FIREKNIGHT2029
Member
I hope they reverse the censorship. It may be minor censorship but it still sucks and is false advertising considering they announced that the whole game would be "uncensored" at launch.
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Stellar Blade Developer Shift Up addresses censorship claims "This is our final product. We are discussing this internally"
Saber
Gold Member
drotahorror
Member
This is really all we have to go on. The blood splatter may have had to be toned down to have the same version of the game approved globally.
Left is final game, Right is demo version.
If that's all I guess it could have been worse. I was thinking dismemberment was axed.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Why would the blood splatter be censored when there was nobody complaining about it?
The striking thing about this whole story is the way that every change has been conflated into a singular narrative with zero evidence of correlation.
The silly Hard "R" thing was about racism, which was the most trivial "fix" imaginable; just swap one repeated graffiti texture for another repeated graffiti texture. Stupid as it was, at least you could see a clear throughline of cause vs effect.
Ok then comes the costumes, which were a non-specific area of complaint - the issue was with the overall design approach not a specific costume. So the causality is questionable because the "nude" costume which was the one getting all the headlines turned out to be unchanged. A couple of others were modified, but also a load more were added in, so you actually cannot conclusively prove the motivation for the update was due to external pressure. At best you can argue, "maybe".
Then we have the gore, which wasn't a bone of contention in the reviews as far as I could tell. So umm, why was that lumped in beyond being something else to rile-up the peanut gallery with?
The giveaway for me was that this conflation was never questioned. The narrative was that one thing reinforced the others, conclusively "proving" shenanigans!
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
The question to ask other then why break your promise of "imma release an uncensored game in all regions" is why were changes made for a R18+ game?
Angry_Megalodon
Member
People got this all wrong. The tweet meant parity among versions so there are no regional differences, a problem they have faced in their other mobile games, with global versions being different from Korean one. They assumed people were in the know regarding this matter but obviously, they werent.
Besides, that was about violence/gore, not sexuality. That's why the director of EA Japan complained (Dead Space was censored and this one didn't)
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Sounds and smells like bullshit. They indeed released an uncensored game in every region. And then patched it after release so technically they didn't lie but a lot of people aren't going to see it that way.
But again if changes were made tone down elements in a R18+ game I guess it really is not much of a Mature rating after all.
If people got it wrong then the devs can muster up an explanation. "These were the final designs all along" just isn't gonna cut it.
But at this stage I don't think anything will other then reinstating the original outfits and reinstating the blood effects.
It won't surprise me if they keep repeating their mistakes like they did with DC and Nikke.
Stuff gets changed, players get pissed, then they change it back. You'd think they would learn by now. Unless of course they made last minute changes because someone offered to cash them a big check.
Crayon
Member
All good points.
The blood seems more likely o be a concession to get it passed in all regions. That happens and I don't see a tenth of the fervor over it.
The two altered costumes look like censorship taken their own. But the only way the square that with so many of the more lewd costumes remaining is that shift up hustled whoever was asking for censorship turning up wth the paltry changes.
Doomtrain
Member
Another thing that should be addressed is the notion that what's on the disc is the "real" vision for a game. That's not necessarily how it works, especially in the age of digital updates and patches. If you look at the entire development lifespan of a project, every piece of that project will likely go through dozens, hundreds, or sometimes even thousands of iterations. There comes a point where the game needs to ship and the team needs to call pencils down, but no game in the history of the medium has ever shipped EXACTLY like how the developers want. Production timelines, publisher deadlines, finite resources, and financial realities of needing a product to sell and make its budget back, etc., will all typically come before raw artistic vision. If you ask any industry professional about games they've worked on, I 100% guarantee every single one of them will have things they wish they could have changed, but for whatever reason, they weren't able to. Ultimately, just because something got pressed on a disc doesn't mean it lines up flawlessly with the artist's vision.
To use a costume as an example: if you were to dig through the repo history of Stellar Blade, you'd likely see every single costume went through countless alterations over the history of the project. From the developer's perspective, this means that there's nothing particularly sacred about the version that shipped on the disc. It's just another revision in an exceedingly long line of revisions.
