CrunchyRoll’s community team for the English release of the mobile dungeon crawler, DanMachi: Memoria Freese, revealed in a recent Reddit thread that they decided to censor the game for the Western audience due to what they felt was and wasn’t appropriate for said audience.

It started when a gamer asked about DanMachi: Memoria Freese‘s English release, noting that some of the art changed and that an interactive mini-game similar to the petting game from Fire Emblem Fates was removed. In the sub-reddit for the game, a community manager hopped into the comment section to say that the interactive mini-game was removed for the English release and that it was not censorship…

“Hi! Official DanMemo Community Team here. The “touching” feature was removed from the English version of the game, yes. Not as a matter of censorship or depriving non-Japanese audiences of anything, but due to what is appropriate and not appropriate for English audiences. Hope that answers your question!”

The community was not at all pleased with this turn of events. They quickly noted that removing or prohibiting a feature or content from being accessed by people is the very definition of censorship.

When the community pointed out that they weren’t appreciative of the English version being censored, and if there was anyway the team could add the touching mini-game to the English release. The community team responded by saying…

“I will pass along your feedback, but the team stands by the decision. Thanks! :)”

So essentially, the niche community who wants the feature are being told that it’s not appropriate for them, despite the fact that the reason they wanted to play the game in the first place was due to what was featured in the Japanese version of the game. The community team even went so far as to say that if people wanted to play the uncensored version, they should just get the Japanese version of DonMachi Memoria Freese…

“If you would like that feature, it is still in the Japanese version.”

Worse yet is that when gamers asked the official Twitter account for the game if it was censored, they responded by saying “Nope!”.

Nope! — DanMachi Memoria Freese (@danmemoen) March 30, 2018

YouTuber Scratch Point did an eight minute rant on the fact that this sort of censorship is still prevalent, even though the market demographic who plays these kind of games actually want those features in the game.

What makes it worse is that the touching feature – where you can touch the heads and bodies of the characters – was advertised in the English trailer for DonMachi Memoria Freese.

At the 1:45 mark in the trailer below, you can see that they clearly advertise the feature as part of the “Communication Mode”. This was uploaded to Crunchyroll’s official YouTube channel on November 7th, 2017.

If you’re unable to watch the trailer, it states…

“You can talk with the characters in the game, right? That’s not all! You can touch their heads and bodies!”

This feature was advertised and then removed from the English release. Thus, technically Crunchyroll could be reported to the Federal Trade Commission or the Advertising Standards Authority for false advertisement.

You can file a complaint using the Federal Trade Commission complaint assistant.

You can also file a complaint using the Advertising Standards Authority complaint assistant if you’re in the U.K.

DonMachi: Memoria Freese is currently available right now for iOS and Android devices.

(Thanks for the news tip Censored Gaming)