BloodGodAlucard said:But that's an issue that needs discussing in the gaming industry. It's stupid to have an adults only rating if it's never utilized. I can understand the argument why Microsoft and Sony wouldn't want to have games with those ratings when you had to go to stores to buy games physically. But with digital distribution now so widely used, there's no logical reason why AO games shouldn't be allowed on the platforms. They allow the sell of unrated directors cuts of movies. They don't outright sell porn on the marketplace. But they could.
If you're confident in your age restriction settings on your console it's dumb to exclude a potential market because some of the public is overly sensitive. Or you're concerned about negligent parents buying adult content for minors. Adults should have the right to have access to this content on their consoles if they choose. Just my opinion.
I realize I'm probably in the minority, but I'm strongly against censorship. It doesn't matter the reasoning. So it's annoying to see things like this happen. Not just with this game but in general.
I am strongly against censorship as well, but what's happening here is not censorship. Nobody has forced the developer to change anything in their game, and the game wasn't refused classification or banned from sale. The ESRB does not differentiate between porn and very extreme content, which is a failing in their rating system, but an understandable one considering how often it comes up (almost never).
Every store, physical or digital, has an undeniable right to choose what they do and do not sell. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and Valve all have decided not to sell games rated AO by the ESRB becauase they don't want to sell pornography, which is what most titles given that rating are. They've also decided not to sell content not rated by the ESRB for similar reasons (though I believe Valve is more open about this). The developers understood this going in, and understood how the ESRB works, and since they still arrived at this outcome, the only options are that they did it on purpose and aimed for an AO rating, or they disagree with the ESRB about how extreme the content is. They made the decision to change the content because they wanted to sell the game on platforms that otherwise wouldn't allow it. No government decision was involved in this, nobody stopped them from selling the game independently on PC, and nobody is stopping them from offering the decensor patch either. We don't consider our music censored because places like Walmart choose to sell the edited versions of albums, or our movies because TBS airs an edited version or some theaters refuse to show specific films.
We're lucky in the US because the ESRB is not a government agency, and the they are more lenient with their ratings than other countries' ratings boards. Consider that games in Australia are rated more harshly, or that games in Germany are actually truly censored by the government.