PlayStation's new censorship making you move away from the brand?

[xh117]

Wait, did they really censor Winnie the pooh in kingdom hearts 3 for china? That's hilarious. I'm not really seeing any censorship putting me off from buying games on playstation though. It's funny how Witcher 3 can get away with nudity but anime tiddies aren't allowed.

[thefourfoldroot]

On 21/10/2020 at 6:38 AM, Faaip de Oiad said:

This garbage company is now officially in bed with a government that suppresses free speech and runs concentration camps for Muslims.

 

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20200922085710/http://legaldoc.dl.playstation.net/ps3-eula/psn/h/h_tosua_en.html

 

CTRL+F, then search for PRC

 

This is beyond disgusting.

They are respecting the laws of the countries they are in. This is what every company and every individual should do. To do anything else is the height of arrogance and an attempt at cultural colonisation. 
 

I just wish they would also subject themselves to the standards of western countries when it comes to the organisations that set rules on what is allowed. As it is they put their own disgusting beliefs and standards above those of the majority of their customers and all ratings bodies by censoring things they disagree with for no good reason.

[El Duderino]

On 10/22/2020 at 8:22 AM, thefourfoldroot said:

They are respecting the laws of the countries they are in. This is what every company and every individual should do. To do anything else is the height of arrogance and an attempt at cultural colonisation.

They bend the knee to China in order to make business there. 1,4 billion people to sell MTX to. China is a dictatorship. The government is homophobic and racist to the bone. Sony knows this. Hell, everybody should know by know. It's not like they're hiding their intentions. The Chinese government knows that everybody would suck their cocks in oder to get access the the world's biggest market.

 

By the way, 

Quote

damages the honor and interests of the PRC

is a fucking joke. Honor? What does that even mean? How can a country have honor? And does this mean it's honorable to run concentration camps? That would put the history of my country into a different light.
 

All men are equal. That's a no brainer. But cultures are not. Cultures that don't cherish human rights are garbage. Examples: China and Saudi Arabia.

 

Capital punishment for homosexuality? No problem. It's their culture. And that's the perfect excuse for every atrocity. Right?

 

And to finish this post I'll give you a little bit of education. Here's the First Article of the German constitution:

 

 

That's the standard I have in my country.

Edited October 24, 2020 by Beyondthegrave07
Removed insults

[Property_Damage]

I think it’s redundant and kinda bullshit, the whole censorship thing started with games like Mortal Kombat way back in the early 90s, thus giving us the ESRB, video game ratings, on wether something is suited for children, or just adults or if the game is fit for everyone.  This was issued by the US government and instead of just following that ground work they laid out, Its now going a step further to where we cant even have Dead or Alive style boob jiggle in Video games now?

Edited October 23, 2020 by Property_Damage

[AJ_Radio]

42 minutes ago, Property_Damage said:

I think it’s redundant and kinda bullshit, the whole censorship thing started with games like Mortal Kombat way back in the early 90s, thus giving us the ESRB, video game ratings, on wether something is suited for children, or just adults or if the game is fit for everyone.  This was issued by the US government and instead of just following that ground work they laid out, Its now going a step further to where we cant even have Dead or Alive style boob jiggle in Video games now?

 

The people who fully support this censorship probably don't play games at all. Let's be honest.

 

Joe Lieberman tried to get games like DOOM pulled off the shelves back in the day. He was a politician. The same kind of morons who wanted to put a warning label on rock albums back in the 1980s because there were explicit lyrics. Then a few years ago there was talk of some idiots at the FCC wanting to control how people watched their shows. Stuff like The Walking Dead, I'm sure some prudes out there want to pull off because some little kid out there might be exposed to it.

 

It's all bullshit. It was bullshit back then, it is bullshit today. Do what pleases you. Limit your kids however you think you need to limit your kids. Some Japanese game has a bunch of boobs and titties? Oh, got to censor that, can't let the youth see it. I mean cmon.