The artist could have been staring at Bunny Suit revisions #1-#748 incrementally for the past two years. Bunny Suit revision #749 could have been committed on Wednesday. The game could have been submitted to the publisher on Thursday. The artist could have come into work on Friday and felt like tweaking some things, resulting in Bunny Suit revision #750, which the producer agreed they could include in a future patch.
The *hope* is that the revision submitted to the publisher is the final one, but due to the reasons listed above, sometimes this just isn't in the cards. When that happens, sometimes the studio will have the resources and the desire to patch things after the fact. Sometimes they don't.
Either way, "this is what was on the disc, so it represents what the developer really wanted" isn't the reality of the medium. It's easy to romanticize it as such from afar, and to try to look for patterns that support larger conversations we care about, but at the end of the day, these things are often much more mundane.
To use a costume as an example: if you were to dig through the repo history of Stellar Blade, you'd likely see every single costume went through countless alterations over the history of the project. From the developer's perspective, this means that there's nothing particularly sacred about the version that shipped on the disc. It's just another revision in an exceedingly long line of revisions.
The artist could have been staring at Bunny Suit revisions #1-#748 incrementally for the past two years. Bunny Suit revision #749 could have been committed on Wednesday. The game could have been submitted to the publisher on Thursday. The artist could have come into work on Friday and felt like tweaking some things, resulting in Bunny Suit revision #750, which the producer agreed they could include in a future patch.
The *hope* is that the revision submitted to the publisher is the final one, but due to the reasons listed above, sometimes this just isn't in the cards. When that happens, sometimes the studio will have the resources and the desire to patch things after the fact. Sometimes they don't.
Either way, "this is what was on the disc, so it represents what the developer really wanted" isn't the reality of the medium. It's easy to romanticize it as such from afar, and to try to look for patterns that support larger conversations we care about, but at the end of the day, these things are often much more mundane.
Pejo
Gold Member
So your point is that we shouldn't believe what is tangible, real, and on the disc because of a feeling you have that "trust me bro it was probably a design iteration".
That doesn't make sense. It also doesn't make sense that a bunny suit, a common theme in design across many forms of media dating back to the 1960s (and made by a woman) suddenly has a a pair of oversized briefs panties under it and something to cover the cleavage, when cleavage is arguably one of the key features of a bunny suit.
I can't believe we're on page 14 and still not willing to accept that the design change was done for censorship reasons.
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Crayon
Member
It's still totally possible that they weren't. The other costumes being unaltered is the biggest thing to consider there. I'm much more confident about the blood. I'm like 90% on the blood but have fallen towards 50/50 on the outfits. Other outfits being unaltered is too big to ignore.
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ToneyJ
Member
There are no gore differences in patched vs unpatched. The extra blood was from the demo, which has since been changed and removed.
In the actual game, there is still some gore/blood, just toned down.
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Doomtrain
Member
That’s not remotely my point. My point is that “what’s on the disc” isn’t “tangible and real” from a development perspective at all. “The disc” is just another iteration in a series of thousands of iterations spanning multiple years. It feels tangible *to you* because you can hold the disc in your hands, but the developers themselves are working from a very different frame of reference.
As an additional example: if a game ships with a bug on the disc, does that make the bug part of the developer’s definitive vision? Obviously not; it just means that bug was present on, say, last Thursday’s build, and that was the one the publisher decided to run with. Developers are well aware that we can patch things these days, and for better or for worse, that dramatically lowers internal pressure to make the disc version the final word.
I’m also not arguing that this isn’t censorship, and I’d suggest re-reading my post if that was your takeaway. I’m arguing that there are myriad variables at play, many of which aren’t visible to anyone outside of the developer and publisher. It’s possible it was censorship. It’s also possible it was something completely mundane. I’ve seen the latter happen numerous times with my own eyes. Short of confirmation from people on the inside, we simply don’t know.
The point of my post isn’t to say what the specific reason is or isn’t, because I’m working with incomplete information and so are you. The point of my post is to offer additional perspective, as a developer, of how many moving parts there are behind the scenes and how chaotic things can get when it’s time to ship. Maybe this fits into the larger zeitgeist about censorship (in which case I oppose the change, for whatever that’s worth.) Or maybe it’s just something really boring. The boring option happens more than you’d think, but it doesn’t make for very interesting message board fodder.
