The big Blind Spot of Game preservation.

[Volkcolopatrion]

From the dead rising deluxe remaster, to Persona 5 Royal, Skullgirls, World of Warcraft and READY OR NOT..

 

There is a problem with games, and even live service games being forcefully censored and even Bowdlerized. Mary skelter 2 had so many censorships changes on the sony platform as to introduce glitches. 

This is bad. 

well let's take a look at what has happened. 

 

 

 

is a bit different BUT it seems that the console platforms.-or someone forcing console platforms to institute censorship- has forced their hand. 

 

 

It is unfortuante. this beast. but why does it exist?


It shouldn't have to be. 

 

Sadly people just mock. 

 

I woudln't be surprised if VoidInteractive got hate mail and threats. 
That's sadly the way of the internet.  

 

I can't support a product that pulls the rug but it wasn't their fault. 

So that beggs the question. 

Who's in charge and what good does this censorship do?

 

With many games going down this route. over and over again. I'm not sure it’s a consensual choice. With the reading above it was a “do this or consequences” from game platforms or payment processors that put those plaforms in chains.

I don’t know for sure. I do know of Sex-Positive Gaming Showing and illustrating how Mastercard and Visa needing to meat with Taro Yamada and Ken Akamatsu about discrimination of Japanese platforms like Pixiv and Fanbox and DLsite. JUST TO NAME A FEW. Making sure that these websites could not engage in the global economy because the largest private companies and payment processors said “no”.  Probably because of SESTA and FOSTA and other really crappy legislation from the EU and USA. 

 

Paxton Vs Free Speech Coallition. Was a blow to free speech rights and will increase goverment surveillance unter the concept of "protecting" people.  

that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. 

 

 

 

The digital age just made the censorship okay in some people’s eyes, but imagine if these were physical products. Imagine if you bought a physical artwork that you really loved. Sometime later, when the company you bought that art book from is overtaken by another company or a platform that sold you the book (or any group) comes into your house and demands that you give them the pages of the art book that someone deemed offensive and decides FOR YOU what you can and cannot see?

 

What of digital and consumer rights?

Now, even if you had no problem with it, although many popular gaming websites will try to unfairly characterize everyone who’s raised their voice about this censorship as crying babies and having character flaws or even be bigots. Censorship is truly what the backlash has been about. It’s about censorship and the nature of owning digital art. It’s about the arbitrary standards of platforms and payment processors that not only hurt art but hurt economic and artistic flourishing and diversity. If consumers allow such censorship without raising any concern about it, that’s a very dangerous precedent. At any time, a developer can drop a digital patch removing swaths of content that consumers enjoyed under the guise of.. ... God only knows what. 

 

It’s about censorship and the nature of owning digital art.

I believe this is right up your alley. 

It's unfortunate and odd because, to my limited knowledge, I have not seen a lot of SKG supporters talk about this. which is odd

Does this mean we should have another initiative to have companies comply with? NO! The EU does not have the best protections when it comes to speech and using government force to compel speech would arguably be hypocritical. 

 

Sadly, this has happened quite often. 

https://www.thefire.org/news/lisa-controversy-highlights-non-transparency-and-arbitrariness-platforms-policing-video-game

 

Some of it being very baffling. 

 

 

 

It's not just games, not by a long shot. The past decade has seen a harrowing uptick in censorship and other such things and disrespect to the consumer... as per the recreational offense of our "modern sensibilities" that are not sensible and are regressive at best. 
 

 

https://www.thefire.org/news/why-sensitivity-readers-are-bad-free-speech-art-and-culture

 

Sensitivity consultants are just called Beta Readers for video games. And it's quite the racket the the writing sphere. 

With all this. I think it would be INCREDIBLY proper to bring this to attention of the like. 

This is change after sale. Consumer choice be damned. 

to paraphrase... 

"Perhaps most importantly, when the standard for rewriting or revising books [movies or video games] is the potential for outrage over the book’s content, nearly every remotely interesting or engaging story we know of will meet it. [that someone can find some problem with something] This is great for the job security of sensitivity readers, but it’s very bad news for art, culture, and free expression."

"The industry or the laws of Countries resorting to sensitivity reading and revisionism and censorship ignores the simplest solution to the problem of art you find offensive: If you don’t like it, don’t consume it — and don’t try to force your tastes and preferences onto others. 
 

We are experiencing a concerning confluence of cynicism on the part of publishers, who want to avoid bad press and continue to sell reprints, and our rampantly censorial culture, where recreational outrage and perpetual offense pervade. Together, these phenomena sanitize, flatten, and dull a world meant to be rich with creativity, experimentation, and growth — and that’s not good for anybody.
 

Attempting to create art that upsets no one will only create art that engages, entertains, and inspires no one. If we wish to promote and preserve free expression, interesting and provocative art, and the ability to change culture — and to recognize that cultural change has occurred — we will have to turn our current trend toward censorship and sensitivity reading in the other direction." 

Please. consider and no hate. no mockery. This is a serious issue. 

[Deep Dive Devin]

Completely out of the range of the spectrum SKG covers. None of this matters if you literally can't play the game at all, and most of it doesn't matter even if you can. Games are made by companies, and those companies are necessarily going to do what they can to appeal to the broadest number of people. If they alter a throwaway string of text, it's because they think that will protect their bottom line better, and have something to back it up. If this is upsetting, go dismantle capitalism about it. It's frankly embarrassing to compare this tepid culture war garbage to actual real-world examples of governments leveraging the law to attack protestors, silence journalists and dismantle people fighting against, y'know, real problems. It's even more obvious when you're including remasters or rereleases changing things. That's not a product you already bought, it's a new product that repackages previous content! You're just upset that they made a decision you don't like. The idea that it has anything to do with "protecting speech" goes out the window when you consider that the new version of a text is just as worthy of protection and preservation as an old version. There's no such thing as an objectively good or bad work of art.

 

Frankly, this is far more an example of the outrage culture and "perpetual offense" you're pretending exists than any kind of opposition to it. Who are you to tell game developers they can't do what they want with their own work? As long as you can play the game, it does not matter. If you're saying that Stop Killing Games, the movement that uses the government to save games, should be telling publishers what to do with their product, you are in favor of censorship, because you're literally asking the government to alter a sold work of art to fit your sensibilities. Everything else here is just complaining about bad updates or a lack of ability to roll them back or mod out the changes, and none of that should be compared to bricking a product people already paid for. If SKG stops games from being destroyed, you'll be able to run some version of games theoretically forever, and in all likelihood, most changes to games in updates will become much easier to preserve due to the lack of online-only DRM preventing them from being played.