Watch Dogs 2 is all about grit, but players didn’t expect to see realistic male and female genitalia on NPCs. That’s right — flaccid, full-detail, unabashed genitalia. In a video game. Woah.
Watch Dogs 2
You can look, but you can’t repost — at least using the PlayStation Network. A player who uploaded explicit screenshots of Watch Dogs 2 genitalia using PlayStation’s built-in tools was hit with a month-long suspension for breaching the PSN’s “Code of Conduct”. Now, Ubisoft says they will patch the game this week so players can share whatever they want, implying that “particularly explicit” nudity will soon be removed.
Yesterday, NeoGaf user Goron2000 wrote in a post that he “accidentally blew up a few women in a back alley with a gas pipe” on a copy of WD2 he received early. He was surprised that Ubisoft had “rendered a full vagina” on one of the women he’d exploded, which he described as an “oversight”. Said vagina is surprisingly detailed (NSFW).
WD2 vaginas are not, in fact, an oversight. Just a few days ago, YouTuber Servan Demir posted a video of himself encountering a fully nude NPC wearing just a beanie, walking down the street with it all hanging out, and soon after, another video of a small hippie colony feature a fully-naked woman (NSFW):
So, graphic genitalia is a thing in Watch Dogs 2. But when Goron2000 used his PlayStation’s “share” function to post a screenshot of a woman’s vagina on Twitter (NSFW), Sony suspended his PSN account for a a week. He forwarded Sony’s note to Kotaku:
We’re writing to inform you that your Sony Entertainment Network account has been temporarily suspended.
We’ve made this decision based on your online activity in Live from PlayStation on 15-11-2016. . . We ask all our players to act decently, respectfully and with consideration for us and other players while using PlayStation Network. To make sure you understand the behaviour we expect from our community, please review the Code of Conduct here before returning to PlayStation Network. Please be aware that any further breaches of the Code of Conduct may result in a longer suspension or even a permanent ban.
It’s true that posting sexually explicit conduct is against Sony’s Community Code of Conduct. The PSN Terms of Service prohibits sharing in-game assets that are “defamatory or offensive (including anything… sexually offensive”) or anything “vulgar”, a curious word to describe human bodies, but whatever!
In an email, Ubisoft told Kotaku that they’re aware that “one” of the NPC models in Watch Dogs 2 is “rendered in a way that is particularly explicit”. It seems like maybe more than one model is hiding some detailed nether-parts, but sure, Goron2000’s viral screenshot was the most explicit I’ve seen. Ubisoft added:
While Watch Dogs 2 is a mature-rated game, we apologise and will update this NPC model to make it more consistent with other NPC models in the game in a patch to be released this week. We also are working with our first-party partners to ensure that players can continue to play and share all content from the game within the bounds of the first parties’ respective codes of conduct.
So, keeping in line with Sony’s Community Code of Conduct and the PSN’s Terms of Service, it appears that Ubisoft will be removing material that, when reposted through PlayStation, could get users suspended.
“Sorry Sony,” Goron2000 wrote on Twitter. “I’ll go back to sharing pics of corpses in RE7 [Resident Evil 7].”
Comments
15 responses to “Watch Dogs 2 Will Patch Out ‘Particularly Explicit’ Genitalia”
That fact that genitals are this big of a deal when you can literally murder the people is very astounding. Who cares about genitals in video games (except those that are demanding their genitals get higher representation)?
Americans don’t receive adequate sex ed, this kind of thing scares the pilgrim right out of them.
Yeah, when I lived there I was surprised at how taboo nudity and sex stuff is. So much is censored over there (it’s ironic because Aus has the rep for being overly censored) and I was surprised at just how many movies I would be watching and stuff got suddenly edited out (one example I can think of is some pretty explicit dialogue in Billy Maddison). But they love violence and war, it’s in their national anthem, they have no problem broadcasting corpses on TV but nipples are bad, yo. Australia is very sexually liberated by comparison.
Edit: I also just remembered, y’know how our ratings include things like “high level violence” and “sex scenes” … America has one that reads “disrespecting the flag.” That blew me away.
Lol, “turn away kids, I don’t want you to see that flag.”
I was used to them blurring “the finger”, but I burst out laughing the first time I saw a blurred butt-crack on US TV.
Meanwhile, we had a rooftop full of drunken nuddies feature on live, international TV during the 2000 torch relay. It was amazing, Aussies are the best!
I remember listening to the radio and often hearing “I chime in with a haven’t you people ever heard of, closing the *mute* damn door”
Yup, blasphemy is treated as swearing.
On one hand, I get it, but on he other… I mean, come on. When are we going to grow up and accept that nudity is literally the most natural thing ever? It’s not like they were explicitly having bondage sex (which shouldn’t be a problem either, but that’s another story.) still, I guess they were saying that they would patch out the issue with the dead woman, not the naked peeing guy or the hula-hoop master.
This game’s available at all good retailers, you say?
A glance at old mate’s twitter shows he’s un-banned. So there’s that.
There’s a lot to digest here.
But, on a domestic note alone, what the classification rating seems to say is accurate – there is nudity in this game.
Now, if/when it’s removed, will the classification need to be reviewed? I don’t expect a change from MA15+ to R18+, but that’s something to consider.
The depiction of said content is the crux of this, I think.
Violence in video games ramps up not because of the devs or buying customers being gorehounds, but because of advances in graphical technology. We get unfairly painted as degenerates and the medium is seen as pandering to the lowest common denominator. Very annoying.
Hacksaw Ridge is a war movie unlike any other because of its depiction of violence, but then again it’s ‘just another war movie’ as well.
If Australia didn’t have an R18+ rating, Watch Dogs 2 and pretty much every tentpole game would be too MA15+ to be MA15+, or unable to be classified at all – and therefore ‘banned.’ Thanks to graphical advances, we’re seeing what’s possible _be made possible_ at a faster rate than cinema, or television (though shows like Walking Dead and Game of Thrones are quite nimble on this).
However, we do have an R18+ rating now and the Classi people can still get it wrong, while getting it mostly right (like with Watch Dogs 2).
This goes back to “depiction” – there aren’t movies like Hacksaw Ridge being made every year, so the ‘oh sex is not allowed but killing people is???’ crowd can’t move the goal-posts and say there’s a double-standard.
In nine out of ten movies that come out each year which deal with adult themes such as sex and violence, it’s implicit depiction, not explicit depiction. Hacksaw Ridge is a piece of media, but it’s also a commercial product. If every super-hero movie went and became more explicit, then people would react accordingly.
So no, Ubisoft should not have to patch out nudey-rudey bits. The fact Ubisoft put explicit depictions of nudey-rudey bits in their software runs afoul of certain checks and balances Ubisoft itself seeks to work within so it can make money.
I can’t help but think of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCopter
That’s the second time I’ve referenced that on here in the past week. Going for the triple…
So if Sony is banning this blokes account for a week, those of you with Sony VR beware your account will get frozen for looking up VR porn LOL. What a world
Just don’t try streaming it when you are looking at the porn 🙂
Also, he was banned for a week, then had the ban extended to a month! It was only just lifted a short time ago.
Bwahahaha really oh my. Note to self DO NOT stream VR porn.
I dont understand how if something is in the game that they didnt want, why was it rendered?
Any game developers explain it to me? I just dont understand it
Im not joking.
meh its a really crappy texture. its nothing compared to age of conan where vaginas and penises are part of the actual character models
America has simply given up and started rendering their models with crotchless knickers ready for their inevitable grabbing at the hands of Donald Trump.
Back up yer games!