davidjaffe
Weighed in on this one. For a while the "if the government did it" argument was bothering me, but then towards the end of the video, it's admitted that censorship can come from outside of the government. The actual change also seems to be about predatory behavior rather than character age.
If the change was just to make a 16 year old character 18, I don't think many people would care. That could be argued to be a change focused solely on localization, although I personally feel it shouldn't be necessary anyway, because the entire game clearly takes place in Japan. At that point, it's almost culturally insensitive, ironically enough. As if to say, "this game might be set in Japan, but those people think the wrong way." Clearly that depiction of the characters isn't illegal in the US, as the game was released that way years ago.
Then again, as said before, the change isn't really about age.
For me, if changes should be considered censorship comes down to a single question.
"Is this change being implemented due to a question of morality?" You answer that, and you answer the question. When someone complained about a sexualized pose in Overwatch, the change the developers made was censorship. When the developers of Overwatch released their game in China and removed all references to homosexuality, that was censorship. You can argue that it's self-censorship, but it's still censorship. When Blizzard punished that streamer for voicing his support of the protestors in Hong Kong, that was censorship. It may have largely be the result of trying to protect their sales in the name of free market capitalism, but that doesn't mean it wasn't censorship. The reason for the change isn't what matters, it's the reason for the petition of the change in the first place. And if that reason is "morality," then the change is censorship.
Criticism obviously isn't censorship, but if media gets changed to fit the moral values of a critic due to their criticism, how is that not censorship?