Earlier this month, an article from Wall Street Journal revealed that Sony Interactive Entertainment was starting to crackdown on sexual imagery in PlayStation 4 games with blanket censorship. However, according to Japanese website Game Spark, a Sony spokesperson revealed that there aren’t any new rules or policies in regards to regulation of sexual imagery on PlayStation consoles, suggesting that Sony is simply enforcing policies that have been in place, but with a stricter hand than it previously did.
According to the spokesperson, Sony’s policy has, and still is, to have higher-ups check games on a case-by-case basis that have been deemed as potentially offensive and/or in violation of its software guidelines. Further, Sony is working alongside global standards, which traditionally have been stricter on sexual imagery, opposed to other mature content, such as violence.
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The official representative further added that Sony is aiming to make the PlayStation a home for all types of gamers, which doesn’t directly, but perhaps indirectly explains why it has began to crackdown more and more on extreme sexual content in games.
When the topic of censorship on PS4 came up, reports and chatter suggested that Sony didn’t randomly create a new policy that targeted lewd games. Rather, it gradually became less and less laxed on policies its had for years. It’s unclear what’s the case, because again, the Wall Street Journal article reports of new policies, but this suggests the policies aren’t new, just the strict enforcement of them is.
Whatever the case, as you would expect, for some parts of the gaming community this has been a hot-button topic. However, for the large, more mainstream base that plays games on the PlayStation 4, not only is this a non-issue unlikely to have any tangible impact on the games they play, but many will probably never even know this is an issue in the first place.
Anyway, as always, feel free to leave a comment letting us know what you think or hit me up on Twitter @Tyler_Fischer_ and let me know there. Do you care about Sony’s recent crackdown on lewd games and sexual imagery?
Thanks, TwinInfinite.
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