RolStoppable said:
MikeRox said:
Is it censorship if it was already locked out though? It was stuff that was never meant to be accessible in the final release. Pretty much the same as those hidden temples on wind waker that were unlocked via the action replay.
This example is content being removed that was available in the original full release of the game in another territory.
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Content that is made and then is inaccessible, that's censorship by the definition that is used in these discussions. GTA: San Andreas would be double censorship because first the content on the disc was only accessible via hacks, then said content got removed from the disc altogether.
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However, that "double censorship" was never available legitimately in any release of the game. Whereas in this instance it was, that in itself is the difference.
Failed concepts/ideas aren't censorship, that is just creative process, Rockstar North chose not to go in that direction. The fact that the ESRB then decided AO was needed because of locked off content being unlocked wasn't "double censorship". It wasn't meant to be accessible in the final product in the first place.
In this instance, the full game was released in Japan, then the Western branch decided that might not go down as well, and so the finished product has been "censored" for a specific audience.
If Hot Coffee was in the Japanese release of GTA but not the others, that would also be censorship. As it stands, it's actually artistic choice of the developer. It's only censorship when it's been removed, having supposed to have been there in the first place.