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Stellar Blade Developer Shift Up addresses censorship claims "This is our final product. We are discussing this internally"

Crayon

Member
Who's turning down anything? No one's telling you not to buy the game, or not to play and enjoy it. No one's saying the other outfits aren't hot as fuck. No one's saying this game is completely irredeemable because they (probably) censored a couple outfits. Anyone can see the changes are very minor. Just pick another outfit if you don't like the altered ones. There's plenty to pick from.

But those are just the details people tend to get caught up in. Censorship has no place in any creative industry and if these changes were really ordered by some outside party for political reasons, that's wrong. Not only does it affect this game, but it sets a precedent for it to happen again. People are simply voicing their concerns to prevent that and this is the appropriate place for it.

The post I replied to was sounding pretty dejected. All they had to do was not fuck it up. They were handed a "win"... Etc.
 

SenkiDala

Member
Rated M is 17+. AO is Adults Only (18+). It's rated M. So it's not like games like this are at the end of the range and can start depicting rape or whatever you suggest without affecting the rating, it's not adults only. AO in the gaming world is usually a kiss of death.
Ah ok, well in EU, 18+ is the max, there's nothing above.

Still I think what I say in the rest of my post. We should stop censorship in gaming. Yes I know when implies a gaming being available for adults only but then don't make ALL your marketing around the kinky contents. Sure that's a couple of costumes and it won't change the rest of the game but I do believe that we shouldn't tolerate any form or censorship.
 

midnightAI

Member
Their "Uncensored in all regions" tweet got community noted

ShiftUp 🤡
Uncensored in all regions means parity across all regions, nothing more

(This was being complemented a few days ago)

Edit: in fact, what if this is direct retroactive action to that EA dude having a whine about Stellar Blade getting a CERO D rating in Japan, they saw it and agreed asking for certain things to be censored? (Unlikely but pressure on rating boards like this can affect change)
 
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Kilau

Member
Let's look at it this way- Maybe it's someone else who was handed a win and fucked it up.

A lot of people were cheering on thIs game because of the controversy over the sex appeal. Continuing on it's path in a world that shuns this kind of thing. Understandable. I am one.

Eve made it through the door, she made it through the hoops, the bumps, the haters, the manipulators, the bean counters, the regulators, the twitter banshees, and through the final stretch...

...to arrive almost unscathed. 95% unscathed.

Very nice.

Unless, you draw a hard line at your principles I guess. Then 95% isn't good enough. Or 99.99999%, for that matter. Maybe having principles means everything is all or nothing.

Well I have principles too, but I'm a practical type and I consider this final game mission accomplished. Anyone who was holding this game up as a flag for anti-uglification or anti-woke should be using it as a cudgel now that it made it over the line. Reviews are great. Awareness is sky high. And most importantly the game still has a cavernous, chrome ass crack in your face at all times.

My friend, there are hectares of artery-clogging cheesecake in this game. We got side boob, under boob, happy trails, anatomically correct sub-crotch structures, micro-breadloafing, glutes that seat four, and a degree of subcutaneous tissue animation the could be described as severe.

Seriously people should be championing this game more than ever. Laughing that those little scraps of fabric were all it took for the horniest aaa game since dead or alive volleyball to get through the censors and to the top page of the store.


Yet here we go, turning it into an L because the little game that could didn't come all the way up the mountain , through all the aligns and arrows, without a fucking scratch. It came all that way and delivered everything from subtle nipple puff to sunlight glinting off a spandex-constricted labia, but fuck all that - it's the principal of the thing and now we lost and here comes the whaaambulance.

I have to stress that the concept of principles or having them is a real thing and very important but in life there are countless instances where have to take wins where we can get them. And turning down a win this clean all considered is just crazy.

None of that is why I was interested in this game, sounds ridiculous honestly.

I only cared because it was a new character with an actual feminine face and body, something that seemed impossible to do anymore in a big game.
 

MayauMiao

Member
Currently playing the game and it’s really good, people should just enjoy the game instead of stressing over all this pointless controversy and culture war bullshit.
Should tell the same thing to Sony, stop censoring the game because it triggers the activist journos and give their customers what they wanted.
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
Should tell the same thing to Sony, stop censoring the game because it triggers the activist journos and give their customers what they wanted.

Why is it that they never follow their own advice? Why even post in the thread if you are enjoying the game and supposedly better than the "controversy/culture war bullshit". Seems to me they *are* in the culture war bullshit, just on the side that doesn't want to bring light to censorship.
 

ManaByte

Member
PB2teEJ.jpeg
 

Peroroncino

Member
They should change the tweet to "slightly censored across all regions" and be done with it :messenger_tears_of_joy:

Either way, minor changes or no, they deserve the blasting, once you get on the soapbox, you better make sure you mean what you say.
 

00_Zer0

Member
Doubt they'll revert back.
The inevitable PC release will fix the censorship issues and put control of such matters in modders hands. Soon enough PC gamers will have options not afforded to the console release.

We can give the middle finger to the corporate overlords and say screw you. If they won't give it to us we will make it ourselves.

