Have you ever had problems with censorship?

Started by TheFrighter, Thu 21/02/2019 17:50:42

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TheFrighter


In this globalized world often we forget that every nation, every state have his own laws about censorship for movies, comic books or music. Some forbids strong violence, others sexual themes and so on.
Videogames don't make exception. In this days of digital purchasing a game could be downloaded pratically worldwide, but how to deal with the censor laws of different countries?

Any of you have ever had problems with censorship?
And how did you solve it?

_

Danvzare

Well I've never made a commercial game before, so I've never had to deal with censorship from the position of a creator.

But from the position of a consumer, there's only one surefire way I know of when it comes down to bypassing censorship. And that is unfortunately piracy.

TheFrighter


So freeware games don't have this kind of problems?

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Danvzare

Quote from: TheFrighter on Mon 25/02/2019 18:12:32

So freeware games don't have this kind of problems?

_

I've never heard of a freeware game being censored.
That's not to say it hasn't happened though. I'm sure someone here who is more knowledgeable than me can confirm or deny that.

Mandle

Quote from: TheFrighter on Mon 25/02/2019 18:12:32

So freeware games don't have this kind of problems?

_

Of course they get censored, but by the upload platforms used to distribute them.

If someone uploaded a game to mediafire or gamejolt or whatever that was full of racist hate-speech then that platform would receive complaints about the content and take it down.

Danvzare

Quote from: Mandle on Thu 28/02/2019 02:08:55
If someone uploaded a game to mediafire or gamejolt or whatever that was full of racist hate-speech then that platform would receive complaints about the content and take it down.
Apparently this does not apply to Steam though.  (laugh)

Mandle

Quote from: Danvzare on Thu 28/02/2019 12:49:53
Quote from: Mandle on Thu 28/02/2019 02:08:55
If someone uploaded a game to mediafire or gamejolt or whatever that was full of racist hate-speech then that platform would receive complaints about the content and take it down.
Apparently this does not apply to Steam though.  (laugh)

Really?

Blondbraid

Quote from: Mandle on Thu 28/02/2019 15:13:57
Quote from: Danvzare on Thu 28/02/2019 12:49:53
Quote from: Mandle on Thu 28/02/2019 02:08:55
If someone uploaded a game to mediafire or gamejolt or whatever that was full of racist hate-speech then that platform would receive complaints about the content and take it down.
Apparently this does not apply to Steam though.  (laugh)

Really?
Well, there was some controversies regarding some horrible shooting games like Hatred and Active Shooter, where the player got to plat as a terrorist gunning down defenseless civilians for the sake of it, being let up on the Steam storefront and only taken down after massive criticism, but the last few years Steam has basically let any game up on their storefront, not just including games that are basically hate speech and glorifying terrorism and neo-nazism, but also asset flips, games filled with stolen code and artwork, broken games missing their executable and straight up malware and viruses, all are allowed on the Steam storefront as long as the "developers" pay the fee for putting it up there. The journalist Jim Sterling has made several videos about the subject on YouTube, but there has also been a few articles about it in games magazines, here's a polygon article of a game that straight up hijacked the player's computers for bitcoin mining.

I'd try and come up with a joke about how low Steam's standards are, but no matter what outrageous vile hate propaganda, theft of copyrighted materials or malware scam I can think of, I've already seen examples of it on Steam.
Even the edgy freeware games I played as a teen on sites like Newgrounds and Gamepuma way back in the early 2000's had higher standards than that.


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