Ive just sent an email to the polish Q3 distributor. Lets wait and see what will they have to say about this situation (on their homepage there are about 3 Quake3 positions, but none of them is available to buy - "sold out" or "not available at the moment").

The game is banned here in Germany. Yes, banned. It is forbidden to sell it publicly, it is forbidden for magazines to write about it. Even mentioning the name is risky for magazines. They call this protection of our youth, I call it blantant censorship.

I have not found a way to buy it yet. I heard about a store in the city that imports it but I have no clue how expensive that would be. I've been considering getting it at Amazon UK but I am not sure about shipping. If anyone here knows a good way to buy the game in Germany (preferably in original English language) and not pay more than neccessary, I'd be more than happy to order my legit copy as soon as possible.

Don't know about Half-life 2 yet, but i assume that it's a cut version here.
With Doom 3 they were actually able to keep it uncut and unbanned, by conveying that it's to be seen as a pure "shocker" instead of a senseless massacre. I'm very surprised that it went through successfully.

edit: Actually, i'm not too sure about HL2, since you can download it via Steam anyways.

Hm. Well no, they aren't banned in Germany. Take a look at Amazon.de, they're both available there