 

Censorship groups want stuff banned so they won't have to deal with it in the future. They are out for their own interests. Maybe I want to play said game with boobs and titties. It shouldn't be them outright taking the game off before it's even released. Some games I've seen lately have shown they will be on Xbox One, Steam and Nintendo Switch. But there is no Sony logo. Yeah.

Edited October 23, 2020 by Spaz

[PostalDudeRus]

After TLoU2 release I spend money I saved for PS5 on new PC, because this is beyond disgusting. Censoring 3rd party games for participial nudity but allowing mocap sex in exclusive game? Hypocrisy its called.

[thefourfoldroot]

On 10/22/2020 at 9:51 PM, Faaip de Oiad said:

They bend the knee to China in order to make business there. 1,4 billion people to sell MTX to. China is a dictatorship. The government is homophobic and racist to the bone. Sony knows this. Hell, everybody should know by know. It's not like they're hiding their intentions. The Chinese government knows that everybody would suck their cocks in oder to get access the the world's biggest market.

 

By the way, 

is a fucking joke. Honor? What does that even mean? How can a country have honor? And does this mean it's honorable to run concentration camps? That would put the history of my country into a different light.
 

All men are equal. That's a no brainer. But cultures are not. Cultures that don't cherish human rights are garbage. Examples: China and Saudi Arabia.

 

Capital punishment for homosexuality? No problem. It's their culture. And that's the perfect excuse for every atrocity. Right?

 

And to finish this post I'll give you a little bit of education. Here's the First Article of the German constitution:

 

 

That's the standard I have in my country.

 

And yes, some cultures are more barbaric and so worse than others IMO (which makes the whole anti-immigration = racism argument bullshit btw). But on a fundamental level people should respect the laws of the countries they are in, this goes for business too. If someone has a principled position that cultures in those countries are simply contrary to human rights and dignity then they are free to argue and fight against it, but must be very careful, because saying “our beliefs and culture are better than yours” is a very precarious position to take. 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Beyondthegrave07

[yellowwindow7]

On 22‏/10‏/2020 at 3:52 PM, xh117 said:

Wait, did they really censor Winnie the pooh in kingdom hearts 3 for china? That's hilarious. I'm not really seeing any censorship putting me off from buying games on playstation though. It's funny how Witcher 3 can get away with nudity but anime tiddies aren't allowed.

 

the Winnie the Pooh censorship is only on the Chinese version if not mistaken, also this censorship affected all versions, the ps4 and XBONE.

 

I edited this because there's no PC version.

Edited October 24, 2020 by yellowwindow7

[Lance_87]

1 hour ago, yellowwindow7 said:

 

the Winnie the Pooh censorship is only on the Chinese version if not mistaken, also this censorship affected all three platform versions, the ps4, XBONE and PC.

 

KH3 doesn't exist on PC...

[yellowwindow7]

7 hours ago, Lance_87 said:

 

KH3 doesn't exist on PC...

 

oh, I totally forgot about that.

[AJ_Radio]

On 10/11/2020 at 2:36 AM, N1NJ4_V4MP1R3 said:

Red flag for me when people say “SJWs” as some kind of derogatory.

 

What’s wrong with social justice?

 

Too many people nowadays take social justice to the extremes, the BlackLivesMatter movement is living proof of that. Social justice should never be changing things to suit your own interests, it should be changing things that benefits everybody in the long term.

 

What social justice is anymore is so grayed out I may as well call it noise at this point.

[black__bunny]

20 hours ago, Spaz said:

 

Too many people nowadays take social justice to the extremes, the BlackLivesMatter movement is living proof of that. Social justice should never be changing things to suit your own interests, it should be changing things that benefits everybody in the long term.

 

What social justice is anymore is so grayed out I may as well call it noise at this point.

 

The fact that you believe that about the BLM movement shows that you have missed the point. Social justice is about equality in every group, not just the mainstream. Which benefits everybody in the long term.

