The first thing I want to stress, as I believe it's super important, is for a company to be upfront with any planned censorship changes. Adding censorship under the guise of silence only leads to hysteria, assumptions, and fear mongering. Unmentioned changes also just seem like a company is trying to be sly and slip them in unnoticed. This will never work. We are observant. There is literally zero negative that can come from being upfront about it. When a company informs their consumers about changes it shows they respect their time, money, and values.

Players fall into three catogories when it comes to censorship.

1. It doesn't affect me, thus it isn't a problem. They will still end up playing.
2. I'm against censorship but never take a stand thus just aid in perpetuating the problem. They will still end up playing.
3. Censorship is a deal breaker. They won't play. I have never once seen a comment stating that because they didn't censor something they won't be playing. So really, why take the time to make unneeded changes? In the end, you're guaranteed to lose players or money over it. The number may or may not be a large sum, but it is still real.

The first and main point against PSO2 censorship is to point out that this game is M rated. That rating covers everything short of extreme violence (ie: Manhunt 2) and visually shown sexual activity. It doesn't matter how visually revealing an outfit is, if it isn't showing genitalia, it's would be fine with an M rating. There is nothing in PSO2 that wouldn't be covered with an M rating.

"But what about the kids! They'll be exposed to predators!" ...I'm not sure if people are just oblivious to the rating or just assume based on the anime style of the game that it's rated E for everyone and that there will be kids here, there, and everywhere, but this shouldn't be the case and definitely not one to take preliminary measures against. If kids have access to it , it's NOT Sega's problem. Its on the parents for not applying the very easy to use parental controls that consoles now have. Again, it's M rated...

It's clear that the game is NOT being marketed to kids as shown with the mature rating, so I have to ask, who's eyes are you trying to protect with the currently known implemented censorship? The kids that shouldn't be playing anyways, or in my case, my adult eyes? As an adult I'm perfectly able to decide for myself what media I ingest. I do not need a company to white-knight for me in my stead. It's M rated, I know what I'm getting into.

I can't believe I have to type this, it almost seems like a joke, but for real, you censored the character height... You are aware people come in all shapes and sizes, yes? NA doesn't hate small people. You censored the height. In. An. M. Rated. Game......

Gameplay. Not everyone plays the fashion end-game. Some are all about that min-max. Character height has an effect on performance. However large or small it is, it exists. You will have players with hundreds or thousands of hours coming from your JP servers who've known a certain level of performance. They should be able to experience that same level on NA servers.

On a personal note, it's obvious I'm anti-censorship. I'm in that #3 category listed above. If I know a game is censored I simply just skip it, and have skipped a number of them over time. I'd rather not have to skip this one but it's a value I'm ironclad on. Change doesn't happen if you disagree with something and continue with the status quo anyways.

tl;dr IT'S M RATED. Nothing PSO2 currently has wouldn't fit under this rating. Leaving the game in it's pure JP form will not cause anyone to stop playing or outright not play, where-as changes will have a negative impact on the game.

Thanks for reading.

@Z0DIAK-BRAVE I support this 100% Even the JP version is getting an age rating change. If the game is rated mature and the player agrees to the ToS at the main menu of the game. Then the company isn't held responsible. I want the NA players who haven't played the game before and those coming to the NA server from JP. To experience and feel what we get on JP.

@The-Question said in Censorship is NOT needed in this M rated game.:

@Z0DIAK-BRAVE I support this 100% Even the JP version is getting an age rating change. If the game is rated mature and the player agrees to the ToS at the main menu of the game. Then the company isn't held responsible.

I agree with the ToS bit. I also think that, as part of the ToS, it should be against the terms to impersonate someone younger than the age that is allowed (17 for M), simply because a stranger in passing is not going to know "they are just pretending".

As the terms of service are currently written the services are ages 13 and up.

I am also in agreement with this. If the game is predicted to have a M Rating, there should really nothing to censor as the intended audience is of persons of 17 and older. I rather you add an option in the game that "disables" the revealing outfit and puts the default outfit for the player. That way everyone gets the best of both worlds. As for the height restriction, this feels more as a personal attack to people of small stature than to prevent players from creating small characters. As someone of small stature myself, I am completely against this as one. I like to create my characters based around my personal features in real life.

This just makes me wonder what else they're gonna take out, honestly IDC about this IF we get the rest of the revealing clothes and the stripper pole... Why not just suspend a character's activity, with SS and chat-log proof of being lewd? Honestly, that would filter those players out of the game better than forcing them to make their virtual little girls a few inches taller. ESP when you raised the max height too, so it's gonna be the same difference in size anyways, and all it does is make it okay to be like yeah dude they're like 16 or whatever.. Weird honestly.. All this is going to do is create more bugs, and I fully intend on making my char the largest size to exploit these.

but essentially, you're saying people under 5' don't exist.. I know many people, and have dated a girl, under 5'.. She was older than I am. It blows my mind, like the people supporting this are the ones sexualizing 'kids' in this case. This is why the Japanese didn't market this game to us. They're probably all like, "Oh, America-kun is at it again. See we were right."

