Sony forces Japanese developers to censor sexual content - For Japanese audiences too.

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

DMC5 and Warriors Orochi are shovelware, good to know

2011 to 2014 to be specific. When people wonder if Y5 will ever get localized. Vita was at its height, you know the wonderful time to be alive as a hardcore weeb who buys everything from Japan.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Eh I really can't really see this as all that damning. The japanese were not even buying Senran kagura even when it was uncensored. The games have had like 5-6 installments to enhance and improve the core gameplay mechanics but they still played like a knock off dynasty warriors. There's really not going to be some sort of max exodus from sony either, everything published in the west is either under Bandai Namco, NIS/NISA, Square Enix, and Atlus/Sega and all of them are in the process of putting out games for the PS4 and/or PS5.

DMC5's patch was apparently initiated by Capcom themselves for fear of normie blowback only to later undo the censoring themselves. And I think the lack of Dynasty Warriors boob jiggle was something relating to Koei tecmo fucking up the frame rates for the ports and wasn't anything to do with censorship but people jumped on the band wagon pretty quickly to accuse without thinking.

Honestly this all strikes me as some sort of corporate buffer because their lawyers told them to do it, because the policy only seems to be targeting games that sold poorly overseas and also have no large following.
The policy has been enacted for around 8 months at this point, considering that we've gotten titles like Red Dead 2, Vesperia, Kingdom hearts 3, Sekiro, Disgaea 1 Complete, as well as smaller titles like Labyrinth of Refrain and Metal max Xeno I don't really see the winds changing.

Almost all of these targeted games were of very low quality. Senran Kagura bombed in Japan and the anime did terrible because nothing recent about the franchise was good. Like with all the high quality Ninja and Samurai games that came out recently or are coming out, SK really needs more to the series than just low poly boobs, the series has been essentially stagnant gameplay-wise for years.

It's really hard to get people to really around censorship when the censored games in question are bad. Series like Atelier fall within the same realm of low quality titles and the last 3 games were all terrible including the recent Return to Arland one. Sophie and Firris were at least tolerable but then they made everything too tedious and boring for the next 3 games with no redeeming aspects. These games can't retain their audience. Now granted all the atelier games have not been censored, but even if they were I don't think anyone would really care in the long run. These games need more competent developers than anything else.

And I wouldn't really want people to call the switch "Vita 2.0" as handhelds are viewed as a side event. People who say the switch is the spiritual successor to the Vita probably never owned a Vita much like the people who kept calling the Wii-U the successor to the Dreamcast or Dreamcast 2.0. If Nintendo wants to seriously compete with Sony in the west, then they need to bring back western devs who can appeal to western audiences by making exclusives. The reason why the n64 is viewed so fondly in the west as the last good nintendo system was because of Rare. You may get people to say the gamecube was good but outside of Paper Mario nearly everything was a step down from the n64. Until Nintendo makes a powerhouse system again it really can't compete in the same areas that sony has influence over or has carried. In order for a console to do triple digits you need America to be fully onboard and with the PS5 announcement it looks like Sony is continuing the success that the PS4 had.

At most the censorship policy is slightly concerning but it's nothing major, once the next big release rolls around people won't think twice.

 

[MI 814]

Eh I really can't really see this as all that damning. The japanese were not even buying Senran kagura even when it was uncensored. The games have had like 5-6 installments to enhance and improve the core gameplay mechanics but they still played like a knock off dynasty warriors. There's really not going to be some sort of max exodus from sony either, everything published in the west is either under Bandai Namco, NIS/NISA, Square Enix, and Atlus/Sega and all of them are in the process of putting out games for the PS4 and/or PS5.

DMC5's patch was apparently initiated by Capcom themselves for fear of normie blowback only to later undo the censoring themselves. And I think the lack of Dynasty Warriors boob jiggle was something relating to Koei tecmo fucking up the frame rates for the ports and wasn't anything to do with censorship but people jumped on the band wagon pretty quickly to accuse without thinking.

Honestly this all strikes me as some sort of corporate buffer because their lawyers told them to do it, because the policy only seems to be targeting games that sold poorly overseas and also have no large following.
The policy has been enacted for around 8 months at this point, considering that we've gotten titles like Red Dead 2, Vesperia, Kingdom hearts 3, Sekiro, Disgaea 1 Complete, as well as smaller titles like Labyrinth of Refrain and Metal max Xeno I don't really see the winds changing.

Almost all of these targeted games were of very low quality. Senran Kagura bombed in Japan and the anime did terrible because nothing recent about the franchise was good. Like with all the high quality Ninja and Samurai games that came out recently or are coming out, SK really needs more to the series than just low poly boobs, the series has been essentially stagnant gameplay-wise for years.

