In overwriting the promise made by developer Shift Up that the highly-anticipated action title would released completely “uncensored”, Sony has announced that they will be patching out a piece of graffiti found in Stellar Blade due to an absolutely reaching accusation from IGN that the in-game artwork could be read as a reference to a racial slur.
On April 21st, Shift Up confirmed an uncensored release of Stellar Blade. The announcement came via the game’s official Twitter account, stating in both English and Japanese that “Stellar Blade offers the same uncensored version in all countries, including the Japanese version.”
Despite the enthusiastic reception from Stellar Blade’s fanbase following Shift Up’s announcement of an uncensored release, a single complaint from IGN prompted Sony, the game’s publisher, to retract the guarantee. IGN’s review highlighted a large graffiti piece in the game reading ‘Hard’ next to a glowing neon ‘R’ sign, near a meet-up location for an NPC named Roxanne. IGN interpreted this as a reference to the ‘Hard R’ version of the ‘n-word’ racial slur, leading to Sony’s decision to nullify the uncensored promise.
When IGN raised the issue directly with Sony rather than Shift Up, a company representative responded, acknowledging that the placement of two graphics in Stellar Blade resulted in an unintentionally objectionable phrase. Shift Up had no intention of creating offensive artwork, and they committed to replacing the graffiti in the Day 1 patch. When pressed further about whether these efforts would extend to removing the graphic from the game’s physical release, considering that those copies would have been printed with the original version of the game’s code, the representative reiterated that the graffiti “should be removed for all users in the Day 1 update.”
Fulfilling their commitment, Sony has rolled out the patch for Stellar Blade. Kotaku reports that post-patch, the graffiti now reads ‘Crime’ instead of ‘Hard’.
Costume Alterations Examples
What are your thoughts on Sony’s decision to patch out the graffiti and censored costumes in Stellar Blade? Do you believe it was necessary, or do you think it was an overreaction? Share your opinion in the comments below!
Stellar Blade is set to begin its PlayStation 5-exclusive sortie on April 26th.
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