After reading through the changes, this is exactly why I came to the comments.
Ben was an honest cop, and got maimed by his dishonest coworkers. Other than the imagery on the surface, there's nothing racially inflammatory about that image at all...
I feel like the same people who would see Big Band getting murdered by crooked cops and somehow feel it's a racially charged moment are the same kind of people who see fantasy orcs and immediately assume the creator is attempting to depict a caricature of black people. Controversies from literally nothing.
> fantasy orcs and immediately assume the creator is attempting to depict a caricature of black people
Not even the craziest thing I've heard connecting make believe races to black people.
This sticks in my head. The logic used to connect Star Wars to supporting enslaving black people by this one person is just, wow.
A black woman wrote an editorial about this. Here is her train of thought. When she was growing up, she had a black barbie doll. She did not have a black ken doll but did have a 12inch Chewbacca doll. Chewy and barbie did all the things that ken and barbie would normally do. This made chewy a black man. The wookies were black people. Years later when she was an adult, she found out that in Star Wars lore the Empire enslaved the wookies. This meant Star Wars was in favor of enslaving black people. This is why she wrote her article, to spread the word.
This was an absolute jaw dropping moment of WTF!. I really wish I would have saved the article. It was a wild ride to read. A fictional government enslaving an imaginary race of space bigfoots is in support of enslaving black people in real life all because of the toys she had growing up.
Yeah he said "Fuck you I'm Millwall" as he took the terrorist down on London Bridge.
Then to the surprise of noone was Milkshake Ducked like 3 hours later.
For most depictions I've come across in fantasy media, orcs mostly act like warhungry barbarians, which when usually depicted are mostly white. Like viking berserkers or cavemen, usually the club weilding animalistic man is ( at least from what ive come across ) usually white. I can see where your point is coming from, with the mad lib exaggeration some people use when trying to make rasict jokes or whatever. But orcs being a stand in for black people seems pretty far fetched from what most people think when they see them. Most people just see them as a war hungry monster tribe. The only people that usually try to make that point are the people who love to bring race into any and every discussion. There are both white and black people like that but I've noticed thats usually a small group of people. I live in north Philadelphia, ive been around black people my entire life and almost none of them are obsessed with their race or mine. We're all just people and treat each other as such. For the record im Hispanic but have blond hair and blue from my moms side.
I've never once connected Orcs to anyone other than barbarian vikings if anything.
People see what they want to see. That's the greatest aspect to art.
No matter how you try to protect it, the brains of a racist is going to associate whatever they want to their vision.
Yeah, the only black orcs I've ever seen or heard about were from that Netflix movie Bright(?). And when watching it I thought it was a cool twist for them because yeah, they're always barbarian's
>huh, it's kind of weird how the authors, who I don't believe are intentionally racist, have inadvertantly tripped into using the same kind of phraseology to describe the actions of these Orcs as historical racists did to describe black people
...Examples?
>routinely stereotyping every Orc as a 'Tyrone', making them speak in ebonics, and doing 'WHERE DA WHITE HUMANS AT' jokes
I have literally never seen this, as someone who is terminally online in multiple Fantasy, gaming, and roleplaying communities. Ever. What are you even talking about?
Right? I was reading his post and wondering what the fuck he was talking about. I've been into fantasy shit for years and am subbed to all sorts of Warhammer/Tolkien/fantasy subreddits. Maybe we're just in better groups?
The entire discussion is a pseudo academic self flagellating pile of garbage attempting to find meaning in a racist facile interpretation of fantasy media.
Creating fictional cultures and peoples is not racist, full stop. The belief that orcs and elves some how “inform” reality is so fucking smooth brained it hurts. It’s hilarious to me how these people bend over backwards to explain to themselves that they’re not racist for seeing orcs as lesser and then connecting it to black culture, it speaks absolute volumes about their personal views and nothing else. Dude wrote a fucking novella of gibberish trying to pretend it’s not him that thinks black people are or orcish, it’s obviously the creators of fantasy media who are at fault for creating a race of violent, stupid, undeveloped orcs.
