After Switch owners complained about the superhero comedy Dispatch forcing censorship on the newly released Nintendo versions of the game, Nintendo released a statement denying that it was directly responsible for this decision.

The statement (per GoNintendo) reads: "Nintendo requires all games on its platforms to receive ratings from independent organizations and to meet our established content and platform guidelines. While we inform partners when their titles don’t meet our guidelines, Nintendo does not make changes to partner content. We also do not discuss specific content or the criteria used in making these determinations."

At the time of the Switch release, Dispatch developer AdHoc stated that it "worked with Nintendo to ensure the content within the title met the criteria to release on their platforms, but the core narrative and gameplay experience remain identical to the original release." But after Nintendo's statement, who to blame for covering Dispatch's naughty bits up is unclear.

Some purchasers of the Nintendo versions of Dispatch have claimed to have gotten refunds, pointing out double standards as games like Cyberpunk 2077 have released on Nintendo platforms without such censorship. But it's worth mentioning that, at least in the case of Cyberpunk, there are distinct regional versions of certain games--the Japanese version of Cyberpunk, rated Z by Japanese rating board CERO, lacks nudity and extreme gore

Source: Gamespot

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Apparently, the censorship goes as hard as putting "black squares" over explicit things. Well, that's weird. I mean, we have things on Switch that are much worse than Dispatch, like Cyberpunk 2077 as it was stated in the news. So what exactly is the problem here?

The situation is pretty bizarre overall given that the likes of Cyberpunk 2077, Outlast 1 and 2, Witcher 3, etc were uncensored on Nintendo's platforms despite featuring far more graphic content than Dispatch.

Some good news though; Adhoc say they are working with Nintendo "on a path forward" and hope to be able to restore at least some of the censored material; we'll just have to wait and see how this plays out over the coming weeks:

https://nintendoeverything.com/dispatch-switch-2-switch-censorship-update-patch/

I'm willing to bet it's the artstyle that's the problem. A cartoon artstyle combined with nudity/sexual content might be a no-go for Nintendo. 

I mean, their statement doesn't shift the blame at all lol. They still say "we inform partners when their titles don’t meet our guidelines" and the Devs say: "Nintendo has content guidelines. Our game didn’t meet those guidelines."

So the whole it's only because of CERO thing sounds like it was wrong.

Yeah the thread title, like the article it's based on, is clickbait and deliberately designed to trigger console warring.

Nintendo should just refund people who bought the game

I'm feeling really shaddy bussines here. Ad-hoc probably knew Nintendo had shitty return polices and purposefully hide as much as they could their low effort censored version until the obvious launch day

They have been refunding people who bought the game.

I thought of that too, but even then South Park Stick of Truth and Fractured But Whole have nudity and sex scenes in a cartoon art style on Switch with no issue.

Good. Another clue of Adhoc being the one to blame here is they offered a disccount for pre-orders, and for PS5 they have an uncensored version outside Japan 

My headcannon of the events:

- There is restrictions for nudity in Japanese games

- Nintendo only allows you to release the game in Japan if the game meet censorship requirements 

- Adhoc knew this and even did a censored version for PS5

- Adhoc realized a loophole in the process, they could release their uncensored version outside Japan, but put on pre order (with a disccount to increase FOMO) and did not tell anybody because they know Nintendo is very strict about returning digital games 

Regardless Dispatch a really mediocre game, with a mediocre story. My honest advice is to just ignore it altogether and go play something else  

As someone who grew up with NES/SNES, I wasn't even offended at the idea. It was like... yeah, that's Nintendo lol.