 

I'm not saying there isn't extremes in these movement because obviously there is, but it generally comes from a place where minority groups are sick of the inequality they experience and mainstream society or institutions in power who refuse to acknowledge it or make any effort to change it. It only becomes noise when you stop paying attention. 

[AJ_Radio]

2 hours ago, black__bunny said:

 

The fact that you believe that about the BLM movement shows that you have missed the point. Social justice is about equality in every group, not just the mainstream. Which benefits everybody in the long term.

 

I'm not saying there isn't extremes in these movement because obviously there is, but it generally comes from a place where minority groups are sick of the inequality they experience and mainstream society or institutions in power who refuse to acknowledge it or make any effort to change it. It only becomes noise when you stop paying attention. 

 

Colleges and universities no longer support free speech like they used to. People need to fight against oppression, not against a mere outcome. My peers who have been held back by a crumbling economy and the fear of offending someone need to step up and take action.

Edited October 30, 2020 by Spaz

[ccrocker58]

Yeah. Very much so. At first it didn't really seem so bad as most games that were coming out censored on PS4 were uncensored on every other platform, and the changes were honestly small and silly with most of the game unchanged. I had become mostly a PC gamer since 2018, and seeing the incredible backlash from the one weekend where Valve mistakenly sent takedown notices to a handful of h-game devs, and seeing Steam a week later start to allow AO games for sale with no negative repercussions, I assumed something similar would happen here and that Sony would quietly drop it. Then I ran into Yuel in Granblue Fantasy Vs. Playing on PC I noticed for some reason, rather than her normal outfit from the original Granblue Fantasy, the devs decided to go with a much more conservative outfit that, iirc, was an event outfit in the original game. Confused, I did research and found that not only had Sony persisted with their harsh content regulation policies, but they'd gotten worse with them, but seemingly only for anime games. For whatever reason, Sony seems fine to have a full on sex scene in their games, and leaves tweets about "blessing your timeline" with a screencap of a bare ass in a hotspring from Ghost of Tsushima.

 

What...is going on here? Sony is making an extremely unnecessary and potentially dangerous shift across the entire industry...that only targets obviously unrealistic characters?

Edited February 4, 2021 by ccrocker58

[Rick_Sanchez]

On 10/22/2020 at 7:52 AM, xh117 said:

Wait, did they really censor Winnie the pooh in kingdom hearts 3 for china? That's hilarious. I'm not really seeing any censorship putting me off from buying games on playstation though. It's funny how Witcher 3 can get away with nudity but anime tiddies aren't allowed.

yeah, the leader of china has been compared to looking like Winnie the Pooh to the point he banned Winnie the Pooh in all media in China.

 

[Trumpet_Boi_208]

On 10/29/2020 at 11:03 PM, black__bunny said:

The fact that you believe that about the BLM movement shows that you have missed the point. Social justice is about equality in every group, not just the mainstream. Which benefits everybody in the long term.

While I do agree with this, you can’t deny that there are a growing number of people out there who use this movement to gain clout, or use it for their own political motivations, pretending that they actually care to gain support. I have found fewer and fewer people who genuinely advocate equal rights without shamelessly attempting to gain clout or support for their self-gain. It’s a good cause on paper, but the execution is flawed by some people who advocate for it, whether that be through media, protests, or other means.

 

*Looks at TLOU 2 and the shitstorm that it aroused*

[fyiByas]

Personally I think whats been most damaging to the Playstation Brand is the Paid Online Service, while sometimes it's nice to play remasters/remakes of games that came out a long time ago there hasn't been a good way to play old games on newer systems. Killing older online games has been kinda a shot in the foot where I can still play Old games On PC with online even if it's just hosting your own.

 

-Their Storefront has been in my opinion needs alot of work. When compared to PStore of Playstation 3 / Vita where it was pretty decent until PS4 rolled around then they completely botched the Store. Harder to find games/DLC but it's still doable unless you're on the older systems heh.

 

-The Streaming Service on Playstation fails to compare of the likes of OBS & others.

 

-PS Communities/Groups/Voice Chat isn't as great as like Discord for example.