Specifically it's because Gary Gygax was a huge fan of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and his orcs are based on Conan's enemies, not on Tolkien's orcs.
For instance the orcs in Tolkien are squat, with the largest being the height of a man. The hobbits disguise themselves as orcs successfully, giving a relative height of them - a hobbit sized orc is not unexpected. Orcs are clever and cunning, using mechanical traps to trick, trap, and kill their enemies. They're far closer to how D&D views goblins or kobolds than they are to D&D orcs.
In contrast Howard's barbarian tribes were large, feral, brutish, and, um, black. Howard was a friend of Lovecraft y'see, and they had some pretty similar views on race.
So when Gygax picked up Howard's barbarian tribes and dropped them into D&D, he didn't quite file all the serial numbers off. Or even that many, given the various bone in nose orc art pieces.
Not missing the point, I'm here with you on it - but the ebonics point seems incorrect? Games Workshop are British, I assumed Orks speak with Cockney dialect?
The original complaint the poster up there is referring to came out of discussions of Orcs in Dungeons and Dragons, not Warhammer (40k). And the Orcs in that setting don't speak ebonics. But the racists who have noticed the parallels and enjoy playing up shitheaded stereotypes use ebonics when depicting those Orcs. They are ultimately a small chunk of the overall playerbase, but they didn't land on this stereotype out of nowhere or invent it themselves, and it's ultimately their finding it that prompted other people to look and go, "Oh, I see how this is happening, we should probably fix that."
>inadvertantly tripped into using the same kind of phraseology to describe the actions of these Orcs as historical racists did to describe black people
Yes, please absolutely do not give any examples to actually support your point. It's always the same round trip. Only conjectures, scholar theories weaponized into the race/culture war and never facts nor evidence.
Saying it's a nuanced conversation while simultaneously presenting an argument lacking any and all nuance? Check.
Assuming that everyone who disagrees with you simply couldn't understand your argument? Check.
What the fuck are you talking about. In most fantasy media that isn't LOTR, orcs are stereotypically tribal barbarians. You're reaching so fucking hard and it's obnoxious. I don't doubt you when you say the edgelords hold onto racially motivated stereotyping, but Holy fuck just let fantasy be fantasy for fuck's sake. There is nothing wrong with the Orc Fantasy Race.
People don't have that nuanced conversation because it isn't nuanced - it's short-sighted. Removing orcs because "racist people will be racist" is accomplishing what? Making them not racist? If you take away enough things that they can use to be racist, you'll end racism? It doesn't work that way. They'll still be racist and project that onto other things that then need to be removed. Where does it end? The only thing you accomplish is taking something fun, innocent, interesting, and flavorful away from far more people to enjoy who are not using it in any malicious way.
In the end, there will still be racism; just not orcs.
The most popular depictions of orcs, including the original creator's depiction, are not really depicted the way you describe.
The next most popular is probably warcraft orcs, which are all over the place in their inspiration, including warhammer orcs, which I aslo have a hard time seeing as overwhelmingly influenced by or referential to any specific non-white cultures.
And then there's is DnD which primarily depicts orcs as more barbarian or in basic "medieval" looking armorhttp://grognardia.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-very-partial-pictorial-history-of-orcs.html
The problem with nuance is that you can't clearly state someone is right and wrong, and that's what most people are concerned with. If I have orcs in my campaign despite agreeing with your points, am I wrong? Some will argue yes, others no, and both may be valid. But if there's a space for me to be *right* and people want me to be *wrong*, it's easier to make me *extra wrong* by calling me a racist.
Or, not every orc is an orc, some are orks based off football hooligans and trying to tie it to a specific race and make logic jumps like "oh they speak different, must be making fun of slang speaking minorities" is some self hating sadness.
Racists being racist isnt a reason to call everyone racist, I know, hard concept.
> "are fetishized and/or have sexualization imposed upon them,"
That is sort of the entire point of the game's style, no? It's sort of cleavage and upskirt the game, no matter how you slice it.