It's really hard to get people to really around censorship when the censored games in question are bad. Series like Atelier fall within the same realm of low quality titles and the last 3 games were all terrible including the recent Return to Arland one. Sophie and Firris were at least tolerable but then they made everything too tedious and boring for the next 3 games with no redeeming aspects. These games can't retain their audience. Now granted all the atelier games have not been censored, but even if they were I don't think anyone would really care in the long run. These games need more competent developers than anything else.

And I wouldn't really want people to call the switch "Vita 2.0" as handhelds are viewed as a side event. People who say the switch is the spiritual successor to the Vita probably never owned a Vita much like the people who kept calling the Wii-U the successor to the Dreamcast or Dreamcast 2.0. If Nintendo wants to seriously compete with Sony in the west, then they need to bring back western devs who can appeal to western audiences by making exclusives. The reason why the n64 is viewed so fondly in the west as the last good nintendo system was because of Rare. You may get people to say the gamecube was good but outside of Paper Mario nearly everything was a step down from the n64. Until Nintendo makes a powerhouse system again it really can't compete in the same areas that sony has influence over or has carried. In order for a console to do triple digits you need America to be fully onboard and with the PS5 announcement it looks like Sony is continuing the success that the PS4 had.

At most the censorship policy is slightly concerning but it's nothing major, once the next big release rolls around people won't think twice.

So at the end of the day you are saying "The games sold poorly so who cares" and "They didn't censor western games!" (But maybe they did! Just we don't know about it, or they have a double standard). Getting rid of sexual content won't make SR better, doing that but not improving anything else would make the series worthless. "The censored games are really bad" Hahahaha! Also, they go after the worst most embarrassing things before moving onto the more mild stuff, so assuming western games are safe is naive.

And sure Nintendo needs more western games, hopefully you mean good western games and not the pandering garbage that Sony seems to prefer as of late (though most of them aren't bad, talking about shit like TLOU 2). But people like Japanese games because they are Japanese, so if more devs developed for the switch and made good games unhindered by Sony's bullcrap, then that would be a good thing of itself as well.

Overall, a better post than what someone like Neural would do but still comes off as contrarian and bootlicking.

 

[huckbeine]

Basically, I am done with Sony. The last cellphone I will bought from them is the XA1 Ultra, that's the last Vita I will buy, that's the last PS4 I will buy. If I have to buy something Sony only has that I want, I will buy it second hand.

 

[UE 558]

It’s a weird bind, if we do nothing, Sony will just keep doing the same shit, if we sperg out like Billy D or NicheGamer, Sony’s probably just gonna use it as ammo and drag SJW spergs like Sterling and LKD in to defend them. This is why a I kinda wish someone like Mark Kern would start up something, someone who understands the industry and would have a strategy more sound than “chimp out on Twitter”. Again, it’s about as likely as DSP getting a job, but goddammit I like my fantasies

 

[Marissa Moira]

It’s a weird bind, if we do nothing, Sony will just keep doing the same shit, if we sperg out like Billy D or NicheGamer, Sony’s probably just gonna use it as ammo and drag SJW spergs like Sterling and LKD in to defend them. This is why a I kinda wish someone like Mark Kern would start up something, someone who understands the industry and would have a strategy more sound than “chimp out on Twitter”. Again, it’s about as likely as DSP getting a job, but goddammit I like my fantasies

Well you're also dealing with the fact that most weebs really don't care for Senran Kagura themselves. It's essentially like being unable to heal an orphan disease because so few people are affected by it.

I mean you censor a game that no real demographic is going to buy and no real audience routinely buys it. I see the OAG/KIA types hoping that a popular game gets hit with censorship because even they're realizing that so few people even like these games. I know they're trying to make it seem like Catherine Fully Body will be censored but it won't, it was already released in japan which means it passed through Sony's censorship rules unchanged which means the US release will be the exact same content.

The other one was Omega Labyrinth Z but the game itself is on par with Drive Girls for being pretty bad, you can import a japanese copy and play OLZ, but the fact will remain that it's just not a good game. And one of the things about games is that if they're not any good nobody's gonna buy or care about them. I mean that's why people laugh or take joy when they see something like Lawbreakers fall flat on it's face, the things a bomb you might as well enjoy the fall out.

 

[UE 558]

Well you're also dealing with the fact that most weebs really don't care for Senran Kagura themselves. It's essentially like being unable to heal an orphan disease because so few people are affected by it.

I mean you censor a game that no real demographic is going to buy and no real audience routinely buys it. I see the OAG/KIA types hoping that a popular game gets hit with censorship because even they're realizing that so few people even like these games. I know they're trying to make it seem like Catherine Fully Body will be censored but it won't, it was already released in japan which means it passed through Sony's censorship rules unchanged which means the US release will be the exact same content.

