EA Japan Exec Criticises Rating Board for Apparent Stellar Blade Special Treatment

CERO in general is pretty inconsistent. I can’t imagine Dead Space having decapitations and dismemberment being literally the point of gameplay went down well though.

times change, rules change. Life's not fair. What's the big deal. I'd want even less censoring. In fact I'd like the big 3 to not police the store and world without the ratings board, but we'll take what we get :3

Ratings boards have always had weird biases. Like when lootboxes were big in like the late 2010s I remember the ESRB made a statement trying to justify it in E rated sports games saying it was far from gambling despite advertisements using a lot of gambling imagery and techniques. I don’t think if the dismemberment in Stellar Blade is near Dead Space, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of bias.

Dead Space goes way more heavy on the gore. That layered flesh system they had, where you peeled through the meat of limbs before dismemebering them, was some next-level stuff. And the enemies were very human-like (being reanimated humans, afterall). In Stellar Blade you fight very obvious non-human monsters, so maybe that classifies as a different type of gore for CERO.

@McBurn The rating system is fine imo, but the censorship can go. Adults can make their own decision, we aren't children.

@Nepp67 @Balie3000 when Peter Jacksons epic gore fest braindead released on vhs in the UK uncut there was a bit of a similar uproar as to why it got a pass and other movies did not. Braindead was seen as a horror comedy of sorts and the gore was so over the top that it was almost comical where other horror movies were quite realistic and visceral so I guess it's a similar thing here. I don't believe in censorship in any medium and if there is something out there that I myself deem inappropriate I stay clear of it but it's not my place to tell people what they can peruse or dictate what is right or wrong (within reason of course.) The age rating should be enough to tell people what content the game includes or the overall theme of the game so if your 12 year old kid is sat up until 2am playing gta online and suddenly becomes a homicidal,drug dealing scumbag I think you need to look deep inside to discover what went wrong with little Billy. I really need to purchase this contentious title.

@Northern_munkey I kick ass for the Lord! Classic!

Perhaps CERO is ran by teenagers? Dismemberment gets shut down but boobs get a free pass.

Neither should have been censored, still feels scummy of him throwing another team under the bus because his team was screwed over. How about we treat adults as adults and children as children and stop censoring content meant for adult eyes 🙄

Rise of the Ronin had both a Cero-D and Cero-Z edition. I wonder if more games could get away with that. Also the way gore and dismemberment are depicted is different in both Stellar Blade (anime gore and dismemberment of monsters) vs Dead Space (realistic hyper gore and dismemberment of humanoids). Again Japan is prudish/conservative in general which is weird since they're the loli country. But I guess it is the way it is.

@Northern_munkey Yeah, if a kid just straight up goes on a murdering spree after playing GTA or CoD, the kid had major issues beforehand and the parents are to blame at that point I think.

All these so called censorship associations should be banned.

In Japan its with all the games that have decapitation and removal of limbs. Nioh has
the same thing.

Yeah it sucks. I live in Japan and have a PS5 digital console. A couple of games I’ve wanted to play but can’t get are Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol, and Dead Island 2. A couple of games I can get, but are censored which slightly annoys me are TLOU2 and Baldur’s Gate 3

What is this? A censorship controversy where Sony didn't f*ck things up? We so back boys lol.

@Kyushutrail I predominantly use my Japan PSN account but sometimes use my Australian one to buy games that didn’t get a release in Japan (e.g. Dead Island 2) or are heavily censored compared to the western versions (e.g. Until Dawn). The only time it sucks is when the western versions don’t include Japanese text support for my language study haha. Anyway I strongly suggest you make a PSN account for another region if you don’t have one already.

Know it's not the point of the article but I still feel no sympathy for EA.

@RadioHedgeFund this comment is legen wait for it... dary

I agree with him, it makes CERO sense.

Yeah I can see where he is coming from. The only difference I can think of is Dead Space is literally designed around dismemberment whereas Stellar Blade, granted only judging off of the demo, only has one part in a cutscene that features it prominently.

@astro911 Thanks I’ll look into doing that. I played Until Dawn last year and didn’t even know anything was cut. It makes me wonder now what other censored games I’ve played without realizing

@Balie3000 Yeah it was definitely the different levels of gore. There's a video on YouTube called Dead Space Remake 4 minutes of gore or something like that and it showcases all the MC's gory death animations.

That EA guy is just acting like a spoilt drama queen because he didn't get his way.

Not just Dead Space, but this other Dead Space clone got rejected as well. I feel there needs to be a change in how games are rated. For it's violence and sexual content.

No jiggly baps on Isaac.

I'm surprised Dead Space would be denied in Japan when there isn't anything in there that's worse than stuff you'd see in Resident Evil. Unless RE is heavily censored in Japan.

I’ve become increasingly invested in the Japan vs Korea shtick recently and it’s evident in this statement. Basically Japan has been moving backwards over the last decade or so and seems to be reverting to some of its isolationist ways. This has a resulted in many Japanese publishers and companies who conduct business outside of Japan to establish offices in Seoul, Hong Kong etc. Sonys partnerships with Chinese developers like Hoyoverse, closure of Japan studio and their new Korean initiative is also a result of increasingly unwelcoming attitudes from Japan.

Don’t get me wrong, Japan is a massive player in the industry but we’re seeing companies start laying groundwork for a worst case scenario where Japan is too difficult to work with/in. I’m not surprised this game got a pass, though it does boggle the mind why the Japanese arm of a western firm got shafted since it’s really nothing to do with Japan.

Maybe there just trying to get along with the Koreans

@tameshiyaku "your mother ate my dog." That's my favorite line..

@Gamer83 Resident Evil is censored in Japan. When you shoot zombies in the head their heads never explode and in RE7 when Mia cuts his hand off with the chainsaw the screen fades to black and you don't actually see it.

@MrMagic
Interesting. Thanks for letting me know.

@Northern_munkey haha, good one. Must rewatch.

But what about Stellar being sexy? Shouldn't I be angry about that, or something? Please, someone tell me what to think.

EA probably didn’t include sufficient money in the bribe envelope. The Stellar Blade team did.

Unfortunately that’s how some of these government offices function.

@ApostateMage I bet there's a fan fiction for that somewhere

I don't understand why people think Japan is against gore and violence. Have any of you seen a category 3 movie? Bunman the untold story is disturbing and ultra violent. The men behind the sun movies are graphic beyond belief. Also the guinea pig movies are truly disturbing. Japan has churned out some of the most violent movies of all time so its a bit odd when they censor video games. Maybe it's an interaction thing?

@Northern_munkey Seems a strange place with some odd double standards, well at least it looks like it on the surface. All the big booby skimpy anime girls that don't look a day past 10 years old having copious upskirt shots in media is cool beans, but actual sexual material meant for adults gets the private areas pixelated. Then as you say, the down right weird and a lot of times incredibly violent films and then censor that gore in that adult videogame. Quite odd.