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Having been a writer and editor on various British magazines including PLAY, GamesTM, and X360, he's now a freelance guides specialist at Dot Esports.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/author\/gavinmackenzie\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"50,000 Stellar Blade fans don't know what censorship is","description":"It doesn\u2019t mean \u201cnot getting your own way.\u201d","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/stellar-blade\/news\/50000-stellar-blade-fans-dont-know-what-censorship-is","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"50,000 Stellar Blade fans don't know what censorship is","og_description":"It doesn\u2019t mean \u201cnot getting your own way.\u201d","og_url":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/stellar-blade\/news\/50000-stellar-blade-fans-dont-know-what-censorship-is","og_site_name":"Dot 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Mackenzie","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/5b21371a14637eed16cd16dbc6601a44","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a5e85c730ab96d45a3825718875719a9?s=96&d=mm&r=g&resize=96%2C96","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a5e85c730ab96d45a3825718875719a9?s=96&d=mm&r=g&resize=96%2C96","caption":"Gavin Mackenzie"},"description":"Gavin Mackenzie has been playing video games since the early 80s, and writing about them professionally since the late 90s. Having been a writer and editor on various British magazines including PLAY, GamesTM, and X360, he's now a freelance guides specialist at Dot Esports.","url":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/author\/gavinmackenzie"}]}},"raw_content":"Stellar Blade\u00a0launched at the end of last week, and\u00a0it seems like there\u2019s been\u00a0more discussion over the minor changes made in its launch day update than over whether the game is any good (it is, by the way.) On 26 April, the game\u2019s launch day, a\u00a0Stellar Blade\u00a0fan called Mark Kern started a petition on Change.org called Free Stellar Blade. Under the heading \u201cWhy this petition matters,\u201d Kern claims that\u00a0Stellar Blade\u00a0has\u00a0been censored\u00a0and that the game is now \u201ca cultural beacon for freedom of expression.\u201d Free Stellar Blade has,\u00a0in a matter of days, already broken its target of 50,000 signatures.\u00a0Many of those signatories have left comments, and the vast majority accuse Sony of censorship and false advertising, with many even going so far as to imply, as Kern does, that the sacred right to freedom of expression is at stake here. The Show Us More Skin petition So, what did Sony actually do to trigger such outrage? Well, a few of\u00a0Eve\u2019s outfits\u00a0in\u00a0Stellar Blade\u00a0are ever-so-slightly less revealing than they were in the game\u2019s pre-release trailers, and indeed than in version 1.00, which is what\u2019s written to the disc of all physical copies.\u00a0Seriously, you\u2019d have to be\u00a0watching the trailers\u00a0frame-by-frame to notice all the differences, and it seems that some fans were doing just that. I\u2019ll get the accusations of false advertising out of the way first.\u00a0Certainly, there is a debate\u00a0to\u00a0be had\u00a0about where\u00a0the line should be drawn\u00a0in a world where game content can change radically during development and even after launch. But no reasonable person would claim that minor costume changes are anywhere near that line, even in a game where titillating costumes are apparently such a big selling point. If you want to see what false advertising looks like, see\u00a0The Day Before. The changes made to\u00a0Stellar Blade\u00a0are trivial by comparison. But I\u2019m not really bothered about people crying over \u201cfalse advertising.\"\u00a0What really gets up my nose is all this talk of \u201ccensorship\u201d and \u201cfreedom of expression.\u201d Wow! Some folk really do exist in a comfy, entitled, spoiled little bubble, don\u2019t they? You are free to express your ideas, no matter how stupid Strictly speaking, censorship is when an authority, usually a government, limits the expression of certain ideas. For example, right now in Russia, you can get jailed for 15 years if caught referring to the invasion of Ukraine as a \u201cwar.\u201d That is censorship. A much looser definition of censorship might include actions taken by regulatory bodies such as North America\u2019s ESRB, Europe\u2019s PEGI, and Japan\u2019s CERO. These organizations were all set up by the games industries of their respective regions and don\u2019t wield any governmental power. But seeing as all major game distributors, retailers, and platforms have agreed not to handle products that aren\u2019t certified by these regulators, you could argue that they have the power to impose censorship. But that\u2019s not what happened with Stellar Blade. If any regulatory body had deemed Eve\u2019s outfits unsuitable for public consumption, then the physical copies of the game would not bear their respective stamps of approval. Can I be 100% sure that Sony didn\u2019t reach some kind of compromise with a regulator whereby they promised to patch the game on day one? I suppose not, but it seems extremely unlikely. And even the Free Stellar Blade petition doesn\u2019t seem to be claiming that this is what happened. Exercising the freedom to make last-minute changes The general belief among the signatories seems to be that Sony censored itself. Now, self-censorship is an even softer form of censorship. But I\u2019ll take it seriously if it refers to a situation in which a person or organization limits the expression of its own ideas\u00a0because it believes it\u2019ll be censored or punished by an outside authority if it doesn\u2019t. For example, Blizzard removes all skeletons from the Chinese versions of its games just in case China\u2019s notoriously inconsistent regulator, the NPAA, decides that skeletons breach a vague set of rules forbidding occult content.\u00a0That\u00a0is self-censorship. But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what happened to\u00a0Stellar Blade,\u00a0either. To me, it looks a lot more like various stakeholders within Sony and Shift Up had differing opinions on what kind of character Eve should be and how she should\u00a0be presented\u00a0and that these minor last-minute changes were a compromise that no one was happy with. It\u2019s more a case of poor cross-cultural communication and clumsy PR than censorship. Crying \u201cCensorship!\u201d just because you can\u2019t see\u00a0quite as much skin\u00a0as you want trivializes the plight of the millions of people worldwide who really do not have freedom of speech. So, you know what: Shut the [censored] up.","apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Stellar_Blade_censorship_Eve.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214457"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214979,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214457\/revisions\/1214979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1214486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"invoiceable_action","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/invoiceable_action?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"internal-label","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal-label?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1214457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