I mean...it isn't the first time they "sanitize" it.
Last time [they made a similar change was the removal of...pantyshot](https://skullheart.com/threads/skullgirls-pc-beta-updates-discussion.407/page-190#post-268947).
Yep its once again people being out of touch with what their fanbase actually want but rather just jump on the next big thing to satisfy the kind of people who would never play the game anyway.
Exactly. These people that they are trying so hard to ponder are never even gonna play these games but hey, let's just annoy the fk out of the people that actually play the game.
Man this reminds me [Hyper Universe](https://mmos.com/news/english-version-hyper-universe-features-censorship-changes) (HU) all over again. HU was a side-scrolling MOBA, it felt different, fresh, looking great and, most importantly, the *artwork* was fan servicey and the in-game 3D models were quite representative of those art. The game itself was great, gameplay was tight and balance was in the right place.
The game had a small but growing fanbase. The dev had a booth at some game expo and some random *social justice warriors* made comments about how fan servicey the artwork looks. The dev immediately started changing all their artwork. The in-game model was mostly untouched (from what I remember). The community was annoyed, demanded that they kept the game the way it was since they paid for that. Dev didn't budge.
Actual players started to bleed out since the dev wouldn't listen to the people that paid for the game and instead was trying to cater to a new audience. The new audience never showed up after all the change were made. The game died a very fast death.
Freaking sad.
Sounds a bit like what happened with western comic books over the last few years. The made massive changes to long established characters, a race swap here, a gender swap there, a sexuality swap or two. All on the goal of attracting a new audience that never turned up, while attacking and alienating their traditional audience who complained. Now they have a smaller business entirely, while Manga is cleaning up but just having a book for everyone to begin with.
Honestly it's such an annoying trend for western developer/publisher to "sanitize" their games like this gonna appeal to a broader audience.
There's so many KR games (including Hyper Universe) that are brought over to the West just for them to be changed in an attempt of "diversity" or being politically correct. Those games are already popular out there and the dev embrace their audience in the home country but western publisher force those censorship when bringing it over... they're literally dumbing down one facet of the game's success (sex sell, plain and simple).
The latest Publisher doing this is Amazon Games, they brought Lost Ark to the western market and I believe they enforced a lot of gameplay change that helped the game being LESS p2w (which is good) but then they changed certain things and two of the most jarring thing being: People being randomly black and a class change to not let the transformation turn the character white. Both of those creates inconsistency in the game and it's plain awful. Also, I picture a conversation with a KR and Western player of the game talking about one of those character turned black; I imagine one describing that one black dude with thick black beard while the KR going "Uh no? He's pale as fuck and have blond hair!" (literally one of the character they changed) bleh
Amazon Games is now tinkering with Blue Protocol next, apparently there's going to be stuff that gets censored in this one. Yaayyy
I wonder how one can force something in a completely made-up and not real character as if the character had some sort of agency outside one's creation.
That's the paradoxical argument you'll hear often when discussing sexualization in games. People will argue sexualization is bad because the characters don't have agency over the game's camera etc. and as such it it's being imposed on them, but at the same time people will also argue that an inherently sexual character like Catwoman for example can't have any agency over her attire, behavior etc. because she isn't real.
Basically people will turn and twist it any way because in reality they just don't want to see anything sexual.
It's not a paradox, because game development has many authors with competing views. A writer creates a woman character, and then the cutscene director zooms in on her tits. An artist designs a costume, and then the marketing manager pushes for skimpier costume options in the DLC. Contradictions are inherent to the process.
There are multiple, competing factions in any team development effort, and sometimes certain voices win over others.
Over a long enough period of time, a character like Catwoman will go through different versions depending on whose voices win out at each iteration.
It's not about "agency." It's about intentional decisions that designers make at various points along the lifecycle of their IPs. It's OK to criticize those decisions.
