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Sony Cracks Down on Sexually Explicit Content in Games (Article States That It Refers to Underage Characters: Check Threadmarks)
- Thread starter Sectorseven
- Start date
User Banned (2 Weeks): Returning from a ban and resuming banned behaviour, fearmongering and conspiracy rhetoric, rationalizing content that depicts sexualized minors
See, this is something to actually get on Sony's case about. Unsurprisingly, no one is doing that, and everyone's instead saying "oh this is clearly aimed at the pedophilic garbage and will not be abused in any way ever". The more sensible crowd are bringing up Mortal Kombat, Devil May Cry, God of War, and so on because they know from experience that those are next. The thing about censorship is that you constantly have to keep an eye on it, or else it will start to take over the things you actually like. We already have throngs of people who say things like "Mortal Kombat/God of War is just some generic fighting game/beat em up built entirely on the explicit content and is completely unnecessary in gaming".
Do you hate companies or do you love them? Which is it, people? Or are you just gonna "deplatform" and ban anyone willing to actually point out these very clear problems with your thinking, claiming they said something they expressly pointed out that they didn't?
Do you hate companies or do you love them? Which is it, people? Or are you just gonna "deplatform" and ban anyone willing to actually point out these very clear problems with your thinking, claiming they said something they expressly pointed out that they didn't?
No, they are bringing it up to equate sexualizing minors with violence.
That's ... a surprisingly well articulated post.
As for censoring pedo shit, go for it. No complaints on my end. The less there are, the better. But man that "think of the children" argument is just shit. Just take a stand against pedo content. Most people would agree. End of story.
Also from afar the whole situation feels like they want their cake and eat it too. Like unless I'm mistaken they keep selling super creepy stuff like the Senran Kagura series (or however it's spelled) but don't want to deal with the controversy that (rightfully) comes with it.
They're not. They simply are not. That is not what this is about. No one is actually equating sexualizing minors to violence, and if they are then they need to be called out for that specific thing. It is never an excuse to support the basic idea of censorship as many others in this thread are doing.
Good.
Can't stand this porno anime imagery, thank you Sony.
And people putting on the same level the violence depicted in God of War with pedo anime tropes... Geez...
Can't stand this porno anime imagery, thank you Sony.
And people putting on the same level the violence depicted in God of War with pedo anime tropes... Geez...
I personally don't give a f what it's called. A ban, censorship, whatever, if it's forbidden and gone in the end.
Nailed it. I'm surprised to return to this thread and seeing people still using the wrong equivalence of comparing extreme gore violence with preying little girls. Like, no matter how hard you try, the violence and gore of Mortal Kombat is designed specifically to be completely fantastic, you can't replicate fatalities, you can't kill somebody in the ways MK shows. Is fantasy. What is not necessarily fantasy and can totally happen in real life is people preying on school girls and try to harass them.
We could argue both settings in the context of a game are equally a fantasy, but if you bring the normalization issue, we already normalized violence, don't keep normalizing more questionable stuff.
Awesome, four posts in a row saying the exact same thing, just like most of this topic. So you're all just gonna write this off as something that will only benefit you and never come back to ruin the things you enjoy? Gotcha. Have fun.
Just... don't... play games with porno anime imagery?
Dunno how it works on the psn store, have not been using it in forever, but on steam in order to see adult content you need to tick a checkbox. why not do the same on consoles, where in order to see 18+ content you need to check a box
Censorship should absolutely be allowed if it bans media promoting the sexualization or exploitation of a minor. They are heinous thoughts and should not be normalized.
Rather than using a slippery slope argument, why don't you argue for a clear guideline on their censorship? Be vocal about what you think is absurd to censor while promoting what you think is ok? Certain acts should never be permitted, no matter how much you stand for free speech.
When it affects the types of games that you're mentioning in a demonstrable way, then my opinion will change. Until then, removing the type of garbage that we're talking about in terms of sexualizing young kids, is perfectly fine. Again I'm simply astounded at the level people will go to try to defend this shit by mentioning THINGS THAT HAVEN'T HAPPENED YET.
Look, I get where you're coming from, from that idea that nothing should be "censored" cause that opens the door to futher censoring "everything", but that is not how things work, never had. The vast majority of the internet (at least the clearnet), from the get go, already banned, "censored", pedo stuff, did that caused the collapse of the entire porn industry? Of course not.
