Late last Friday, publisher Xseed Games announced Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal’s December release will be delayed while the company removes some of the sexual content from the PS4 version of the game. They cite “the wishes of the platform holder,” suggesting the removal is due to a changing stance on sexual content on Sony’s part.
“The release of Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal will be slightly delayed as we remaster to remove the interactive ‘Intimacy Mode’ from the PS4 version,” the company wrote in a statement published on Twitter.
In a follow-up tweet it added, “We respect the wishes of the platform holder,” which could suggest Sony requested the changes. Re:Newal is a 3D remaster of the side-scrolling beat-em up for the 3DS of the same name. Players fight as scantily-clad girl ninjas, and they can also dress up their characters and, in the game’s Intimacy Mode, grope them.
Xseed called the game’s new Burst mode “a voluptuous visual feast” in a press release earlier this year.
It’s unclear what Sony policy Xseed is citing or when it came into being. Speaking in an unofficial capacity on his Twitter account, Xseed localisation producer Tom Lipschultz called this apparent requirement “very much a new thing,” but didn’t elaborate further. Sony did not respond to a request by Kotaku for comment.
“‘If you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost,’” Lipschultz wrote, quoting fantasy author and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman.
“I don’t like intimacy mode in SK. But I’ve always stood up for it, because … well, this. This is how it starts, my friends. Welcome to the new ‘90s.”
Earlier this year, Omega Labyrinth Z, another game based around young-looking anime girls, became the first game to be banned from physical sale in the UK since Manhunt 2 for its touching mode, among other things.
Publisher PQube Games eventually cancelled the game’s Western release altogether after Sony refused to carry it. Sony also dropped the sex manipulation FMV game Super Seducer from PS4 in March, just days before it was set to release.
Sony’s possible crackdown on this kind of content, whatever the details and reasoning behind it, appears to be a recent development. 2016’s Gal*Gun: Double Peace includes its own rubbing mechanic, but it released on PS4 and Vita without trouble.
PQube also published that game, and even said at the time that getting it approved for Western release was surprisingly easy.
Xseed stated on Twitter that the Steam version of Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal will be held until the PS4 version is ready but that the game will be uncensored on Steam. After previously cracking down on sex games earlier this year, Valve appears to be moving in the opposite direction as Sony, having also approved the “100 per cent uncensored” visual novel Negligee: Love Stories for sale in the US just last month.
Comments
10 responses to “Xseed Removes ‘Intimacy Mode’ From PS4 Version Of Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal”
Arrogant Sony is back?
Wonder which female staff member Gamergate will blame & bully this time?
They’ll just pick one out of a hat, staying in line with their usual idiocy.
Or the first lady who speaks up or is referenced in the slightest way to be working near the room where the decision was made.
This policy saddens me. We would have never got Mass Effect’s tasteful bone-scenes if this had been in effect last gen. When is it daddy’s turn to have nice things?
In all fairness, I’m pretty sure that the stuff removed from this game was nothing really “tasteful”, but rather virgin teenager’s fantasy fuel. I think the tasteful stuff actually has somewhat better chances.
Come on, now. You’re just kink-shaming here… and what’s wrong with virgin teenagers anyway?
Sorry to say this, but the negative implication in my description is entirely in your reading. I was a virgin teenager once, too, after all. I wouldn’t go shaming anybody for stuff that I myself partook of, back then.
I was merely making a difference between stuff that is targeted towards super horny youngsters that don’t know much about sex or people of the opposite sex and the more nuanced kind of adult content the previous poster was referring to. And this is not trying to imply that one is superior to the other, but rather than they are created differently, for different audiences.
Nah, the boning in mass effect wasnt really tasteful at all
Miranda the ”perfectly sexy” genetically engineered clone anyone?
Blue sexy aliens that mind meld during sex?
Slave kink stuff in mass effect 2 and the multiple dance clubs with people in cages sexy dancing?
It was virgin fantasy as fuck, i mean dont get me wring i loved the tropey blue sexy aliens it was virgin fantasy scifi and im down for that
Well, I don’t know about you, but inside my old-man-body there lives a horny young teenager 😀
I guess you could say that my tastes have broadened but I can still appreciate, shall we say, more simplistic titillations 😉 That’s why I find it disappointing that Sony has apparently decided to ‘censor’ this game because it considers that the kind of titillation it offers is ‘bad’ for westerners.
I mean, really, Sony is just making a business decision, but I suspect that it is doing so out of fear of reprisals by the usual howling termagants and their catspaws. Just something we have to live with in this day and age, where people can tell me to be ashamed of being turned on by anime girls. *shrug*
Yeah, I hear you. I can only imagine that their reasoning is that consoles are seen as toys (especially with the Holidays looming), so with its cutesy anime character design this game could easily find itself under some kids’ Christmas tree and then become a massive PR bomb in the worst time of the year to happen. Obviously, such a thing would be the fault of hapless/careless parenting but nobody would think of that when it comes to “protect our kids”.