...and they are, we're a bad joke to them. We're also making fun of them for being short, inadvertently.. On top of throwing out the integrity of their dev team. I hope they got their money's worth, because I'll go back to JP and I haven't played there since 2013..

Yes I agree I hope they don’t censor this game we need to experience the Japanese cultures and content.

I agree with this as well. If the game is rated M, then there's seriously no reason there should be anything censored. If anything, since there's no need to keep the rating below M, any censoring just comes off as a company deciding for me what I'm comfortable with seeing.

If I can read Japanese (and even if I can't), I'm perfectly capable of playing the Japanese version of PSO2 here in North America, just as many people do. What sense then does it make for the North American version of the game to be any different from the original? There's no reason why we shouldn't get the same content they have, presented in the exact same way.

There are plenty of western games that have similar content to the kind people are concerned will be censored in PSO2. A great example being Saints Row The Third. I encourage you to go look at the character creator, and check out the clothes. There's plenty of YouTube videos showcasing that stuff. That game's outfits range from fully clothed, to absolutely nothing at all. Choosing to go naked does put mosaic censoring over breasts and genitals, but going one step up from naked, and you find yourself with something quite similar to what I believe is called the "Smart Inner". Even with that, it's still only M rated.

So really, if Saint's Row can do it, why can't PSO?

I honestly planned on getting premium day 1, but now I don't know any more. If the team is more worried about spending time censoring and patrolling, instead of bringing QoL updates and making NA it's own thing, then I can't support it.... I want this game to succeed on it's own merits, and not by focusing on the things that you think detract from it. It honestly shows, you have little faith in the player-base and the devs that loved their creation.

But in all seriousness, do the right thing, and censor Episode 4 by deleting it. Then I might look past not being able to have that ridiculous chest piece. You know, THAT one.. Because I already know, because the translated title is wrong.. It isn't "Phantasy Star", it's "Dies in the West." This is not what Based Phil fought for. Don't make the divide between Japan and the West bigger, because let's face it, we're all weebs here. Who is anyone kidding? Just because this game is on the free-to-play page of the store doesn't make it right to cut up and distribute how you want, trust us, it's easy as hell to play on JP nowadays, and dude, most of us are ready to move on from that.

What we want from the NA dev team is how you handle the updates and content and what made JP-PSO2 fun. Lose sight of that, and that's how this game will lose it's following.

Please do not censor the game. It is a deal breaker to me. The game have a rating for a reason. Let the true fans enjoy the game as it is.

I really hope they don’t I mean look at Tara on Xbox you can play as a loli ninja in skimpy outfits and there (as far as I know) no out cry to censor it at all

I agree there should be an agreement to play the game without censorship after all in 2020 since PSO2 is now coming to NA it's going to be the game of the decade I dedicate my life to PSO2 and I want to play it without restrictions

I think that it's important for companies to evolve over time and do bold things that players might not agree with. While I have seen some valid opinions here, I have to disagree. I really appreciate the powers that be making the decision to change this. Plus as a sufferer of limited outside length induced syndrome, it really makes me feel appreciated as an end user that a company would care about my condition and make a game change to accommodate me.

Someone is gonna be "offended" whether something is censored or not - there is no way around that. So why censor? You're just giving yourself more work/stress and making it look like you have no spine - to just come out and say this instead: "Yes, this is a Japanese game which has lots of freedom/customisation options and not scared of some skin - you got a problem with that?"

Especially as someone who has an interest in things like Anime, Japanese games etc, it annoys me every single time some company tries to remove some typical "Japanese aspects" - from a Japanese game. It's a damn Japanese game, it's already been proven by the likes of the Yakuza games - that they're more than able to do very well being themself.

Good games do well, it's not hard to understand. And no amount of censoring is gonna hide the fact that it is a Japanese game... So personally would appreciate it, if you stopped bending the knee to the easily offended. If they actually like the game, they will play it even if isn't changed to their whims.

@RocKiee-Kyrosu said in Censorship is NOT needed in this M rated game.:

Someone is gonna be "offended" whether something is censored or not - there is no way around that. So why censor? You're just giving yourself more work/stress and making it look like you have no spine - to just come out and say this instead: "Yes, this is a Japanese game which has lots of freedom/customisation options and not scared of some skin - you got a problem with that?"

Especially as someone who has an interest in things like Anime, Japanese games etc, it annoys me every single time some company tries to remove some typical "Japanese aspects" - from a Japanese game. It's a damn Japanese game, it's already been proven by the likes of the Yakuza games - that they're more than able to do very well being themself.

Good games do well, it's not hard to understand. And no amount of censoring is gonna hide the fact that it is a Japanese game... So personally would appreciate it, if you stopped bending the knee to the easily offended. If they actually like the game, they will play it even if isn't changed to their whims.

Honestly I 1000000% agree with this I'm going to stop myself on the censorship thing and just say I'm glad the game is coming to North America and I'll finally get to be able to play it as I'm sure we all are

i agree with this, censorship is a joke, and every child has to grow up and learn all about the trash of the world and it makes no difference when they learn it