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AngryLittleAlchemist on 10 March 2019
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Darwinianevolution said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

But Sony isn't the one who censored this game ... 

I mean, I *could* see a future where Sony tries enforcing it on larger publishers and I actually think that may happen but it would take a long time to get to that and honestly it doesn't seem like something that's going to be happening anytime soon. I'm also not sure how it would lead to lawsuits ... sounds like a huge stretch to me, the little guys wouldn't try to take Sony to task especially because most of these companies are based in Japan. 

It's worrying but I honestly don't think the big games are going to face this scrutiny right now, it's the little projects which are argued to be less "tasteful". 

True, but without Sony's new policies regarding mature content, do you think Capcom would've bothered? The big games are as affected as the smaller ones. More, in fact. Big companies are not going to risk their monumental investments for a naked butt, whereas an indie dev with a small but loyal userbase can just migrate to other platform (or just regular PC) and be safe in the thought of most of their customer base following them.

See, I don't disagree with you, but you're kind of talking about two separate things and linking them together just because they're in the same topic. One issue is Sony specifically censoring games as a policy, one issue is a company's own decision to self-censor to keep up with global trends, and they are NOT the same thing even if they are both related. Sony's "new censorship policies" are extremely vague and we don't know much about them yet, but I think it's pretty clear it's affecting smaller developers and not really big developers. Your point about PC would make sense, but most of the small-scale developers that are being targeted are in Japan, where PC gaming is nowhere near as popular as it is worldwide. 

Censorship IS more of an issue in general with bigger companies but it's not because of Sony - it's because of self-censorship. Companies that are bigger have a more recognizable image and want to keep their brand intact. Now, in my opinion, a lot of companies go too far in doing this, especially because putting risky content in your games is now more normalized than ever. But ultimately big corporations appealing to an audience that don't even use their products in order to have a clean brand image is unfortunately something that happens quite often in the gaming industry, and that isn't Sony's fault.

So yes, censorship affects the bigger guys more, but Sony's censorship policies are much more affecting smaller developers especially those based in Japan.