It is ok to put your finger on questionable stuff so you can keep enjoying other stuff you like. That's mainly why game developers are clamping down on racism on online games lately. Did censoring the racist on the chat ruined the game for everybody because we didn't protected his precious free speech? Well, no. That's how things should be, in order for all to enjoy things in a civilized manner.
Also, keep in mind that nobody is forcing anyone here to not enjoy the things they like, just go look for them somewhere else. Returning to the original source of the discussion, here is just Sony saying "not on our platform". Nintendo is accepting pretty much everything on the eShop nowadays so, in the big scale of things, not much is gonna change, you just gonna have to change your main console.
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lol no, mk fatalities were always "FUCK YES THAT'S AWESOME" edgy gore
There are countless reaction videos to modern fatalities and people on this very thread saying they should be spoilered because they're gross. I guess it was a different time when your 16bit character would punch 3 heads out of his/her opponent :P
Actually from my experience that has not been the case. We are on Mortal Kombat 11, it's only gotten more graphic over the years. Those aren't next, they have been fine. Underage child pornography is not. It's pretty fucking straight forward and sensible.
So... did you happen to actually look into anything you're talking about here before you took the moral high ground? Or nah? Cause I don't think you have any clue what you're talking about.
No, those violent games are absolutely not next. It's been, what, 5 months of them incredibly consistently targeting only fanservice, the vast majority of which was of young/underage characters (I'm counting DOA as an exception here and not DMC)? Bringing up those games is just needless fearmongering, disingenuously bringing up complaints of double standards, general foolishness, or some mix of those. The "more sensible" crowd are the ones talking about the issues with an unclear policy, not the ones suddenly bringing up violence solely to defend this kind of content.
The end of your post is nonsensical as well. Has anyone even been banned in this thread for anything other than Gamergate dog whistles and/or outright defense of sexualizing underage characters? And why are you bringing up "deplatforming" like you have an axe to grind? What brilliant poster going "I think this slope... may be slippery!!" got "deplatformed" here?
Skipped previous pages because this thread is a mess and the title doesn't help staying on topic (policy officially confirmed, which wasn't the case before, and lack of details confirmed again, being costly for the devs), but:
Games can be allowed in regions, it's the same for patches. Different certification processes, which MS got rid of a long time ago, and which Nintendo kind of unified in recent years.
On top of that, if the patch is out in a region but not another, it's obviously an issue with the platform holder. Not the developer.
Already tried, reports were ignored by mods, and admin changed the title only to "article states that it refers to", when it should be "speculates that". Don't bother.
I'm not sure if you know how gamedev works, but regional branches are a thing.
Games can be allowed in regions, it's the same for patches. Different certification processes, which MS got rid of a long time ago, and which Nintendo kind of unified in recent years.
On top of that, if the patch is out in a region but not another, it's obviously an issue with the platform holder. Not the developer.
So it's basically like Steam's "Do whatever until people actually start giving a fuck like the media or other groups" but even worse? Fair enough then. That's on Sony to fix their awful guidelines and make a firm stance on not having pedo content on their consoles. (well... from now on since the Vita is dead) The rules should be fair and clear and apply to everyone equally. I mean I don't want a complete overcorrection that hurts small publishers who didn't plan to release pedo content anyway.
Though this seems more like Sony just covering their asses than actually giving a fuck about banning pedo stuff from your words. About what I expected from them.
Lol, our local news had a short little segment about this and the footage they showed was Mortal Kombat 11 (Kitana and D'vorah) and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Pyra). And here I thought MK11 was being praised for toning down the sexualization.
Sensible people? Give me a break.
It's a pathetically transparent attempt to punt the issue and invoke a stupid slippery slope argument mostly by folks who can't find it in themselves for even a moment to condemn creepy sexist shit.
i mean if sony really want ban of that kind of game from their plattform.
they would remove all those game from psn and told devs remove questionable scene not just crop or add smoke/ray light.
Isn't the edited title a bit misleading?
This isn't a direct quote and sounds more like a conclusion by the writer. The more direct statement from Sony cites #metoo which is hardly restricted to minors.
This isn't a direct quote and sounds more like a conclusion by the writer. The more direct statement from Sony cites #metoo which is hardly restricted to minors.
