK rating

That is one heck of a Necro