 

- I agree Censorship does suck for almost all stances & I for one kinda dislike the new approach of treating bad mouth voice chat. Not to say it shouldn't go unpunished but it's a bit much when it'll lock your account entirely. 

 

 

The Biggest thing that Sony should indeed carry on is making new addicting fun Franchises along with focus on Software & Hardware. New Physic Game engines for example.

 

Just my take on the Matter, I just wish Playstation, Nintendo & Microsoft could do better on their first party stuff instead of just cashing on bare minimum.

 

Edited February 4, 2021 by fyiByas

[ccrocker58]

13 minutes ago, Trumpet_Boi_208 said:

*Looks at TLOU 2 and the shitstorm that it aroused*

Did it really incite a shitstorm though? I remember people being pissed about the story early on, like before it even released, but after that I seem to only remember it breaking sales records and not much else. It wasn't until recently that I read some comments about the hypocrisy in its sex scene. But until recently I hadn't really paid much attention to the Playstation scene...or console scene in general, honestly.

 

7 minutes ago, fyiByas said:

Personally I think whats been most damaging to the Playstation Brand is the Paid Online Service, while sometimes it's nice to play remasters/remakes of games that came out a long time ago there hasn't been a good to play old games on newer systems. Killing older online games has been kinda a shot in the foot where I can still play Old games On PC with online even if it's just hosting your own.

 

-Their Storefront has been in my opinion needs alot of work. When compared to PStore of Playstation 3 / Vita where it was pretty decent until PS4 rolled around then they completely botched the Store. Harder to find games/DLC but it's still doable unless you're on the older systems heh.

 

-The Streaming Service on Playstation fails to compare of the likes of OBS & others.

 

-PS Communities/Groups/Voice Chat isn't as great as like Discord for example.

 

-I agree Censorship does suck for almost all stances & I for one kinda dislike the new approach of treating bad mouth voice chat. Not to say it shouldn't go unpunished but it's a bit much when it'll lock your account entirely. 

 

 

The Biggest thing that Sony should indeed carry on is making new addicting fun Franchises along with focus on Software & Hardware. New Physic Game engines for example.

 

Just my take on the Matter, I just wish Playstation, Nintendo & Microsoft could do better on their first party stuff instead of just cashing on bare minimum.

 

Again, I haven't really paid much attention to consoles the past couple of years, but I do find it baffling how Sony somehow has managed to actually lose functionality going from one console to another. Granted, this time around it seems to be mostly in small things like the video editing capabilities of the PS5 compared to the PS4. Neither were spectacular, but on PS5 it's painful to even try.

 

As for the profanity censorship, I actually did notice that, by way of a bug no less. Or at least I think a bug. My roomate has been uploading the 30 second trophy videos it saves on his youtube account so he can free up space on the SSD. He just names them after the trophy name for the title. Well, apparently the title of the trophy for beating Leechmonger in Demon's Souls contains profanity? I assume this is a false positive, but it's kind of crazy that Sony is censoring what you can post on youtube and twitter now.

 

Still, the censorship thing is what is pulling me away from Playstation the most, and to be honest it's starting to make me straight dislike them. No one was complaining about what they're restricting and it's changing the entire gaming landscape for the worse in my opinion.

[Jelly Soup]

I'm not a fan of censorship, but I'm more on about the lack of proper BC. I understand the issues behind creating a theoretical PS3/Vita emulator in system, but I still feel like I shouldn't have to jump around old technology to access digital information using the same network. I'd even accept PSNow as an alternative if it would allow for access to my full PSN library.

[AJ_Radio]

On 2/3/2021 at 10:26 PM, fyiByas said:

Personally I think whats been most damaging to the Playstation Brand is the Paid Online Service, while sometimes it's nice to play remasters/remakes of games that came out a long time ago there hasn't been a good way to play old games on newer systems. Killing older online games has been kinda a shot in the foot where I can still play Old games On PC with online even if it's just hosting your own.