BaneIsPain
Member
Just give us a toggle option to add/remove layers in suits.
Pejo
Gold Member
Holy moly that's quite a leap inlogic to compare this situation to a bug. Those are two entirely different things. I get what you're saying but there are just an ocean of bad faith posts in this thread and to me, your earlier post was another one of them.
Saber
Gold Member
Not sure about the blood, all I can read here is some kind of context(and insults) about the costume aspect but I don't remember reading anything about the lack of blood. Is there any context?
Doomtrain
Member
You’re correct that this isn’t a bug, but I’m illustrating a point that “the disc” isn’t sacred. If you’d prefer, perhaps the parry timing is a better example?
Genuinely curious why you think my post is bad faith. I acknowledge that censorship is a big thing in the industry right now and I oppose it. I’ve also acknowledged that it’s entirely possible that it happened here. But it’s not *the only* explanation. I’ve worked on games where the scenarios I’ve described have happened. I can think of one off the top of my head that really pissed off the fanbase and literally turned out to be the director going into the project files without telling anyone, making a change without understanding how a system worked, and breaking things that somehow circumvented our QA department and got pushed out as a patch. I don’t know if the internet had any specific theories as to why that happened, and I don’t think the game was controversial enough to be part of the culture wars or anything, but I do know from that experience that if anyone tried to ascribe greater meaning to it, they were wrong. One way or another, players were upset and the director got yelled at.
Again, maybe that happened with Stellar Blade and maybe not, but having experienced things like this, I think the fact that the possibility exists is worth considering. Ultimately, we can’t know for certain until a public statement is made (and even that could just be PR speak.)
Crayon
Member
There's only one picture of the blood difference and I wasn't so sure about that one, but after playing the game and remembering noticing how much blood in the demo, I think it did get cut back.
Saber
Gold Member
I get that part. I'm talking about if anyone here ever care to provide any modicrum of explanation for the reason for why they removed the bloodly part or if is this also part of the same argument people keep repeating with costumes.
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Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
The big problem for me is that the reason people are pissed off is over "principle".
On the surface this seems perfectly right and reasonable, people are fed up with the nanny-ing and sermonizing about diversity and politics. It annoys the fuck out of me too.
BUT. If you actually stop and think about it, Stellar Blade was always a "win". All it had to do was sell really well and the point was proven that there remains a demand for games in this style.
The only thing all this bullshit internet drama is accomplishing is showing the industry that it doesn't matter whether you give the people what they want, you're always going to get battered by petitions, and boycotts, and calls for your head, for something!
Its not helping the cause.
Its also logically ass-backwards! Its easy for anyone impartial to pick holes in the whole "censorship" narrative, because with it being argued as a matter of principle its a cartoon version of a complex issue. Cultural lines are drawn differently depending on where you are in the world, some places are more sensitive about sex, others violence and dismemberment, religious and political imagery etc.
This matters because there's no indication -as far as I know- that Stellar Blade has any regional variants, so their claim of it being uncensored in all areas is probably true, but in reality is about something else than making culture-warriors in anglo countries happy. There's not a version with Pride flags and one without sort of thing.
Above all else though, is it actually that inconceivable for a developer to want to tweak back things like blood-splatter or some costume designs because they prefer it that way? Does it absolutely have to be something they were forced into under duress?
Confirmation bias is a real thing.
One last point; I doubt this was planned, but you could look at the whole "Hard R" thing as a masterful piece of trolling. Its perfect bait, people get mad and then more people get mad about people getting mad... 4-Chan would be proud of that shit! Its so perfectly stupid yet its managed to goad the whole internet community into uproar.
On the surface this seems perfectly right and reasonable, people are fed up with the nanny-ing and sermonizing about diversity and politics. It annoys the fuck out of me too.
BUT. If you actually stop and think about it, Stellar Blade was always a "win". All it had to do was sell really well and the point was proven that there remains a demand for games in this style.
The only thing all this bullshit internet drama is accomplishing is showing the industry that it doesn't matter whether you give the people what they want, you're always going to get battered by petitions, and boycotts, and calls for your head, for something!
Its not helping the cause.
