Ok a bit of a recap to what actually happened with Sony Playstation, SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) the branch which deals with playstation exclusively moved its headquarters to California. Every console has a "game approval" process where you have to send your game to the platform holders and they do a quality assurance testing of sorts. In theory it has less to do with content and more with if the game is running in an acceptable state on the platform as an example, historically it had very little to do with contents of the game itself. The game approval commitee (or whatever) moved to California along with SIE and so developers had to send in their games to sony california to get approved. This is where the global standards thing came in as the game approval team started asking for various elements of game content to be removed or altered (even for japan only releases not worldwide/localized) for them to be in line with "global standards". The japanese division quietly accepted this because the top positions of the playstation heirarchy is mostly western including the president himself. Sony Corporation might still be japanese but they leave SIE (american) to their devices as long as they continue to bring in money and lets be real money lost due to censorship of ecchi games is miniscule in the grand scheme of things so everyone just went along with it without fighting back.
*I would assume the same for xbox game approval given the recent Gal Gun fiasco. Nintendo's game approval team on the other hand is either in Japan or regional approval teams cannot force changes (unless technical), the current president of Nintendo has also said on record that they will not force changes if the content has been rated by the rating boards of respective countries, so 3rd parties can get away with it (Rating boards like PEGI and ESRB are actually surprisingly lenient given the state of the clown world) . First party games however cannot because NOA/NOE (america,europe) handles localization and things get dumbed down or censored in that process. We all know what steam is like and based on past examples it seems like whether a game gets approved or not solely depends on who is judging it as they dont have guidelines (not that I am aware of).
The earliest known example of sony's new policy we got was second half of 2018 from silverio trinity producers complained about it on a niconico livestream. This is also where we have concrete proof of devs saying that they have to go through approval of the US branch even for games that are meant for japanese audiences. Various other actual censorship got spotted after that and the rest is history.
Some aspects of ecchi games that are the most prone to getting sony banned are
1. CGs with partial nudity* (because of this one big Japanese Console VN publisher just censor even pantyshots from in their VNs)
2. Anything related to touch features, for example Senran Kagura touching or stuff like Omega Labyrinth, Mary Skelter, Moero Chronicles/Crystals rubbing.
As a fan of ecchi games and owner of all playstations upto ps4 this hit me hard to the point that I seethe about this everyday. Ecchi games are now a dying breed because apart from 3-4 devs everyone just gave up and goes along with these "global standards". Great example would be my (ex) favourite ecchi dev Compile Heart still licking sony boots with the new Nep X Senran (my most favourite ecchi ip) game recently (it will be 100% self censored and not even close to Senran greatness).
Mary Skelter Finale (also Compile Heart) is about to be released this year in the west and you will see that they completely removed the rubbing function which from the first two games, the game even got a lower rating from the first two (CERO D) to CERO C. There was some drama regarding Mary Skelter 2 (will provide links and talk about it if anyone wants) which lead to this decision.
Anyway I think theres a lot of misinformation regarding Sony censorship and console game censorship in general so I felt like making this thread. I can provide links for my claims if anyone wants but a simple google search should be enough.
I'll add a few links because wth I'm bored. Here are some recent examples from Entergram one of bigger console VN publishers in Japan.
Archives of tweets by uitachibana (as far as I know he was one of the first on jp twitter to call out and show examples of sony censorship, his screenshots are still used today by people as examples)
As you can see its not even sex scenes that get censored for consoles anyways (partial nudity is still used in console by devs who dont follow this "global standard" , its just regular ones (panties, bikinis).
and heres a tweet from the same guy saying how this global standards shit has affected console vns, that is most devs just follow plays along with sony policies.
You can go like well yeah console vns were always shit, but thats not the point, the point is how this has changed how things were before and how ecchi games (non pornographic) as a whole is a dying breed because of these standards and the jp devs unwillingness to fight back. None of these vns were released for any other region than japan mind you. Forcing "global standards" even when these things are only for japan.
I have more links I may post more when Im bored or something.
*I would assume the same for xbox game approval given the recent Gal Gun fiasco. Nintendo's game approval team on the other hand is either in Japan or regional approval teams cannot force changes (unless technical), the current president of Nintendo has also said on record that they will not force changes if the content has been rated by the rating boards of respective countries, so 3rd parties can get away with it (Rating boards like PEGI and ESRB are actually surprisingly lenient given the state of the clown world) . First party games however cannot because NOA/NOE (america,europe) handles localization and things get dumbed down or censored in that process. We all know what steam is like and based on past examples it seems like whether a game gets approved or not solely depends on who is judging it as they dont have guidelines (not that I am aware of).
The earliest known example of sony's new policy we got was second half of 2018 from silverio trinity producers complained about it on a niconico livestream. This is also where we have concrete proof of devs saying that they have to go through approval of the US branch even for games that are meant for japanese audiences. Various other actual censorship got spotted after that and the rest is history.
Some aspects of ecchi games that are the most prone to getting sony banned are
1. CGs with partial nudity* (because of this one big Japanese Console VN publisher just censor even pantyshots from in their VNs)
2. Anything related to touch features, for example Senran Kagura touching or stuff like Omega Labyrinth, Mary Skelter, Moero Chronicles/Crystals rubbing.
As a fan of ecchi games and owner of all playstations upto ps4 this hit me hard to the point that I seethe about this everyday. Ecchi games are now a dying breed because apart from 3-4 devs everyone just gave up and goes along with these "global standards". Great example would be my (ex) favourite ecchi dev Compile Heart still licking sony boots with the new Nep X Senran (my most favourite ecchi ip) game recently (it will be 100% self censored and not even close to Senran greatness).
Mary Skelter Finale (also Compile Heart) is about to be released this year in the west and you will see that they completely removed the rubbing function which from the first two games, the game even got a lower rating from the first two (CERO D) to CERO C. There was some drama regarding Mary Skelter 2 (will provide links and talk about it if anyone wants) which lead to this decision.
Anyway I think theres a lot of misinformation regarding Sony censorship and console game censorship in general so I felt like making this thread. I can provide links for my claims if anyone wants but a simple google search should be enough.
I'll add a few links because wth I'm bored. Here are some recent examples from Entergram one of bigger console VN publishers in Japan.
Archives of tweets by uitachibana (as far as I know he was one of the first on jp twitter to call out and show examples of sony censorship, his screenshots are still used today by people as examples)
As you can see its not even sex scenes that get censored for consoles anyways (partial nudity is still used in console by devs who dont follow this "global standard" , its just regular ones (panties, bikinis).
and heres a tweet from the same guy saying how this global standards shit has affected console vns, that is most devs just follow plays along with sony policies.
You can go like well yeah console vns were always shit, but thats not the point, the point is how this has changed how things were before and how ecchi games (non pornographic) as a whole is a dying breed because of these standards and the jp devs unwillingness to fight back. None of these vns were released for any other region than japan mind you. Forcing "global standards" even when these things are only for japan.
I have more links I may post more when Im bored or something.
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