 

They really need to stop with the remakes. For Crash and Spyro it makes sense, because those old games from decades ago didn't age well.

 

Unfortunately I live in an area where internet is spotty and I can't move until I get a better job and COVID-19 really starts dying down. PS Now is a good option in my opinion if you're just looking to try out some games and play some older ones but the only way to play PS3 games is to live stream them, either on PS4 or PS5. I absolutely hate doing that, I want to be able to download directly onto a newer system without having to bring out the older system to even play the damn games. I love the old God of War games, may even replay them again on another account, but god forbid having to pay a subscription service just to play them on a more modern console.

 

It's not a good option for me.

[Rozalia1]

I abhor censorship of course but beyond "What will be next?" many of the things censored or stopped from coming over aren't exactly... high art... actually wouldn't it actually be high art technically so I should say low art? Whatever, point is it isn't exactly something many in the west will be missing. Thing is there are some things on the border shall we say which gets stopped and if that border expands... bad stuff. This is why so many people go all in on defending Gal Guns and the like. It isn't some great defence of Gal Gun at play, but one of what will accepting these things in the present bring in the future. I read that Mary Skeltor 2 isn't going to come out in the west on Playstation due to this sort of thing for example. On the other hand, to offer some words from the other side of the aisle... censorship can actually improve a work believe it or not. Death end re;Quest 2 had character's super mode outfits modified for example to show less skin yes, but the changes were actually minimal and honestly looked superior. It kept the spirit of the original designs and didn't go overboard. 

 

Anyway, what is more concerning is Sony's lessening mindshare outside the mobile space in Japan. For the big Japanese companies this isn't a big issue as they have western fanbases which means they'll keep putting things on PlayStation. If you're into smaller Japanese devs or like being surprised by some strange/interesting/special gems now and then, companies that don't have that built up solid western fanbase... then yeah, you're missing out if you're not with Nintendo too. I don't however think that this sort of policy is in any way responsible for that. It ain't like this is some alien and new thing for Japan. Back in the day Nintendo wielded much stricter censorship on Japanese devs and they got through it. 

[ccrocker58]

On 2/6/2021 at 8:36 PM, Rozalia1 said:

I abhor censorship of course but beyond "What will be next?" many of the things censored or stopped from coming over aren't exactly... high art... actually wouldn't it actually be high art technically so I should say low art? Whatever, point is it isn't exactly something many in the west will be missing. Thing is there are some things on the border shall we say which gets stopped and if that border expands... bad stuff. This is why so many people go all in on defending Gal Guns and the like. It isn't some great defence of Gal Gun at play, but one of what will accepting these things in the present bring in the future. I read that Mary Skeltor 2 isn't going to come out in the west on Playstation due to this sort of thing for example. On the other hand, to offer some words from the other side of the aisle... censorship can actually improve a work believe it or not. Death end re;Quest 2 had character's super mode outfits modified for example to show less skin yes, but the changes were actually minimal and honestly looked superior. It kept the spirit of the original designs and didn't go overboard. 

 

Anyway, what is more concerning is Sony's lessening mindshare outside the mobile space in Japan. For the big Japanese companies this isn't a big issue as they have western fanbases which means they'll keep putting things on PlayStation. If you're into smaller Japanese devs or like being surprised by some strange/interesting/special gems now and then, companies that don't have that built up solid western fanbase... then yeah, you're missing out if you're not with Nintendo too. I don't however think that this sort of policy is in any way responsible for that. It ain't like this is some alien and new thing for Japan. Back in the day Nintendo wielded much stricter censorship on Japanese devs and they got through it. 

 

I'm not exactly sure how the censored outfits in Death End Re;Quest 2 are superior. They clearly meant for the original outfits to be used because outside of coloring some skin black and adding in huge, tacky, glowing neon color patches they were the same outfits. That's not better if you ask me, it's just...well...censorship.