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Mackenzie","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/5b21371a14637eed16cd16dbc6601a44","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a5e85c730ab96d45a3825718875719a9?s=96&d=mm&r=g&resize=96%2C96","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a5e85c730ab96d45a3825718875719a9?s=96&d=mm&r=g&resize=96%2C96","caption":"Gavin Mackenzie"},"description":"Gavin Mackenzie has been playing video games since the early 80s, and writing about them professionally since the late 90s. Having been a writer and editor on various British magazines including PLAY, GamesTM, and X360, he's now a freelance guides specialist at Dot Esports.","url":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/author\/gavinmackenzie"}]}},"raw_content":"Stellar Blade\u00a0launched at the end of last week, and\u00a0it seems like there\u2019s been\u00a0more discussion over the minor changes made in its launch day update than over whether the game is any good (it is, by the way.) On 26 April, the game\u2019s launch day, a\u00a0Stellar Blade\u00a0fan called Mark Kern started a petition on Change.org called Free Stellar Blade. Under the heading \u201cWhy this petition matters,\u201d Kern claims that\u00a0Stellar Blade\u00a0has\u00a0been censored\u00a0and that the game is now \u201ca cultural beacon for freedom of expression.\u201d Free Stellar Blade has,\u00a0in a matter of days, already broken its target of 50,000 signatures.\u00a0Many of those signatories have left comments, and the vast majority accuse Sony of censorship and false advertising, with many even going so far as to imply, as Kern does, that the sacred right to freedom of expression is at stake here. The Show Us More Skin petition So, what did Sony actually do to trigger such outrage? Well, a few of\u00a0Eve\u2019s outfits\u00a0in\u00a0Stellar Blade\u00a0are ever-so-slightly less revealing than they were in the game\u2019s pre-release trailers, and indeed than in version 1.00, which is what\u2019s written to the disc of all physical copies.\u00a0Seriously, you\u2019d have to be\u00a0watching the trailers\u00a0frame-by-frame to notice all the differences, and it seems that some fans were doing just that. I\u2019ll get the accusations of false advertising out of the way first.\u00a0Certainly, there is a debate\u00a0to\u00a0be had\u00a0about where\u00a0the line should be drawn\u00a0in a world where game content can change radically during development and even after launch. But no reasonable person would claim that minor costume changes are anywhere near that line, even in a game where titillating costumes are apparently such a big selling point. If you want to see what false advertising looks like, see\u00a0The Day Before. The changes made to\u00a0Stellar Blade\u00a0are trivial by comparison. But I\u2019m not really bothered about people crying over \u201cfalse advertising.\"\u00a0What really gets up my nose is all this talk of \u201ccensorship\u201d and \u201cfreedom of expression.\u201d Wow! Some folk really do exist in a comfy, entitled, spoiled little bubble, don\u2019t they? You are free to express your ideas, no matter how stupid Strictly speaking, censorship is when an authority, usually a government, limits the expression of certain ideas. For example, right now in Russia, you can get jailed for 15 years if caught referring to the invasion of Ukraine as a \u201cwar.\u201d That is censorship. A much looser definition of censorship might include actions taken by regulatory bodies such as North America\u2019s ESRB, Europe\u2019s PEGI, and Japan\u2019s CERO. These organizations were all set up by the games industries of their respective regions and don\u2019t wield any governmental power. But seeing as all major game distributors, retailers, and platforms have agreed not to handle products that aren\u2019t certified by these regulators, you could argue that they have the power to impose censorship. But that\u2019s not what happened with Stellar Blade. If any regulatory body had deemed Eve\u2019s outfits unsuitable for public