18-Rated Wii U Games Can Only Be Bought For Four Hours A Day

[drop2]The Wii U’s parental controls can be toggled on and off, but even with them off Nintendo have deemed it necessary to lock off any purchases of ‘mature’ games until after 11pm at night.

The discovery first surfaced on NeoGAF, where it was found that buying certain games was off-limits regardless of who’s holding the GamePad, and if it’s before Nintendo’s own rather restrictive watershed, that also includes viewing trailers.

Apparently kids don’t surface between 11 at night and 3 in the morning.

“Legal age restriction requirements vary across a number of European countries,” said the platform holder. “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 only be made available at night.”

Of course, should anyone up at that ridiculous time actually buy an 18-rated game online for the full RRP, it can be played at any time, if the parental controls are off.

The restriction applies regardless of any other settings. If you’re the only person in the house, and you’re mid-thirties, you still can’t buy ZombiU until 11pm.

35 Comments

  1. Bizarre way of doing things.

  2. German’s eh?

    • Well I think you’ve said everything there is to say on the matter

    • As a German I can only laugh at Nintendo’s excuse (and our restrictive laws when it comes to violence in video games…).
      I can buy 18-Rated games on Steam whenever I want.

      Cantexplainthat.jpg

    • Let’s take things one step further and stop porn during the daytime. Actually, that’d get so many people back into work (or back to getting on with work) it’d be untrue! Still… awesome stance from Nintendo. Truly befuddling.

      • NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!*retreats to a cave with his porn collection and a lot of tissues and lube* :p

  3. If it’s just one country in the EU then surely it’s not too much effort to have a separate set of rules for the exception rather than the rule?!

  4. Only on Wii Eu.

  5. iI hope every single one is true. 100 getting a ps4 on release, unlike getting the ps3 two years after release.

    • woops that was for the other article

      • Don’t worry. You win the whole of TSA for the best Gravatar, so we’ll move the whole articles around so your comment is in the right place ;)

    • Too many windows open at the same time eh!?

      • loool thanks cc_star.

        also yes, too many tabs open at once.

  6. Wii U gets worse and worse.

  7. These companies are always banging on about the games market being the fastest growing form of entertainment and boasting about gigantic sales figures, and yet Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft seem to come out with the most bizarre and incomprehensable nonsense on a weekly basis.

    • Not really, they’re just complying with laws where they’re based. Perhaps they’ll update it so different countries can break away from this, but for now they’re still launching around the world, having only just had their Japanese launch a couple of days ago.

      • So you reckon Germans can only watch 18s on Netflix or whatever between 11pm-3am?

        Even the Germans aren’t that strict. I mean they’ve only just made bestiality illegal!

      • so by extension, they won’t be able to sell any games that are banned in germany on their eu store?
        because they’re based in germany.

        seriously, region locked, content tied to the console not your account, pitiful built in storage, though allowing you to use up to a two TB external drive is a mitigating factor, charging for child accounts, which will have only one effect that i can see and that is encouraging the kids with a wii u to lie about their age, and now this.

  8. That really is stupid. Why didn’t Nintendo move their location? Wii U isn’t getting much good press at the moment

  9. Isn’t 4am to 6am still during the night? This wouldn’t have happened if any of Nintendos first party games where 18-rated. I wonder how long it’ll stay this way?

    • Well apparently German children get up at 3am I suppose. Zombies ? lol

  10. Won’t sales get affected? I know some of the games online cost the price of a small house but surely they would see some decline. What working person is going to be up at that time.

    Is the time limit on actually downloading games or just purchasing them?

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