I wonder who's next on the censorship block…

This censorship row started with localization teams filtering out content they found objectionable and making up their own stories. It progressed to the point that Western developers have begun catching flak for bowing down and altering their own content. Now it's pressuring Japanese developers to make the changes themselves, be it self-censoring or not bringing the games over.

This attitude of “I don't like it, so you can't have it” is just cyber bullying. As long as your social media mob dislikes something, it's perfectly fine to insult the people who enjoy it, fine to lie and slander if the opposition is unpopular. These same people who harp on and on about how cultural appropriation oppresses minority cultures, while treading over an unpopular minority they don't like.

This will end the same way all bullying does, when the perpetrators stop getting attention for their actions and find a new target. Once they're gone, perhaps the real feminists, the women who are motivated to take action and make real games, good games, will rise up and take us to an era in gaming where there is a full spectrum of female characters. Where female characters don't have to be perfect, and can show their flaws without some imbecile getting their jimmies rustled because she's not perfect and crying sexism.

If I could say a few things to the Japanese gamers:

I'm sorry our nutters have begun ruining things that you love. I think it says a lot about how bad our culture has become that we produce shitty human beings that want to take away entertainment from others, because they themselves don't like it.

I'm sorry that proponents of censorship insult your country because it has different views on sexuality and what's acceptable.

I agree that its a shame members of American society try to alter your culture, despite the warped, ultra-violence prevalent in our society. Somehow it's fine to show multiple beheadings in a PG-13 movie, but skimpy clothes and breasts aren't fit for adult consumption in videogames.

You are not alone in your frustration. There are many Westerners just as pissed off as you are that this is happening. Maybe if you're loud enough together it will stop, but you have to do it in a way that doesn't make you look bad, like the posts from earlier in this article.

This has been deemed too sexy for human eyes.

Before I continue on, I need to outline that there are two types of people you can describe as Social Justice Warriors: Actual progressive thinking people, those who do great work to improve society as a whole,and SJWs, a derogatory term for those that are eager to support a good cause but have little to no understanding of consequences or human rights.

Progressives push for LBGT equality or realistic portrayals of women, which are admirable endeavors. It's thanks to these people that America has finally started protecting gay rights like marriage, classic bullying is on the decline, and people are taking mental illnesses more seriously. These are great improvements for our society, and I applaud these people.

SJWs mean well. but they're easily manipulated, get so caught up in fighting for causes that they're blind to how hypocritical they can become, and their ignorance on the issues they're fighting for results in an end goal of sterile uniformity they call diversity. These are the people I'm going to call out, the SJWs that push for censorship instead of equal representation.

For example, if someone doesn't like homosexuals or displays of homosexuality, they have the option to look away from it away from it. That's reasonable, and downright sane. If they don't like sexualized portrayals of women in games? Understandable, it's not for everybody. Fortunately, they can look away from it.

Except they don't. Instead of looking for media more to their tastes, or getting off their asses and making said media, most SJWs will just piss and moan until developers cave and change the product to what they like, at the expense of others. When someone opposed to the changes cries censorship, SJWs will say it was the owners choice to change the product in order to avoid conflict, and you should respect their wishes to do so!

Unless it's something SJWs enjoy: Then it's censorship and it's fucking offensive. They had a meltdown of epic proportions when the UK branch of Cartoon Network cut a scene from Steven Universe, a show they produced, so that a 3 second clip wouldn't cause controversy. That is their right according to SJWs, so why did they go crazy? It's because they don't want equality, they want their view to be the only view, and when their own words are used against them, the blind SJWs reveal themselves to be hypocritical, pissy babies that will throw a tantrum.

Bringing this topic back to games, having the option to turn on filters for things like sexy outfits, blood and gore, or cutting away from violent imagery would be the smart option. Alternatively, developers could produce censored and uncensored versions, or use downloadable patches, to preserve ESRB/CERO ratings. That's not good enough though, gamers aren't allowed to have that option at all.

The “just don’t play it” mantra is nonsense, sexist depictions of women in games are not just harmful to women, they're also harmful to men. — Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) November 18, 2014

Could you imagine this backwards logic applied to anything else a group of people didn't like?

“The 'don't pay attention to other peoples lives' mantra is nonsense, acceptance of gay marriage in our society is not only harmful to real marriage, but our souls as well”

Interracial couples, cats, guns, anything can be plugged in there to see how stupid this line of thought is. Here's a tip for the hypocritical: If that argument doesn't work for those assholes, it doesn't work for you assholes. The argument only grows in stupidity when you realize that these “feminists” don't represent all women and can't even agree on what makes something sexist outside of cases that are painfully black and white.

[Disclaimer: This is the opinion of the author]

Square Enix has censored at least one Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness character. The developers decided to take one character's suggestive underwear and turn it into “diapers” or “granny panties,” because they wanted to avoid a negative reaction in the West. With just one small act of censorship, which may be one of many in the game, the development team has stepped on a landmine of hate and ill will.

Nailed it!

Is the change a huge functional difference? Not at all, and I find this level of vitriol disproportionate with the changes we know so far, but what people don't realize is the passion of the audience and the principle of the act.

Believe it or not, some people value these little things as highly as you value your personal tastes. It looks like a tiny thing to go off the deep end over, but it's just the straw that broke the camels back. These fans have a right to be pissed, they're a minority that these things were aimed at, but because a louder minority of Westerners (who weren't going to buy the game in the first place) are proselytizing developers, they're having things that appeal to them taken away.

You might think it's stupid to raise a fuss over just panties, or the swimsuits in Fatal Frame, the breast slider in Xenoblade Chronicles X, the altered relationships in Fire Emblem Fates, R. Mika's butt slap, and so on. Tell me, though, what right do people have to change something these fans enjoy? How would you feel if someone came and censored all of blood out of Western games and edited all of the guns into squirt guns? Blood isn't necessary, and Splatoon has shown guns don't have to be fatal to make a fun game, so it should be fine right?

Except it's not, and it wasn't. The original self-appointed morality police have already tried to take blood and murder from Western gamers, and it ended poorly for them. Remember Nintendo's SNES version of Mortal Kombat? It went over like a turd in prom punch, so they brought the bloody violence back in full with Mortal Kombat II. Violence is now so popular here that you can't have a Western AAA release without it. Period.

We know what it's like when people try to tell us what's good for us, what's appropriate, and try to take “unnecessary” things, like blood, from us. So why do we laugh at and marginalize those who complain about the sexuality of games being toned down? It's not our fetish they're coming for, so it's not our problem.