Well, this comment section will be divided between folks that think is a justifiable change because nothing of value is lost. And people that are not content in having the game that they bought years ago receive those chances that have a pretty clear "sanitizing" objective.
Personally, I find it odd that the developer even went there in the first place. Some of the changes are indeed minor, like removing the armbands, others do change the tone of the scene being depicted and a bunch a literal sanitization of what could be considered fan service. But no matter what is being changed, doing so for a 10-year-old title is weird in itself and extending that to an already-published art compendium is pretty shitty as is posting those changes on their forum and straight up locking the thread.
My only question is: who is this for? Skullgirls is both a niche and old game. I don’t see this attracting much of a new audience. Seems like all this does is annoy fans.
There’s a mobile game? Since when? Like a fighting mobile game or gatcha thing?
I somehow doubt anyone is dropping the best fighting game out there for Skullgirls.
>>I somehow doubt anyone is dropping the best fighting game out there for Skullgirls.
Yeah, like anyone could ever put down Thems Fightin Herds for even 20 minutes 😎
Oh absolutely. No fighting game out there is as bold and singular in its equine/bovine vision as them fighting herds. That vision alone should guarantee it a spot in the fighting games hall of fame.
I was suddenly unsure if this was rgaming or not and checked my url. Theres always whole bunch of bad faith conversationalists trying to subtly denigrate alternate game spaces. TFH gets this a lot.
Right shame. I know it's a bit of a meme for starting as an MLP fan-game but there's some seriously good fighter chops if you can get past its origins (even though in its original form it was still a really fun game tbh.) Plus the characters were designed by Lauren mother-fucking Faust? Come ***ON.***
The feeling I got from the article makes it seem like the devs did this as a reflection of their personal values, not for the purpose of pleasing or upsetting anyone else. They knew it would likely be a controversial decision.
I'd understand that if they actually made Skullgirls non-fanservicey, but it seems all they did in that department was removing a few panty shots from a game full of them.
Yeah that's my thing. I don't care about anime girl butt but I also don't care about anime girls full stop. So this change isn't going to help me decide on some game I've never wanted before or after the changes
This happens all the time. There is a niche product with a niche audience, the creators resent this, so then they destroy their product in search of a broader audience and lose the one they already had.
You see this with stuff like Star Trek. They keep trying to make it into a dumb mass-market thing and failing because they don't seem to understand it'll never work. Star Trek is Star Trek, there is no possible way to make it a world-class IP like Pokemon or Call of Duty.
Devs probably think they're losing people due to the "horny" aesthetic, when those people would never play Skullgirls in the first place. Sorry, your indie tag-fighter is not a few panty shot removals away from tearing up the steam charts.
At least with Star Trek all they are doing is making new shows that have nothing but superficial similarities to the old shows. They didn’t go back and change the old shows.
The better example would be episodes 4/5/6 in Star Wars. George Lucas constantly made revisions and then would claim the original film it was recorded on was lost when people would ask for them in their original form.
The leads and most of the employees of the new dev team are ex-devs of the original dev team.
The lead of the last dev team fired everyone because he was pissed that he was accused of inappropriate workplace conduct.
Edit: and what's up with all of the people saying the same stuff in this thread? "These aren't the same devs", "the game is long finished and done with", "maybe this is just pandering to finally get on Evo".
All of these things are objectively wrong. It's the same devs minus the original lead, game has been in active development for a while, with 2 characters coming out this year, and it was at Evo literally last year. This thread is fucking weird.
As far as I know he didn't fire everyone per say, he refused to leave the company he made and everyone quit. The rights of the game were in the hands of the publisher so they just transitioned it to them.
Sort of, but not really. Alex Ahad was responsible for most of the look of the original characters and the original universe, and had been working on that stuff since at least 2005, well before even meeting Mike Z(aimont) in ~2009. Neither of those two are involved with the current iteration of SkullGirls, with both being pushed out for slightly different reasons, with Mike Z being the one involved in the recent sexual harassment suit and everything else, while Alex was pushed out earlier for reasons not made public...but whatever the reason is, the newly reconstituted company without Mike Z hasn't sought to bring him back on board.
