Not really.
Owners of the mod, as well as the servers are located in Germany/Austria, and thus are subject to their laws, whatever might be thought of those. So, whilst we can debate whether or not Stalin is a bad name (imho, whilst he was every bit the monster that Hitler was, if not more, censoring names is plain dumb), the other is simply a case of adhering to laws and thus not debatable.
This.
From a legal point of view it is not possible to allow people to call themselves H.itler and so on. You can't name your character this way in 99% of all other online games by the way (at least if they have some form of moderation). Why should you be allowed to do it here?
It is only fair to also forbid names of other mass murderers of the 20th/21th century. H.itler and Stalin had and still have a huge influence on modern (european) politics, culture, the generation of our parents and especially our grandparents. Both of them killed millions of people and devastated all Europe. Lots of people (who are still alive) lost close relatives, were exiled and persued.
In Russia for example the last Gulag was only closed at the end of the 1980s! Currently we even experience a growing tendency of Neo-Stalinism there. Lots of political and social conflicts in Eastern Europe are still a result of Stalinism.
In Hungary the antisemitic Jobbik-Party with it's (New) Hungarian Guard (some kind of successor of the Arrow Cross Movement, which helped the N.azis to murder the hungarian jews) is part of the government. Some months ago one of their leaders claimed that jews are "a threat to the national security" and that they "should be registered in special lists". I guess you get the point...
So National Socialism and Stalinism are not just something that happened in the past and that we can forget now. They still affect (directly or indirectly) the life of lots of people.
This is a game and not a platform for questionable political ideologies.I can understand that people are offended by such names (especially in Eastern Europe).
What is the point of calling your character H.itler anyways?
Is it cool? Nope. To provoke other players? Well, I guess you are 12 years old then.
If you call your character H.itler you are most likely just an extremly uneducated dump fuck. Not worth wasting your time to support such people.
You can nearly use each name you want. There is almost no censorhip in this game, so I don't see a real problem.
By the way: I had a very nice and friendly conversation with Merc_Stalin. He also came to the conclusion that Stalin could indeed be offensive for some people and simply changed it. Unlike some of our usual internet warriors he had no real problem with it.
