Dead Island: Riptide producer baffled over franchise's ban in Germany

Dead Island: Riptide producer Sebastian Reichert has said he unsure why Techland's franchise is banned in Germany when there are other violent games sitting on store shelves.

Speaking with PCGamesN, Reichert said German laws prohibit the sale of games which promote violence against humans or human-like characters; essentially, to the government, zombies are humans even if they are rotting, reanimated corpses.

"It doesn't matter what [the enemies] are, as long as they're human-like then you have a problem," Reichert explained. "For Dead Island in particular it was a problem that you could attack the zombies when they are dead, because that's mutilation of corpses.

"[But] we punish the player if he does it because if the player tries to stab and slash everything that lies around him, his weapon will break and he's fucked. We're not even rewarding him, we're punishing him for that stuff."

Reichert said he doesn't understand why his game is banned for sale in Germany, when games just as violent are allowed. Using Gears of War 3 as an example, Reichert pointed out the similarities between human beings and the Locust Horde in the game - which despite their reptilian appearance, are humanoid enemies.

"At the moment I'm really confused that you can buy Gears of War 3 in stores in Germany, but not Dead Island," he said. "Because where's the difference? I mean, [the enemies] are human-like, and [you can] do things to them... they really have nice finishers. That flamethrower finisher, he rams the flamethrower into the body, pulls the trigger and the flames come out of every body part. That's in stores."

"It feels f**king awkward to have one of the most successful games in years and nobody in your country knows it."

Dead Island: Riptide is due for release on April 26, 2013.