>The lead of the last dev team fired everyone because he was pissed that he was accused of inappropriate workplace conduct.
This is a crucial aspect of this. I expect that they feel like it's cleaning the game of that douchebag's influence. More for them than for anyone else.
People should read the lawsuit going on. None of these people are good people. There's chat logs of how everyone acted while working there. A lot of the current devs said things of a sexual nature that isn't appropriate for a work environment as well
Lmao, there's legit fucking proof that these people made a concerted effort to oust him. The guy submitted Slack messages that they made on the server after he requested the logs because enterprise Slack allows that. The idiots thought they could use the same server the company owns to plan to backstab the guy and get away scot-free. This is a perfect example of how people like to just listen to the first news and take it as gospel, they never actually follow it up, so the accused, even if they're in the right, could never be vindicated in the public eyes.
I found out that they hired someone who did a porn parody of skullgirls to work on the game too, so they didn't really care about the sexual nature then too either:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fzs0VhhaUAY500n?format=jpg&name=large
>The lead of the last dev team fired everyone because he was pissed that he was accused of inappropriate workplace conduct.
Patently false. I was led to believe so as well upon initial coverage, but the end of the affair, document reveals and the court ruling proved otherwise. I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your post, but this part is blatant misinformation, reeking of "I read the PCGamer headline at day1 of the event and called it a day".
Yeah
While I disagree with the changes I could get over them if people didn't litearlly lose content they paid for
the annoucner pack, the art gallery content, etc
If you wanted to update to newer "Cleaner" versions you should have just left the old ones in as alternate stuff in the galleries
I'm reminded of Crash Nitro Fueled, the devs got flack for the Rilla Roo character looking too weird, so a few patches later they added a "Fixed Rilla Roo" version
They didn't delete the old version, they just added the option to use a "Fixed" version insted as a separate racer.
Or Genshin impact which changed a bunch of default costumes for China reasons, Amber Jean Rosaria and Mona all got new outfits and outside of China you were allowed to keep the old ones as an alternate costume while the new ones would be the default in story cut-scenes going forward.
Why couldn't the devs just do this, future stuff will use these new "Cleaner" versions but the old versions and art book stuff just stays as is as part of the games existence and time capsule.
I think they should have done the Fighting Game Thing and released Super Skullgirls 3rd Encore \^Extend\[est\] as a new, separate version of the game that had some new content and would be the supported version going forward. Then they could do whatever they wanted with it and there wouldn't be any complaints about them erasing parts of the game people bought that had been finished for 5 years.
I fully understand why they didn't, but I definitely would have preferred it. Especially if they plan to make more of these changes going forward which I can easily see.
Pocky and Rocky: Reshrined should've done that shit with how they ruined Ame-no-Uzume. In the American and European versions, she's flat and covered up for no goddamn reason but in the Japanese version, she's allowed to be busty and show cleavage like her Japanese mythology counterpart when they could've just made it an option to cover her up in the non-Japanese versions of the game so people don't have to import to get the right version of the character in their game.
It feels weird. Like people can say "it's no big deal" but doesn't that go both ways? If changing was no big deal, then the change at all wasn't necessary.
The panty shot art was so offensive that the linked article couldn't even post it.
Oh, wait. They did post it. They said it sexualized a 16 year old girl and that it needed to be censored, and then they went and posted that picture. Really gets the ol noggin joggin
I still think the skirt is too short if that’s their reasoning. But 16 is legal consenting age in a lot of places. It’s also art of a fictional person so it’s not like their real.
Yeah they deleted everything on their Forums bashing the changes, and had a bunch of sockpuppets in their official Discord praising the changes.
One dev even said "It's fine if we took content from your art book, it's still somewhere online!", even though it misses the point that you STOLE pages out of an Art Book that you've been selling for 10 Dollars
It's not just some 10-year-old title. The game was recently being actively developed for and perhaps still is. Changes to the game were already happening prior to this. Some of you are acting like this game was just sitting there for ten years and the devs just randomly went back to make changes.