This might include things like adding the censored stuff like outfits, gore/blood back in. As well as new outfits, QOL features, or even new gameplay tweaks. PC release can't come soon enough.
 

Yoda

Member
Seems they kinda step into it themselves. If they're going to bow to pressure from western activists then they shouldn't try to ride the hype of bucking the trend of "non pretty" characters in games. I get that the censorship is minor, but if there IS censorship then probably best that word isn't in the marketing at all?
 

Toons

Member
It quite literally went into why the scenario you brought up is extremely unlikely. But I see that you have no intention of engaging in discussion. That's fine.

Dude you said the main reason you didn't see that it was likely this isnt Sony is because the game was promoted from day 1 as a fanservicey game, and that its too egregious a change to not happen without strong reasoning. so what I'm saying is I disagree on both of those reasons because it's still a very fanservicey game and they didn't even change much.
 

Toons

Member
Idk if it's just me but my timeline's filled up with this shit now & people are barely talking about games anymore. All this political shit & the brain-dead convos around this game are all I ever hear about now, SONY PLS DROP A BANGER SHOWCASE ASAP, I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE

I used to talk about video games so much more than I do, but its rarely ever even fun to talk about anymore because of the culture stuff, its always gonna be there i get that, always has been but you literally csnt escape it anymore
 
Its a nothing-burger!

Look, if you didn't have an ideological horse in the race, you'd just shrug and change it too. Because it doesn't matter!
Do folks such as yourself who say this realize that it clearly matters, since someone at the company decided to make the changes? If it didn't matter, we wouldn't have had the changes in the first place.
 

Pimpbaa

Member
What the hell people? You can use the skin suit almost immediately in the game, and that leaves nearly nothing to the imagination. Even the standard suit you get looks like it was painted on Eve’s skin. Most of the outfits show no censorship at all yet a few alterations of a couple of outfits and people go nuts.
 
What the hell people? You can use the skin suit almost immediately in the game, and that leaves nearly nothing to the imagination. Even the standard suit you get looks like it was painted on Eve’s skin. Most of the outfits show no censorship at all yet a few alterations of a couple of outfits and people go nuts.
Unannounced changes after-the-fact when people already paid for it, together with actual marketing of alleged no censorship, is what caused the issue. If they just told us the changes it would have been fine. But the actual twitter announcement of the patch just mentioned performance enhancements and parry changes, this is dishonest.

The following was the announcement of the patch but with no mention of the outfit changes.

If you change the outfits, just say so. The fact that they didn't tell players show they were ashamed of it.
 
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DryvBy

Member
I'm not sure if people are aware but unless you have something saying Sony told them to have one outfit censored (which doesn't make sense as there's worst outfits than this one in the game), then it's not censorship. Censorship requires a 3rd party to be involved of some sort telling them to knock it off.

If Sony told them to, it's censorship. If the studio making it didn't, it literally isn't censorship even if they changed something. That falls within creative choice.

Imagine thinking Bungie censored Master Chief by not having his schlong out the entire game.

Some of you need to just play games with both hands. You don't have to fap every minute of the day, especially when playing games.
 

Senhua

Member
I think companies should start treating USA the same way they treat Saudi Arabia and China - releasing special USA editions with less revealing outfits, custom labels and so on.

Shame that this cannot happen due to the size of american companies and a lot of companies being american in the first place and thus preventing other countries from dealing uniquely american issues (or invented spanish like in SM2). But maybe eventually as there is no point for other countries in the world to deal with american mess.
I agree with this.
It's time for some American to realize that anything global/international is not as same as America and pretty sure while english language is deemed as an "international" language by a lot of people, it's still far from english = american.

Why when one games been localized to english, it means is for American? why not Australian/UK/Singaporean/ Hong Kong/ Indonesian etc.
There are so much other country that use english as their international first/second language.

You know that Chinese people said to this current trends? American Cultural Revolution
They really do not care about all the shit happen on there and please stop exporting your American trash culture under the pretense of anthing global / international.
It does not work with trade and political relation and certainly will not work with entertainment media too.
 
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I'm not sure if people are aware but unless you have something saying Sony told them to have one outfit censored (which doesn't make sense as there's worst outfits than this one in the game), then it's not censorship. Censorship requires a 3rd party to be involved of some sort telling them to knock it off.

If Sony told them to, it's censorship. If the studio making it didn't, it literally isn't censorship even if they changed something. That falls within creative choice.

Imagine thinking Bungie censored Master Chief by not having his schlong out the entire game.

Some of you need to just play games with both hands. You don't have to fap every minute of the day, especially when playing games.
You think this is about things not being sexy. You are deliberately ignoring the actual outrage. All this wouldn't have happened if they didn't hide the changes in a patch and told no one, AND marketed the game as uncensored. You think this is about sex? If that is all you are boiling this down to then you don't understand this at all.
 

MayauMiao

Member
Some of you need to just play games with both hands. You don't have to fap every minute of the day, especially when playing games.

This kind of vitriol isn't going to win you any argument. If anything, it shows your complete lack of understand as to why the drama started.
 

DryvBy

Member
This kind of vitriol isn't going to win you any argument. If anything, it shows your complete lack of understand as to why the drama started.

