> The same game design reskinned would be fine.

The same game design reskinned wouldn’t be the same game, though.

I respect the Germans for their decision to pass and enforce their laws in Germany, and to have an opinion about how websites are displayed to German IPs, but I also am sensitive to the artistic intent of id software, while questioning the necessity of making the games in the first place. Nazi symbols are problematic for the same reasons that war movies are: even if you’re trying to make an anti-war or anti-Nazi piece, it still portrays the very same imagery and context in order to subvert it or supplant it. It’s somewhat self-defeating, and it’s fodder for fans of the things creators themselves may oppose to rally around and agitate for or against to raise awareness for their ideology and their support of it.

Ironically, id didn’t even start that franchise, though they did popularize the genre and their own place in it with Wolfenstein 3D.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein

That said, the original stealth based games were loosely based on real events in which Allied forces killed Nazis, so I’m kind of okay with publicizing notable historical instances of Allies defeating Nazis in World War 2 to a point. We’ve probably crossed that point as soon as id made Wolfenstein 3D, if not before that under Muse Software, which curiously disestablished itself after the second game in the franchise before id continued it. I don’t mean to find fault per se but the moment has passed to make these kinds of content in my opinion.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20140710-can-a-film-be-t...

> “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film,” is a quote often attributed to the late French filmmaker François Truffaut.