Google bans WW2 game Attentat 1942 in certain regions

Google has banned self-proclaimed historically-accurate World War 2 game Attentat 1942 from the Google Play Store in Germany, Russia, Austria, and France.

Developed by Charles Games in collaboration with historians from the Czech Academy of Sciences, Attentat 1942 is a game that aims to display the horrors of war in a sincere and sombre way. Back in 2018, it was nominated for Excellence in Narrative at GDC's Independent Games Festival.

However, Charles Games has been having a hard time trying to port it to mobile, mostly because of Google Play guidelines. Check out the tweet below.

"Google rejected Attentat 1942 due to Nazi references," the tweet reads. "After all the hard work, multiple e-mails, approval by German regulators, we're frustrated."

"How we're supposed to make an historically-accurate game about WW2 horrors without Nazis? We don't know."

The team also notes that they spent six months porting the game from PC to mobile, and have now been blocked from at least four countries' app stores. According to the thread, Norwegian game My Child Lebensborn - described as "captivating" in this instance - had similar issues with Google Play regulations.

But according to Charles Games, Attentat 1942 is "firmly anti-fascist."

"While we agree that stores and platforms have to deal with hateful content, if reviewers took a closer look at Attentat 1942 for just a moment, they would find out we are not that," reads the tweet. "Attentat 1942 is firmly anti-fascist."

Shortly afterwards, Charles Games posted a follow up tweet, which featured a screenshot of the representative from Google stating that they were, "not able to provide a better answer" in relation to why the game had been banned and why the appeals were falling on deaf ears.

Fortunately for Charles Games, Google Czech is getting involved:

"Google Czech contacted us," reads the tweet. "We talked and they promised to look into the Attentat 1942’s rejection from the Play Store further."

"Let’s stay cautiously optimistic," it concludes.