Its also logically ass-backwards! Its easy for anyone impartial to pick holes in the whole "censorship" narrative, because with it being argued as a matter of principle its a cartoon version of a complex issue. Cultural lines are drawn differently depending on where you are in the world, some places are more sensitive about sex, others violence and dismemberment, religious and political imagery etc.
This matters because there's no indication -as far as I know- that Stellar Blade has any regional variants, so their claim of it being uncensored in all areas is probably true, but in reality is about something else than making culture-warriors in anglo countries happy. There's not a version with Pride flags and one without sort of thing.
Above all else though, is it actually that inconceivable for a developer to want to tweak back things like blood-splatter or some costume designs because they prefer it that way? Does it absolutely have to be something they were forced into under duress?
Confirmation bias is a real thing.
One last point; I doubt this was planned, but you could look at the whole "Hard R" thing as a masterful piece of trolling. Its perfect bait, people get mad and then more people get mad about people getting mad... 4-Chan would be proud of that shit! Its so perfectly stupid yet its managed to goad the whole internet community into uproar.
Pejo
Gold Member
I don't think anybody is questioning at this point that things HAVE been changed, at least I fucking hope not because they'd be verifiably insane. The cause and the purpose of the change is what's being debated.
Crayon
Member
The blood has not got a fraction of the attention. Partly due to it being known as a common thing - there's a lot of countries where the ratings are more harsh on that or don't allow it at all. I think that's been the general assumption and part of why people are mostly leaving that alone. Still could be just a choice on their part but we've seen violence toned down many times to pass ratings, usually resulting in regional versions of the game differing. In this case they seemed intent on all regions getting the same cut.
^^^Excellent post.
not compromising one's principles is great... in principle.
Day to day, we know there are things like; Picking your battles, choosing proportionate reactions, not being overconfident, not jumping to conclusions, exercising patience, seeing the big picture, separating emotions, etc. These things are not principles, but wisdom, and sometimes they conflict.
Toons
Member
The problem is a reason was given snd its being rejected. And there's no actual reason that the given reason is being objected that has anything to do with this game or its studio.
Dr. Claus
Vincit qui se vincit
I have long since blocked the bad faith posters. All they do is push strawman arguments, insult, gaslight, and dismiss anything they disagree with.
Whether or not you care about the censorship is one thing, but the constant attempts to label and dismiss everyone as being mindless incels who is being led by the nose by Grummz is pathetic.
InterMusketeer
Gold Member
Bro, the game's creator rejected his own answer directly when he gave it. Apparently he doesn't believe in the persuasiveness of his own reply. Why would anyone with a good head on their shoulders put any kind of value in it then? How is it at all surprising that it's being rejected?
Do people just leave critical thinking at the door when they enter this thread?
Doomtrain
Member
What was his answer? I don't think I saw that.
DoktorCoktor
Member
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InterMusketeer
Gold Member
It's in the video in the OP. A direct quote: "I know this answer is not enough to convince our user."
Well, 'lo and behold, users were not convinced, yet somehow folks in this thread keep stressing that we totally should. If someone hands me a sandwich and immediately tells me it probably tastes like shit, I'm not taking a bite. His statement does nothing to take away any suspicions and actually legitimizes them.
Fake
Member
Critical thinking is a thing of the past for social media warriors.
Crayon
Member
If those legs are bare, that makes three versions of that outfit. And I would be kind of surprised if having bare legs was an issue given what else is in the game.
Doomtrain
Member
It's been said before by you and others, but this is another thing that makes me hesitant to attribute this purely to censorship. Given that the game contains much worse -- I mean, you START with the Skin Suit -- why would Sony or anyone else demand these specific outfits be toned down?
The best argument I can think of in favor of that is if Sony said something like, "You can have X number of outfits that show X amount of skin, but no more." I suppose that's possible, but it feels strange. Is there any other situation where this would make sense?
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Pejo
Gold Member
This is wrong on the assumption that Censorship is a documented regulation or a science or something. I mentioned this earlier in the thread, at its core, it's an action taken by a feeling/reaction about something. There is rarely consistency or sensical reasoning behind what gets censored, specifically in video games.
