Welcome to the Censored Gaming Recap! In these articles, we take a look back at all of the latest happenings in the world of censorship and then round them up in a special weekly feature.

It’s been a bit of a quiet this time actually and some of the stuff that’s been going on has been positive, but then again, not everything has been so cheerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFYCYLsbE1k

The first point is that 3 new games have been added to Twitch’s List of Prohibited Games. The games in question are all made by the same developer and were recently package as part of a bundle named Radiator 2, with some improvements made to them. Now, however, all three games have been targeted by Twitch as being “inappropriate” and have basically been banned from being able to be streamed on their site.

The games are described as ”short experimental games about male sexuality” and there is no explicit nudity or sex. Twitch has offered no explanation for this decision and interestingly they also didn’t contact the developer to let them know. Robert Yang, the games' developer, offers an interesting explanation of the situation over on their blog. You can check out our previous report on this here.

Next up is something a bit more positive. A new study has been conducted on the impact that games have on violent crime. Their conclusion? That there is absolutely no short term effects between the two. The experiment was carried out by looking at crime statistics whenever a violent game was released and the researchers found that crime actually decreased during this time frame. They do highlight an area of weakness in the study and how there may be possible long term effects which the experiment doesn’t account for, but, in terms of short-term effects, once again research has shown there is no link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVkBO97ui6o

In other news, Mugen Souls Z has been announced to be getting a Steam release via the folks at Ghostlight. This brought the question of whether it would be the censored PS3 release, which removed the bathing mini game found in the Japanese version. Unfortunately yes, like the first game, the Steam release will be censored just the same, as confirmed on Ghostlight’s Twitter account.

https://twitter.com/ghostlightgames/status/753620689442238464

If you’re interested in learning more about the changes then make sure you check out Censored Gaming's full censorship report, in the video above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZtCvrNpkPA

Also, the new JoJo's Bizarre Adventure game, Eyes of Heaven, has removed a Nazi styled costume from all Western releases.

The character Stroheim has both the Nazi and Cyborg costume over in Japan, with the Nazi one being his default. In the West, though, the Cyborg outfit is the default and the other is completely removed. This is likely due to German law, which straight up bans Nazi-related symbols from games. This law doesn’t just include the more obvious things such as swastikas, though, but also stuff like uniforms that look similar to those associated with Nazis.

“So flat, super flat” and "Did I get a little…bigger?”

And then to finish up this time with MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death - the RPG recently banned in Australia. Whilst the Australian rating system refused to rate the title, the ESRB has given the game a Teen rating, which is just such a massive difference.

From the rating summary, it seems that this is the rating that should have been expected. The summary mentions things like low cut tops and jiggle physics, as well as some suggestive dialogue. It’s really strange that the game drew so much controversy over in Australia, despite it being no different to many other games. Hopefully, this isn’t a sign of stricter rating procedures being implemented or something. Perhaps it was just a one off or, who knows, whilst unlikely maybe there was something in there that the ESRB missed. Whatever the case, only time will tell and we’ll continue to be there to keep you up to date.

See you next week for more of the Censored Gaming Recap and please check out the Censored Gaming YouTube channel for more content on video game censorship! Or our Twitter account here!