[aldo_14]

Keish is a tasty and healthy alternative for many main dishes at the dinner table. Using a mix often consisting of egg, vegetables, and finly ground or cut chips of meat (often ham) it delivers a sensational taste for only a fraction of the calories.

Heh, relevance escapes us sometimes.

Quiche.

[Grug]

Keish is a tasty and healthy alternative for many main dishes at the dinner table. Using a mix often consisting of egg, vegetables, and finly ground or cut chips of meat (often ham) it delivers a sensational taste for only a fraction of the calories.

Heh, relevance escapes us sometimes.

Quiche.

My bad. *fixes*

[Eightball]

Aw get off your high horses.  They patched in the EU version, too.

And it's not censorship since they chose to do it to them self.

You can call it "self-censorship", but it's not like the guvamint is making them take it out. 

[Mefustae]

Aw get off your high horses. They patched in the EU version, too.

And it's not censorship since they chose to do it to them self.

You can call it "self-censorship", but it's not like the guvamint is making them take it out.

In a way, it is. They don't want to create another debacle like Hot Coffee, so they're going to the trouble of taking out a ****ing nipple that consumers would have to disect the program to find. Had they left it in, they would have left themselves liable to be chastised should some politician get wind of the offending nipple and **** themselves like before.

You're naive if you think 'self censorship' is in any way different from 'censorship'.

[vyper]

Mmmm.... cheese and ham Quiche. *drools*

[aldo_14]

Aw get off your high horses.  They patched in the EU version, too.

And it's not censorship since they chose to do it to them self.

You can call it "self-censorship", but it's not like the guvamint is making them take it out. 

Um.... let's say you write an article on The Satanic Verses for a magazine, and your magazine wants to begin publishing in the Middle East.  Say that magazine independently decides to remove the article for their Middle East edition.  Does that mean the society and government of those Middle Eastern countries has had absolutely no impact upon that decision?

[Eightball]

No, but if you really want that article or those nipples to get out there, you are completely free to do it yourself.  Self-publish.  Capitalism, baby.

The publishers are worried about money, first and foremost.  If they think it will be bad for them (ie, get less sales) to leave the nipples in, then they will want to remove them.  Since it doesn't affect gameplay, I don't understand the clamor to leave them in.  You are free to publish "Boobspace: the Great Wet T-shirt Contest" if you want.  Just make sure you have the money to do so.  If the society or culture in which a product will be made available dislikes a feature of the product, it can hurt sales to leave it in.  Any for-profit venture has to keep this in mind.  If the game industry is trying to make unadultered art (har!) then nobody would buy it.  Many game descisions are made to maximize profits.

The government in this situation is not forcing them to do anything directly.  Currently, the government isn't doing much at all really.  The GTA "Hot Coffee" scandal was mostly confined to the ESRB, not the government.

And I think you're fooling yourself if you think "censorship" and "self-censorship" are identical.  They are related, yes, but not the same at all.

[aldo_14]

Self censorship is a direct consequence of societal attitudes and ergo the censorship seen to be imposed in prior cases.  Take2/Rockstar got sued and attacked by any number of politicians and 'interest' groups for having some mild smut hidden away in inaccessible code (except by breaching the EULA), costing them millions.  financial self-interest will always take precedence over defending freedom of expression (and an errant nipple is freedom of expression, if only because of the consequences and precedent set by removing it), but the trick is not to encourage the latter.