Edit: apparently the devs are still working on releasing Marie. I thought she had already been released by now but I guess not. Also, the game is to receive an Xbox port soon too. So still active development as of now.
The only change I really have a problem with is the censorship of Big Band’s backstory. The devs seem to think that black people are too sensitive to handle the depiction of police brutality in a video game and that just comes off as infantilizing to me
I don’t really give a shit about the other stuff
I think it's the police that are too sensitive to handle their brutality being depicted...
But yeah. That's some real life people's backstory. Too real?
I’m pretty sure it’s just the internets response to white people making racially motivated backstories for their characters.
Do y’all really think people won’t twist it to make it seem racist? Why would a cop care about this lol
This might be a unpopular opinion but despite MikeZ being a weirdo his simple minded passion for Skullgirls is what made the game possible. Without him its just a bunch of corpos milking a franchise.
Without MikeZ Skullgirls is a corpse, and those left in charge purely are making these kind of decisions to get every last dollar out of it.
This should be a bare fucking minimum for any platform that supports updates/patching. Minecraft has done it for so long I can't believe this isn't demanded by the broader audience.
Also, mods and fan-made tools and fan-made servers compatibility is a huge issue, so being able to play older versions of the game is very important for minecraft experience.
> but it originally started just because Notch used a version control system for the launcher. It had been like that since the beginning and they just never stopped doing it
The launcher did not originally support switching to old versions of the game, that came much later and they had to ask the community to provide some old versions of the game as they didn't have copies themselves anymore.
Very "shotguns replaced with walkie-talkies in ET". Why do this? The Nazi characters still look like Nazis. Fanservice seems to be a selling point for this game, so I can't imagine its fans being delighted about having less of it.
It was actually Schindler's List.
Spielberg was shell shocked after working on an epic length holocaust movie and fell into a crisis of conscience with regards to Hollywood depiction of violence. Then he emerged from severe anxiety and realized what he did by altering Indy and E.T. was a crime against art.
No such apologies from Lucas after the Star Wars edits, but I do want to point out that people often incorrectly assume Lucas is responsible for terrible decisions. A lot of bad moves on Phantom Menace actually came from other producers, and the most hated things in Indy 4 are actually, on recorded meeting transcripts, the fault of Steven Spielberg. Lucas pushed back, unsuccessfully, on many things he's now blamed for.
p.s. Love the username.
I just like that they keep the cartoonish thighs and titties but slightly cover up the butt. So like it's really no less oversexualized but now it's ever so slightly worse at being oversexualized lol.
The nazi's here were the black egrets which were good guys. They were like the monarchs secret police but worked with parasoul to defend the kingdom.
I actually think it's reasonable to make them less nazi like cause its definitely weird to make them LOOK so much like nazis but make them good guy. A little revisionist history a bit.
It's satire. It's not even that nuanced. It's "haha isn't it funny if the lovable idiot good guys were resembling an organization that very much wasn't? So you think they're evil and all and then they turn out to be the comical sidekicks?".
But alas, terminally online people in charge of decisions.
Yeah I get that. I'm asking why are the designs of the game suddenly an issue? This game has been out for a long time. Why now are people making a stink about it? Seems like such a niche game.
"We aren't planning to discuss these changes any further."
Stunning and Brave of them to put their fingers in their ears and go "lalalalala we can't hear you!"
(Not directed at OP just venting)
**Tl;Dr**
Sexuality in video games is entirely valid. Go play something else if you don't like it.
It's the same thing every time.Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, and now Skullgirls.Not sure about Soul Calibur but 6 flopped so the series is probably on ice at this point.
Every time we get a fighting game that's even remotely sexy or fetishy the devs tone down the sexual themes at some point. And every time the same idiots say "it doesn't change the gameplay any, go play something else or watch porn you perverts". Oh so tearing a woman in half is fine but god forbid she show some skin.