Oh heaven forbid I lose the highly valuable opinions of people who don't know what the word censorship means!
 
Really hope they roll back the outfits to the unpatched physical version. And if not i hope ppl keep putting pressure on them.

Im playing the game unpatched but would be nice to play the NG+ and other future updates without the censored outfits. This is a +18 game. Why western games like Cyberpunk, BG3, and many others can have full uncensored nutity on playstation, and as soon a game from asia comes out the censoring team say, "hold my soy late, got work to do"?.
Because those games are "the right kind of sexual"... Blame the woke cult. They don't want me experiencing "the male gaze", lmao. Which is such a dumb phrase. The dudes that support censorship like over at resetera and ign all remind me of limp wristed Smithers and the pole dancers scene.

The same people who are against this are also all pro slut, polyamory, hos, cheating and prop up only fans hos, why because it's women taking stuff from straight men. It's their weird cult of intersecutionaily. Been fighting this shit since it popped up online in 2014.
 
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Fredrik

Member
Some of you need to just play games with both hands. You don't have to fap every minute of the day, especially when playing games.
There is nothing more risky here than what can be seen on a normal beach and I don’t think fapping on a beach is all that common. Even in a standard gym you see more than in most modern games. It’s okay, most people are able to enjoy the sight of pretty people without touching themselves, there is no need to go into defence mode here.
 

DryvBy

Member
Drop the disingenuous assertions that people who are critical of censorship as perverts who want to touch tv
There is nothing more risky here than what can be seen on a normal beach and I don’t think fapping on a beach is all that common. Even in a standard gym you see more than in most modern games. It’s okay, most people are able to enjoy the sight of pretty people without touching themselves, there is no need to go into defence mode here.
Still not censorship. And there's worst outfits than the one above.

You're a moron if you think people didn't buy the game to touch themselves. The same ones are complaining censorship like they understand the word.
 

MayauMiao

Member
I think companies should start treating USA the same way they treat Saudi Arabia and China - releasing special USA editions with less revealing outfits, custom labels and so on.

Shame that this cannot happen due to the size of american companies and a lot of companies being american in the first place and thus preventing other countries from dealing uniquely american issues (or invented spanish like in SM2). But maybe eventually as there is no point for other countries in the world to deal with american mess.
Ummm..

 
Unannounced changes after-the-fact when people already paid for it, together with actual marketing of alleged no censorship, is what caused the issue. If they just told us the changes it would have been fine. But the actual twitter announcement of the patch just mentioned performance enhancements and parry changes, this is dishonest.

The following was the announcement of the patch but with no mention of the outfit changes.

If you change the outfits, just say so. The fact that they didn't tell players show they were ashamed of it.

Day one patch only changed that and the hard R thing. The 2 Costumes were changed before day one patch.
 

LimanimaPT

Member
Censorship? Is this some kind of dictatorship? Freedom of expression is being lost. What law has been broken?
Don't change a single bit of your game.
 

Fredrik

Member
You're a moron if you think people didn't buy the game to touch themselves.
Well then I guess I’m a moron because I really don’t think anyone would pay $70 to get fapping material when internet exist.

You think people bought the Dead or Alive games to fap as well? Dragon’s Crown? Tomb Raider? Final Fantasy 7 remake? Or what about mods? You think those who use mods just want to fap?

Or could you see any possibility that people just want to play a great game and think it’s even better when there is some extra eye-candy?
 

Newari

Member
"It's so small change, it doesn't matter" <- That kind of thinking over many years made us go from classic Tomb raider Lara to Spiderman 2 MJ.
The one who complains the hardest seems to get their will through so gamers are starting to complain
 

Snake29

RSI Employee of the Year
At least the camel toe is still intact!

Why have to cover the cleavage though?

The suit looks better with that and has more class, and more mysterious.

Also, the demo is not the final product. Demos are months and months old.
 
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xrnzaaas

Member
The whole situation is a mess. The dev definitely knew that Sony will force them to censor some suits, but kept silent about it watching the pre-order numbers rise. Sony on the other hand decided to censor less revealing suits, while leaving some of the more revealing (including the skin suit) intact.

It's probably good to remind people again about not pre-ordering anything, even if it's looking like the game is actively going against the Western trend of uglifying female characters.

Oh yeah, and remember to go retail. ;)
 
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Nonsense. America does not force any gaming company to make changes to their games so your comparison to China or whatever is absurd. Anything done to a game is strictly voluntary so don't blame the US, blame the publisher.

We absolutely can blame America. American publishers, American platform holders, American culture, pandering to American sensitivities to succeed in the American market. American companies like Blackrock and Vanguard that incentivise certain portrayals of women and alphabet inclusion. This all came out of an American state... California. Your nation likes to take credit for a lot of things but your country owns this woke shit through and through.
 

Fredrik

Member
Oh yeah, and remember to go retail. ;)
To play unpatched and miss out on the gameplay tweaks that reduce latency?
Nah. But if the social media noise don’t make them reverse it it’ll eventually be fixed through the Steam release, all post-launch gameplay patches plus mods to filter out any westernized design ideas. Just sucks to wait.
 
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