 

As for the smaller JP devs, for many of them, yes, this policy is directly effecting them. A lot of them made games that specifically targeted a niche audience looking for a little more titillation in a game, and their success was built upon that. These policies rob them of the platform that brings them the most exposure to the west, which is currently the largest market in the industry, iirc.

 

Your example with Nintendo, honestly, is only showing that the Sony's policies are causing a regressive shift. There's no reason for the industry to have to go back to those times, and you're ignoring the fact that Sony's policies don't just effect Japanese games released in the west. Sony's content regulation policies are a worldwide thing. Whether the game is released in Japan, Europe, US, they all are required to follow the same policies.

Edited March 16, 2021 by ccrocker58

[Helyx]

Y'all sure love some tiddys.

[RadiantFlamberge]

On 10/23/2020 at 0:53 AM, AJ_Radio said:

The people who fully support this censorship probably don't play games at all. Let's be honest.

 

Joe Lieberman tried to get games like DOOM pulled off the shelves back in the day. He was a politician. The same kind of morons who wanted to put a warning label on rock albums back in the 1980s because there were explicit lyrics. Then a few years ago there was talk of some idiots at the FCC wanting to control how people watched their shows. Stuff like The Walking Dead, I'm sure some prudes out there want to pull off because some little kid out there might be exposed to it.

I'm sure they don't play games at all. Another game Lieberman raised ruckus over was the gun game Lethal Enforcers (Sega/SNES/PS1) with digitized characters ala Mortal Kombat, but nothing really graphic. When you shoot a criminal there's just a red hit spark, then they flinch from the hit and flicker out. Most console versions are censored somewhat- certain taunts from the criminals "You missed me, pig!" and "You can't shoot me, copper!" are cut out. The SNES version renames the Drug Dealers mission to The Gunrunners, and Chinatown Assault to Downtown Assault. PS1's version isn't censored. If this got a PS4 rerelease, today's Sony would probably meddle with it.

 

The FCC needs to know this is 2021. One of my favorite channels is AMC's sister channel IFC. You can see a movie uncut and uncensored, only with commercials. Something with a R or a harder PG-13 rating will be shown as TV-MA, rather than watered down to get a TV-14.

 

[Rozalia1]

3 hours ago, ccrocker58 said:

 

I'm not exactly sure how the censored outfits in Death End Re;Quest 2 are superior. They clearly meant for the original outfits to be used because outside of coloring some skin black and adding in huge, tacky, glowing neon color patches they were the same outfits. That's not better if you ask me, it's just...well...censorship.

 

As for the smaller JP devs, for many of them, yes, this policy is directly effecting them. A lot of them made games that specifically targeted a niche audience looking for a little more titillation in a game, and their success was built upon that. These policies rob them of the platform that brings them the most exposure to the west, which is currently the largest market in the industry, iirc.

 

Your example with Nintendo, honestly, is only showing that the Sony's policies are causing a regressive shift. There's no reason for the industry to have to go back to those times, and you're ignoring the fact that Sony's policies don't just effect Japanese games released in the west. Sony's content regulation policies are a worldwide thing. Whether the game is released in Japan, Europe, US, they all are required to follow the same policies.

 

That is why that censorship is not that bad. The spirit of the original design is still there, they have just added an element to it that honestly improves it. A hammerblow of censorship would be to completely cut the design and put them in a new one, which in itself could be a fine design, but would not be the original spirit intended for good or ill.

 

Those Japanese devs appeal to a niche audience over there which is seen negatively both here and in Japan itself. I'm not going to say what Sony is doing is correct, but it does give an opportunity to those devs to try and appeal more to a new audience who in the Japanese form of their product are not into it. This stuff happens all the time, often at the behest of the makers themselves. Their product might be very Japanese to the point of being impenetrable to most people, so they instead of wanting things to literally be translated over want it adapted in such a manner that keeps the spirit, but makes it more accessible to people. 

 

I'm with you that we shouldn't be going back to such times. However, a lot more is allowed these days and we've not gone back to anywhere near what it was... plus if what people say is true, these sort of directives will go once the current head is no longer in charge.