Pissed off at recent taming down of M-rated games in the PS4

[Chris_Ceee]

Sony's censorship is specifically directed against small and medium sized Japanese developers, affecting even games only released in Japan. Sony even forces Japanese developers to submit all paperwork and documents in English (surely a problem for small developers in Japan)!
So called "AAA" from Western developers are completely unaffected, even if they feature explicit gory violence and nudity (something which no Japanese game has, for it is not allowed in Japan).

[DarknessFX]

Indeed. It's a weird moment when Sony is censoring content while Nintendo is okay.

[Whitetail8]

As some of you have already mentioned this is not an issue affecting western releases, this is Sony pushing an agenda against Japanese releases, its perfectly fine for the Witcher and GTA to have nudity, sex scenes and violence, but god forbid anyone is exposed to big bouncing anime titties, now if they were to offer us de-censoring patches then I would be fine with it but they won't because they have an agenda and its going to cost them a lot of loyal playstation people. I have been loyal to Sony since the PS1 but this is the most pissed off I have been with Sony.

[SnowyJess]

I find it quite amusing that Nintendo of all companies is now more lenient on content than sony, they still censor their first party releases from what I remember but they seem fine with third party games being uncensored(or in some cases censored just enough to avoid an adults only rating). I just hope Nioh 2 won't be affected by this.

[isturbo1984]

The answers to this is Sony's new North American headquarters is California. The capitol of stupidity.

Also... social justice =/= politics. Even if SJWs would like you to believe their "cause" is a political one, lol.

[Brigand Boy]

I'm not sure where I heard this (possibly on the Quartering?) but Sony's current HQ for games in the west is in the Bay Area. And as someone mentioned above, all games everywhere now have to be submitted to this branch in order for it to be released here or in Japan on the PS network. Submitted in English, and the hours the place keeps are Pacific time, not Japanese time.

And this branch, for whatever reason, doesn't like jiggly bits or gore. It's annoying, and I feel for the PS4 owners out there.

[Chris_Ceee]

It seems Sony's games division ceased to be Japanese, and is now a California company, for all intents and purposes.

[JackofTears]

Yeah, it's rather unfortunate, I'm glad Steam changed their policy on this - if you knowingly buy an M rated game, you should have access to M rated gameplay - be that tiddies and sausage or murder porn.

[Chris_Ceee]

Steam is fine with realistic gory violence and nudity, but now censors/bans unrealistically looking Anime-style games.

[JackofTears]

Last I heard, Steam changed its policy to allow those games.

[fenrif]

Steam changed it's policy but they keep censoring games regardless. One Angry Gamer has run a few articles about it.

[Chris_Ceee]

Taming or toning down of games which are supposedly M-rated already. Nothing political I hope mods but heck, what got into Sony doing this? Sure its already done (DOA6 and DOAX Scarlett, haven't touched Senran Kagura yet).

Hopefully the free market forces will knock some sense into Sony.

Steam rocks! (Fyi, own a PC,Switch and PS4)

Sadly, Steam is now also censoring and banning -- and same as with Sony, it is also directed against Japanese niche game developers (I am boycotting Steam/Valve too, and cancelled my account).

What is really troubling is the prospect that Japanese developers will start to self-censor in order to avoid having to deal with Sony's nonsense (we cannot blame them, for smaller developers probably don't have to funds to develop two different versions -- one for Sony/Steam and one for Switch/Xbox?).

[Verhoven 69]

Steam reversed itself? Last report I had read had the woke gaming press knocking them down for allowing "legal" gaming genre attuned for the adult gamer.

[RevolverGirl]

I dont know about "reversing" but they straight up deleted a RATED E non sexual game because it had a loli in it. Steam is doing that for quite a few games that feature lolis even in a non sexual manner (which even though im still against it I would understand). But It seems more like they are an old man that doesn't understand how things work.

[Verhoven 69]

Well, again, not shilling for them(Steam) but if its an E and them NPC journos get even a slightest opening to virtue signal, then better be safe than sorry.

[Dub-Z]

Honestly, a lot of the games targeted so far aren't my thing at all, but it's a slippery slope to any kind of content for any kind of game, and the impetus behind it is suspect.

I remember when we weren't going to get Xenogears localized because of it's religious content being seen as controversial for the US.

[Chris_Ceee]

It is depressing that we still have to deal with the same censorship nonsense as gamers had to endure in 1991 and 1992 when the Western releases of Streets of Rage 2 and Final Fight were censored for being too sexy. Only now Sony's censorship is on global scale...

[+ D A W N +]

Yep Australia defenintly get the rough end of the censorship sick. The first thing that comes to my mind is southpark.

[RetroRex]

I traded in my PS4 a while back for this very reason. Between switch and PC, I can still get access to most of the games I want to play.

[Hyperweasle]

The American rating system is weird, a T rated game, could be just as violent as a M rated game, one example that comes to mind is Halo and Star Wars Republic Commando, both are about just as violent, but one is rated M and the other is rated T. If anything, I thought the ragdoll physics in Republic Commando created more gruesome looking deaths, than it did in Halo, along with the blood splattering in on your visor with some mild gib effects when shooting enemies. The only difference being one had dynamic blood while the other didn't, because I guess blood splattering on your visor doesn't count.

[Ryan]

But it IS political. That is why these games are suddenly scrutinized. Outrage culture has become so cancerous that Sony has chosen to become proactive. I would imagine those games are still available in Japan though, so just create a Japanese account and you can access the store.

[Verhoven 69]

The trouble is, the games are getting toned down prior to release even if they are M. There's a certain game along the Senran Kagura vein that's still "in the works" despite it being already finished because of this issue.

[fenrif]

Taming or toning down of games which are supposedly M-rated already. Nothing political I hope mods but heck, what got into Sony doing this? Sure its already done (DOA6 and DOAX Scarlett, haven't touched Senran Kagura yet).

Hopefully the free market forces will knock some sense into Sony.

Steam rocks! (Fyi, own a PC,Switch and PS4)

It's fucking over japanese devs too because this isn't AFAIK concentrated in the west. It's due to Sony moving their global HQ to California and suddenly the entire company runs on the morality of that little bubble of the world. It also, overnight, meant that japanese developers had to find someone to translate their documentation, and had to submit based on USA time rather than Japanese time. A lot of smaller Japanese devs were complaining about it.