Conan Exiles has made more than one dong-centered headline, and it’s beginning to build quite a reputation for itself. Months ago the internet got a good giggle over the penis size slider that players got to tinker with in the player creation suite, and anyone who’s watched Conan Exiles streams on Twitch (there are a lot of you) knows that nudity is fairly rampant in the game, especially in the beginning. With Conan Exiles making its console debut this week on Xbox One, some players may be disappointed to learn that the spicier bits have been censored for the North American release.
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That’s right. It was decided that the North American version of Conan Exiles, in order to maintain an M rating, would have to do away with all of the penis flopping. The snake has been caged, because North American gamers are apparently much more sensitive to nudity than our European gaming brothers and sisters, who are going to enjoy a PEGI 18 rated Conan with all of its bare original content.
In the video above you can see a few fellas from Funcom hyping the Xbox One launch and explaining the differences between the European and North American release. If you skip to the 23:51 mark you can hear more about the censorship and the reasoning behind it.
If Conan Exiles were to retain its original, er, features, there’s a good chance that the ESRB would slap it with an Adults Only (AO) rating, which would mean much less visibility for potential buyers, and possible bans from streaming the game on Twitch (we know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense). The bottom line is that an AO rating would hurt Funcom’s bottom line. Conan Exiles enjoyed some fantastic word-of-mouth marketing due to its flippancy over male genitalia, but now the time has come for Funcom to decide between an uncensored product and, likely, more money.
It does seem a bit odd considering the number of games with M ratings that feature male genitalia. Off the top of my head, Grand Theft Auto V, Dante’s Inferno, and South Park: The Stick of Truth were all offenders. All of these games are somewhat modern, and all of them feature male nudity to an extent. On the other hand, nudity is potentially much more prominent in Conan Exiles, whereas in the previously mentioned games you only see it for a short time, so that could make a big difference.
At any rate, we think you’ll have a blast with Conan Exiles, and the XBO version comes with The Frozen North expansion for free! Check it out this Wednesday.