InterMusketeer
Gold Member
Not everyone within Sony might have been happy they were involved with this game. We know Sony has people checking content and censoring it. What if they threw their weight around to make their mark on this game? Maybe these measly changes were all they could muster. In other words: Workplace politics.
Apparently Shift Up fired two women who disagreed with the game's direction. It's not unheard of.
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Pejo
said, censorship does't have to make sense. Completely innocent conversations have been censored in games before because localizers wanted to make a joke and didn't value the source material. And since we don't get a whole lot of transparency in the gaming industry, it's quite likely we'll never know exactly what happened.That's the same image that was posted in the first post on Friday. What's the third version of that outfit? The patched and unpatched are the same for that as far as I know. There's completely bare legs in the bikini so would be pretty daft to add stocking for anything other than asthetics. They made the right call with modelling stockings. I remember she looked weird and lanky from the side without it because the side of that dress was open and she pointed that side to the camera a lot. I think I even made a comment about it somewhere on a preview build video last year if some neogaf detective can find the posted video.
Dr. Claus
Vincit qui se vincit
Not everyone within Sony might have been happy they were involved with this game. We know Sony has people checking content and censoring it. What if they threw their weight around to make their mark on this game? Maybe these measly changes were all they could muster. In other words: Workplace politics.
Apparently Shift Up fired two women who disagreed with the game's direction. It's not unheard of.
Like
We literally just got confirmation that Sony censored two pictures in an artbook that will be uncensored on Nintendo Switch.
Sony is fucking retarded.
Saber
Gold Member
Garbage argument. Subject to change means changes during the project lifecycle, not after is launched. Otherwise companies could remove pretty much about everything, giving them power to take away everything with the premise that was subject to change.
ToneyJ
Member
I love that he said that lol. Basically "I gave my corpo, NDA'd, PR response to the situation, but my fans aren't stupid enough to actually believe that nonsense".
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Crayon
Member
He said he anticipates that the people who have a problem won't believe him. You were just lamenting some lack of critical thinking. Sounds more like he called it.
They op shows one with fishnets and one with stockings. This one looked like bare legs but the pic is blurry so I'm not sure.
Crayon
Member
Idk but I can tell you that question has been getting dodged a lot.
While the changes are too small for me to care about, I think from a marketing standpoint they stand to win be releasing the alternate costumes.
The costumes already exist and wouldn’t be much of an issue to add. The only issue may be whatever caused them to make the alterations.
The censor angle is questionable given the number of more revealing outfits but it might also be about designs where they’ve copied a pre-existing design and needed to alter it enough to avoid plagiarism issues.
The costumes already exist and wouldn’t be much of an issue to add. The only issue may be whatever caused them to make the alterations.
The censor angle is questionable given the number of more revealing outfits but it might also be about designs where they’ve copied a pre-existing design and needed to alter it enough to avoid plagiarism issues.
Crayon
Member
Not everyone within Sony might have been happy they were involved with this game. We know Sony has people checking content and censoring it. What if they threw their weight around to make their mark on this game? Maybe these measly changes were all they could muster. In other words: Workplace politics.
Apparently Shift Up fired two women who disagreed with the game's direction. It's not unheard of.
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This is handwaving the issue with the other costumes, and contains a contradiction. You are saying essentially that censorship works in mysterious ways, but you know what really happened.
How they got through all the skimpier costumes does not necessarily take censorship off the table, but it can't just be ignored. One has to at least take a crack at it. It's asking a lot for everyone to agree the elephant in the room is meaningless.
A big issue here is that the movement or whatever is hinging very heavily on having absolute certainty of what happened and the motivations. As soon as reasonable doubt is allowed to get it's toe in, the dynamic changes a lot.
Fishnet? Are you talking about the strange Aliasing from the off TV screen photo or am I being stupid and not seeing a fishnet?
Crayon
Member
Fishnet stockings. Like the hookers wear!
You're talking about this image right?
Why don't I see hooker stockings?
There is an off tv photo Aliasing effect but no stockings.
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Crayon
Member
You're talking about this image right?
Why don't I see hooker stocking?
Oh yep now that I zoom in I could see them.
Oooohhhh but really I don't. I zoomed in and what I'm seeing is some sort of moire artifact from an off screen image
Sorry I have a vitamin deficiency and see hookers everywhere.