consumption, then the physical copies of the game would not bear their respective stamps of approval. Can I be 100% sure that Sony didn\u2019t reach some kind of compromise with a regulator whereby they promised to patch the game on day one? I suppose not, but it seems extremely unlikely. And even the Free Stellar Blade petition doesn\u2019t seem to be claiming that this is what happened. Exercising the freedom to make last-minute changes The general belief among the signatories seems to be that Sony censored itself. Now, self-censorship is an even softer form of censorship. But I\u2019ll take it seriously if it refers to a situation in which a person or organization limits the expression of its own ideas\u00a0because it believes it\u2019ll be censored or punished by an outside authority if it doesn\u2019t. For example, Blizzard removes all skeletons from the Chinese versions of its games just in case China\u2019s notoriously inconsistent regulator, the NPAA, decides that skeletons breach a vague set of rules forbidding occult content.\u00a0That\u00a0is self-censorship. But I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what happened to\u00a0Stellar Blade,\u00a0either. To me, it looks a lot more like various stakeholders within Sony and Shift Up had differing opinions on what kind of character Eve should be and how she should\u00a0be presented\u00a0and that these minor last-minute changes were a compromise that no one was happy with. It\u2019s more a case of poor cross-cultural communication and clumsy PR than censorship. Crying \u201cCensorship!\u201d just because you can\u2019t see\u00a0quite as much skin\u00a0as you want trivializes the plight of the millions of people worldwide who really do not have freedom of speech. So, you know what: Shut the [censored] up.","apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Stellar_Blade_censorship_Eve.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214457"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1214979,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214457\/revisions\/1214979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1214486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"invoiceable_action","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/invoiceable_action?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"internal-label","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal-label?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=1214457"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1214457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

Rokurou

{"id":1214457,"date":"2024-04-30T06:42:31","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T11:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/?p=1214457"},"modified":"2024-04-30T06:42:33","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T11:42:33","slug":"50000-stellar-blade-fans-dont-know-what-censorship-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dotesports.com\/stellar-blade\/news\/50000-stellar-blade-fans-dont-know-what-censorship-is","title":{"rendered":"50,000 Stellar Blade fans don’t know what censorship is"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stellar Blade<\/em> launched at the end of last week, and it seems like there\u2019s been more discussion over the minor changes made in its launch day update than over whether the game is any good (it is, by the way.)<\/p>

On 26 April, the game\u2019s launch day, a Stellar Blade<\/a><\/em> fan called Mark Kern started a petition on Change.org called Free Stellar Blade. Under the heading \u201cWhy this petition matters,\u201d Kern claims that Stellar Blade<\/em> has been censored and that the game is now \u201ca cultural beacon for freedom of expression.\u201d<\/p>

Free Stellar Blade has, in a matter of days, already broken its target of 50,000 signatures. Many of those signatories have left comments, and the vast majority accuse Sony of censorship and false advertising, with many even going so far as to imply, as Kern does, that the sacred right to freedom of expression is at stake here.<\/p>