The new PS5 game Stellar Blade comes from South Korea. Before the release, it was promised that an uncensored version would be released worldwide. But with the “Day One” patch 1.02 a costume has been changed. There is talk that Sony is behind this. Angry users are starting a petition to reverse the change.
This is the situation:
Stellar Blade, the action-adventure on the PS5 starts demo
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Graffiti was “accidentally” racist
What did the patch officially change? The patch came on April 26th and brought the “New Game+”.
In addition, a graffiti in Stellar Blade was changed: The graffiti showed two words close together: a “Hard” and next to it an “R-Shop”. That was unfortunate.
In the USA, the term “Hard R” refers to the racist pronunciation of a swear word (the N-word), which has a “soft A” as a slang term, but with a “hard R” as a racist insult against black people .
Sony said this offensive graphic was “unintentional” and will be removed (via ign):
“Placing two graphics side by side in Stellar Blade resulted in unintentionally offensive language. Shift Up had no intention of creating offensive graphics and will replace the graffiti for the Day 1 patch.”
An outfit was defused in the patch
What unofficial change are fans upset about? It’s about the tightly cut outfit “Holiday Rabbit”: In the new version, Eve wears an additional piece of clothing in the chest area, which covers her cleavage more.
Critics consider this to be “stealth censorship.”
The gore effects in the game are also said to have been reduced. Blood is no longer spread over Eve’s entire body, but is significantly reduced, criticizes a user on Twitter.
Developer wants to keep the current version
What do the developers say? Game director Hyung-Tae Kim has spoken out about the accusation of censorship. He says the current version of the outfit is the one that was planned from the start. They didn’t want to go back to the other version.
But you can see and understand the anger and therefore have an internal discussion about the process (via levelup):
“Understandably, we are also aware of this problem. However, the final costume we wanted to show you is actually the version 1.0.0.2 costume. I want to make it clear that this is our final product. However, I know that this answer is not enough to convince our users. There is an internal discussion about this, so I think we will have the opportunity to answer this question soon,” said the developer.
Petition demands: take back censorship
What is the reaction?? Mark Kern, a former Blizzard developer who later failed as head of the MMO “Firefall” and has been developing a new MMO for years, has once again taken the lead in a protest. He is active on Twitter and often criticizes gaming studios here. 8 years ago he campaigned for a “WoW Classic” – in recent years, for example, he has railed against Starfield’s main menu (via gamestar).
He has started a “Free Stellar Blade” petition demanding: “We, the players, want the content back” that Sony showed in the original version of the trailer. Censorship must be withdrawn.
The petition via change.org now has over 31,000 signatures.
Small change – big excitement
This is what lies behind it: It seems unlikely that of all the things in Stellar Blade, Sony would change exactly this one outfit with a precise intervention and accept so much criticism for it. The “skin suit” is still in the game.
If there had been extensive changes, the criticism would be more understandable.
This is ultimately the same debate that was had with Stellar Blade. The South Korean Stellar Blade is an ideal vehicle to express criticism of Western developers and their supposedly excessive political correctness:
The new PS5 game from South Korea sparks a discussion about beautiful women in video games