The other one was Omega Labyrinth Z but the game itself is on par with Drive Girls for being pretty bad, you can import a japanese copy and play OLZ, but the fact will remain that it's just not a good game. And one of the things about games is that if they're not any good nobody's gonna buy or care about them. I mean that's why people laugh or take joy when they see something like Lawbreakers fall flat on it's face, the things a bomb you might as well enjoy the fall out.

Like I said earlier, I think a major Western indie getting censored will be the thing that might get bells ringing. The Western AAA pubs know how to bend Soyny to their will, the Japanese AAAs likely know how to prevent the censors from ever going off in the first place (with the off-hiccup like DMC and Lady and Trish), and many of the lower end/indie Nips will probably just take the path of least resistance and just move all their operations to Switch/PC

 

[AbyssStarer]

Well you're also dealing with the fact that most weebs really don't care for Senran Kagura themselves. It's essentially like being unable to heal an orphan disease because so few people are affected by it.

I mean you censor a game that no real demographic is going to buy and no real audience routinely buys it. I see the OAG/KIA types hoping that a popular game gets hit with censorship because even they're realizing that so few people even like these games. I know they're trying to make it seem like Catherine Fully Body will be censored but it won't, it was already released in japan which means it passed through Sony's censorship rules unchanged which means the US release will be the exact same content.

The other one was Omega Labyrinth Z but the game itself is on par with Drive Girls for being pretty bad, you can import a japanese copy and play OLZ, but the fact will remain that it's just not a good game. And one of the things about games is that if they're not any good nobody's gonna buy or care about them. I mean that's why people laugh or take joy when they see something like Lawbreakers fall flat on it's face, the things a bomb you might as well enjoy the fall out.

Fuck you, I wanted to play Omega Labyrinth Z, it's expensive to import. For that matter, I also wanted to play Dungeon Travelers 2-2 but Atlus USA was too much of a pussy to localize it after they had backlash censoring a few images in the DT2. They deserved that backlash because DT2 didn't need it, but because of that censorship and notoriety To-Heart Dungeon Travelers and DT2-2 are both about $60 to import new copies of. Fuck everybody on a budget who wanted to play those games, we don't matter. The audience who likes these types of games doesn't matter because uppity douchebags don't like us. Perfectly fine precedent to set.
It's already been pointed out many times in this thread, the quality of these games isn't what matters, what matters is the principle. The trend in censorship is going to come right back around to bite you all in the ass in a matter of time. Just because it's not what you care about now doesn't mean it's not coming.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Fuck you, I wanted to play Omega Labyrinth Z, it's expensive to import. For that matter, I also wanted to play Dungeon Travelers 2-2 but Atlus USA was too much of a pussy to localize it after they had backlash censoring a few images in the DT2. They deserved that backlash because DT2 didn't need it, but because of that censorship and notoriety To-Heart Dungeon Travelers and DT2-2 are both about $60 to import new copies of. Fuck everybody on a budget who wanted to play those games, we don't matter. The audience who likes these types of games doesn't matter because uppity douchebags don't like us. Perfectly fine precedent to set.
It's already been pointed out many times in this thread, the quality of these games isn't what matters, what matters is the principle. The trend in censorship is going to come right back around to bite you all in the ass in a matter of time. Just because it's not what you care about now doesn't mean it's not coming.

That's kinda the issue the quality of the game DOES matter. You can't make people care about a shit game. Being jaded and cynical kinda goes with the territory and when you tell these people you have to care about a flaming pile of garbage as a matter of principle it's not going to go over smooth. I mean did anyone really care about the games when EA released numerous bombs and nobody liked the games and all the journalists wrote articles about why it's bad to make fun of a game because you'll deter women and minorities from contributing to games? That's the same principle shit. You can't argue with principles you need actual substance to be there. I mean hell do people remember that Sunset game where you're the maid? That got mocked to hell and back and caused the developers to rage quit because they felt that people were obligated to buy the game out of the principle of it.

Senran could very easily fill the space that Metal Gear Rising could have occupied. The clothing mechanics could have been improved upon and have a MGR slow motion target system where in very fine detail you wreck your opponent by hacking and slicing off parts of their armor and have a wide variety of enemies that you can tear down into pieces. Story you can really do whatever since the story in SK never really mattered much, hell just do a full on reboot. They really need to make it with far more solid content and gameplay systems.

