Sony’s new now infamous censorship policy is getting more and more complaints by Japanese developers. In a recent incident Japanese developer Light is facing severe hiccups in releasing its upcoming Visual Novel, Silverio Trinity, on the PS4 and PS Vita.
The developer held a live broadcast recently to inform fans about why it was taking so long to release they game. They state Sony’s new aggressive policy has caused the game to be indefinitely delayed as they don’t know when and if Sony would approve it.
Silverio Trinity is a game with heavy sexual themes, but nothing about this is new, as games with similar tones have released on Sony platforms in the past. Plus Sony Japan seems to be more lenient towards what can make its way to the Playstation consoles, however it seems that Sony’s Western wing is meddling in their issues.
Light notes that Sony is asking them to ask for the game’s approval in English, and answer their questions in that language only. This is really confusing for Japanese developers since most of them don’t speak English. Light also compares this situation to Steam, stating if they choose to release it on Valve’s platform the approval would only take a few days but they can’t due to a deal with Sony.
The policy has led to XSEED removing “Intamacy Mode” from the new Senran Kagura game and heavily censoring a recently released Japanese Visual Novel called Nora, Princess, and Stray Cat.
It’ll be interesting to see how future Western games are treated by this policy.