Protagonist? That seems very unlikely as it was always just going to be Kara. And there are male/female strippers in the game as it is. Maybe they wanted them to be more revealing originally? In the past Sony didn't really have an issue with their own games at least, there is literally a dick in The Order
It looks like he is talking about the first pitch, so it was way before the first image was seen
Sexualization of children is always wrong but it should be a parents job to control what their child sees. Games have a rating for a reason. I am not a fan of censorship.
It's really a *chefkiss*level post.
A work of art.
Starts with "actually"
"she is fine being groped"
ends with "watch the anime"
Perfection
Utter perfection
Sexualization of children shouldn't happen no matter what parents or childs play.
You know, this is why adding this shit is problematic even if it's fiction and drawings and whatever shit you want to say. It still normalizes it. People deny this but it's a fact, that we can see a minor being groped and thinking it's fine because she consents and its just fanservice and its what anime is and all of that shows how repeated exposure of something can help to normalize it.
If this is true this does cross a line for me so I hope it turns out false.
An M rated game depicting actual functioning adults (like the ones that Detroit clearly had) shouldn't be censored because it was "too sexual".
One thing is to censor anime lolis and shit like that and another is this.
Again, if true, I'll be very displeased with Sony. Hopefully we can get a confirmation there.
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This isn't sexual content-related, but we do know that Sony stepped in on the scene in which Jason dies in Heavy Rain, since it was originally going to be just Jason being struck by the car. Quantic Dream could have done a much better job than they did with the compromise solution that wound up in the final game, but I suspect that with all the mo-cap in the game, their hands were tied with how much they could have adjusted that scene with the time that they had to do it in.
I don't think that's necessarily indicative of anything company-wide in terms of policy, but if that tweet is correct, it does suggest that there was perhaps some friction between QD and Sony over the years due to content.
I wonder if that was become of this mandate or because of PEGI/ESRB.
I doubt sony would want a situation where one of their headliner games is banned in certain countries.
I could see them dodging that to, for example, have the game be able to be sold in Australia with no issue. Australia has a BIG problem with solicited sex and has banned many games that have it.
It's not PEGI/ESRB.
Again, it's the whole thing around this controversy: Sony is going above the rating boards, and asking developers to change games that have already been approved and/or deemed lawful.
There's no issue on other platforms, it's weird how there's still people trying to find excuse to say "but maybe it isn't Sony?" when there's plenty of proof it is, and that they aren't giving those guidelines to anyone (thus adding costs to development, especially for multiplatform games).
Well with Detroit it's different. I can totally understand the stance sony saying to a developer of a game they're publishing and marketing for exclusively to not have content that would get the game banned in certain markets. I can also totally understand them going to 3rd party developers and publishers of which they do not have a fiscal hand in and saying, "your game has underaged nudity or content that can be preceived as underaged nudity and either change it or you will be refused cert." Both are perfectly understandable stances unique to Sony, but they are two different circumstances. There are other games on the PS4 from 3rd party developers that have nudity and sex and aren't banned or censored by Sony's mandate.
That being said, there are totally prostitutes in RDR2 so...::Shrugs::
That being said, we know how David Cage likes having his pointless nude scenes in his games so...::Shrugs::
As for "plenty of proof", I'd like more examples than DMC5, which was rolled back since it probably was never an issue anyway, and a lot of dubious anime games who's entire mandate is sexual content.
I'd also like Sony to actually publicly state what the extent of their mandate is...but...yeah, I'm not willing to say "Sony doesn't want sex in their games" when they didn't have a problem with a full modeled penis in one of their biggest sellers last year.
RDR2 isn't a Sony IP but Detroit is, so they can have a deciding role on what the game they are funding can have or not.
As long as they (Sony) don't post clear censorship guidelines its impossible to tell what they ask to remove next time. Underage characters is just "one of their biggest concerns", what else? Any nudity? Any mature content? Anything from non-AAA and non 1st party devs? Anything that will directly compete with 1st party dev sales?
Don't let that slippery slope hit your butt too hard on your way out.
Is this supposed to be some clever gotcha rhetorical thought experiment? Because I can honestly answer that in 99% of cases I fucking hate any and all companies. I can count the good things they do in terms of representation and consumer rights on one hand.
...adult people shouldn't be watching sexualized children either? What the hell am I even reading in this thread?
Yup, totally. And again, I can totally see them saying, "Don't have a prostitute character if you're going to be spending most of your time in a strip club surrounded by nudity so we don't get banned in multiple countries."
But they also didn't tell Rockstar "take that penis out or you won't be on this platform".