 

[AbyssStarer]

That's kinda the issue the quality of the game DOES matter. You can't make people care about a shit game. Being jaded and cynical kinda goes with the territory and when you tell these people you have to care about a flaming pile of garbage as a matter of principle it's not going to go over smooth. I mean did anyone really care about the games when EA released numerous bombs and nobody liked the games and all the journalists wrote articles about why it's bad to make fun of a game because you'll deter women and minorities from contributing to games? That's the same principle shit. You can't argue with principles you need actual substance to be there. I mean hell do people remember that Sunset game where you're the maid? That got mocked to hell and back and caused the developers to rage quit because they felt that people were obligated to buy the game out of the principle of it.

Senran could very easily fill the space that Metal Gear Rising could have occupied. The clothing mechanics could have been improved upon and have a MGR slow motion target system where in very fine detail you wreck your opponent by hacking and slicing off parts of their armor and have a wide variety of enemies that you can tear down into pieces. Story you can really do whatever since the story in SK never really mattered much, hell just do a full on reboot. They really need to make it with far more solid content and gameplay systems.

The games that have been censored recently were all trash, lol, ok, sure.

 

[UE 558]

You guys know you can like games Sony’s published AND still be upset by their corporate practices, right? Might sound kinda dumb, but I’m actually kinda interested in playing Spidey(though I might get a used/“ebay new” disc now). I’ve always had a soft spot for Insomniac, even R&C 2016 was kinda fun, despite the easiness and shit writing and the web slinging looks neat, but at the same time I still think Sony, the game’s publisher/IP holder has been engaging in a fuckload of scumbaggery as of late

 

[Marissa Moira]

The games that have been censored recently were all trash, lol, ok, sure.

They really were though, SK Burst Renewal, Omega Labyrinth Z, Zanki Zero were all subpar, and then there's the fact that visual novels really are not games.

 

[MI 814]

"The games were crap so who cares!" That's the mentality Sony wants you to have, before they censor more mainstream games you actually care about. I'm shocked that you guys are blind to that lol. Then again there are people on here who defend Epic so yeah.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

"The games were crap so who cares!" That's the mentality Sony wants you to have, before they censor more mainstream games you actually care about. I'm shocked that you guys are blind to that lol. Then again there are people on here who defend Epic so yeah.

Sony is not so dumb to outright shoot themselves in the foot. So far most arguments supporting Sony had been the damn tired underaged excuse and never about the lacklustre quality of the games

 

[UE 558]

Sony is not so dumb to outright shoot themselves in the foot. So far most arguments supporting Sony had been the damn tired underaged excuse and never about the lacklustre quality of the games

Except from Moira because they’re stupid.

 

[Marissa Moira]

"The games were crap so who cares!" That's the mentality Sony wants you to have, before they censor more mainstream games you actually care about. I'm shocked that you guys are blind to that lol. Then again there are people on here who defend Epic so yeah.

Considering the policy has been enacted for at least 8 months and what's come out since then I don't think anything more mainstream is going to get censored. It was only just made officially public this week but it's been going on for awhile now.

 

[UE 558]

Guessing it’s less about Japanese AAAs being exempt from censorship and more about them knowing how to get around it, with DMC being a case where they accidentally let it slip past them. But for the most part, it seems like Capcom, Namco, Sega, etc know how to avoid the censors, it’s Compile Heart, Tamsoft, and other AA/indie devs who need to worry. On the western side, I could definitely imagine some of Devolver’s racier games being targeted

 

[Marissa Moira]

Guessing it’s less about Japanese AAAs being exempt from censorship and more about them knowing how to get around it, with DMC being a case where they accidentally let it slip past them. But for the most part, it seems like Capcom, Namco, Sega, etc know how to avoid the censors, it’s Compile Heart, Tamsoft, and other AA/indie devs who need to worry. On the western side, I could definitely imagine some of Devolver’s racier games being targeted

Devolver really hasn't put out anything that would violate the policy though. Violence and Vulgar subject matters are ok, it's just stuff specifically tied to visible interactive underage nudity which sets it off.

Mortal Kombat 11 made it through the policy unchanged, the fatalities are all intact and they're still the same quality of graphic body horror that's come to be expected of the series.

 

[UE 558]

Devolver really hasn't put out anything that would violate the policy though. Violence and Vulgar subject matters are ok, it's just stuff specifically tied to visible interactive underage nudity which sets it off.

The “infamous scene” from Hotline 2 comes to mind, though it’s an older game, so it’ll likely be unaffected unless they try to make an Enhanced Edition or something

 

[Marissa Moira]

The “infamous scene” from Hotline 2 comes to mind, though it’s an older game, so it’ll likely be unaffected unless they try to make an Enhanced Edition or something

I don't think it would because that's a passive use of rape and not a directly interactive one, Hotline also isn't based around rape. IIRC it can also be disabled in the menu itself from the PC copy.