How about you whiny puritanical assholes take your own advice, fuck off back to your bland ass e-sports safe games and stop ruining other people's fun. Go play any of the once enjoyable games your kind have watered down and ruined.
Don't like sex? Don't like anime or stylized animation in general? Can't separate fiction from reality for something YOU personally dislike? Shut up or get out. These spaces are not nor were they ever meant for you. Anyone in them with any power and self respect will not and should not cater to you.
I just noticed, why did they get rid of the Soviet announcer pack? That’s probably the weirdest thing to remove. IIRC it was even a stretch goal for the Indiegogo campaign.
Also, what were the guest arts removed in the art book?
I don't know anything about this game but retroactively editing and censoring content is shitty. I understand content of games can age out, but that's all perspective. Would be better to just create a sequel that is toned down vs altering the original piece.
Also, this shit always pisses people off. Devs know this.
Exactly why I think this is low key rage bait. Skull girls already had a small community, even smaller after these devs forced out the main director of the game who was kind of the cult of personality reason people were still into it in the first place.
Mike Z was what made people interested in SG, but he wasn't "forced out," he was sexually harassing people and they asked him to resign. In response, he made "unrealistically high and potentially illegal" demands. Then everybody quit, his company was dissolved, and SG got new devs.
Interesting to see all the people spamming "not the original devs" when anyone who's been following Skullgirls over the years knows that the current devs are a studio [founded by a large number of the original devs.](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/disciplines/future-club-is-a-new-dev-owned-studio-from-ex-lab-zero-staff)
What do you want to bet that whatever culture war youtuber started this bitching used that line and people who don't even play the game are just parroting it now?
>What do you want to bet that whatever culture war youtuber started this bitching used that line and people who don't even play the game are just parroting it now?
There's also a decent amount of "game has been finished for a long time" and "they probably want to get into Evo". Ignoring the fact that the game has been in active development for a few years now, with two characters coming out this year, and the fact that they got in Evo for the first time last year, before these changes. These things are easy to tell if you've been following the game or the fighting game scene even a little bit.
Vast majority of this thread are probably people who have barely, if at all, played the game.
I see people attempting to whitewash Mike Z even. Lotta comments seem to be those types of people that really love jumping on culture war things they're not actually familiar with and like to enflame discussions for the sake of pushing their own ideals.
I haven't seen anyone outright type out "this is woke" here in this thread, but the comments read an awful lot like that is what they want to say.
I don’t get why they make the changes now…
I don’t remember people not buying Skull Girls because the characters are to provocative.
Is there one person out there that is thinking to themselves, I’ve been waiting to buy this game and now I can because they covered up them anime cakes?
People are acting like they scrubbed the game of panty shots. They didn't even change any of the ingame sprites! All of the changes were to story mode art and gallery images! Most of everyone complaining aren't even aware what the changes are, they've just decided this is the hill they're dying on as part of some cultural crusade.
It reminds me of Mass Effect Legendary Edition removing ass shots of Miranda. People lost their shit about censorship. The game is still super thirsty and has sex scenes.
They removed close-ups of Miranda's ass when she is talking about being traumatized by her father. Thematically those ass shots never made sense and were uncomfortable.
> The game is still super thirsty and has sex scenes.
I agree with your point about how those shots didn't make sense in those specific scenes... but I don't know that I would call the game "super thirsty," and the limited "sex scenes" it has are really mild IIRC.
Bioware kindof caved and got rid of even the fairly tame nudity after a bunch of people with sticks up their asses made a huge deal about the pg-13 sex scenes in ME1.
Huh I thought ME2 and 3 were straight ports in the LE and they only touched ME1, are there any other cutscene changes? That's a pretty good one, those ass shots really were so bad.
Sort of. They only ever showed her face in a photograph that you get if you romance her. The original version was basically just a photoshopped stock photo of some generic model, and was widely criticized for that reason. The new version is a shot of an actual 3D model of Tali without her mask.
Yeah, it feels like there are certain things devs aren't allowed to touch in the least little bit without having hundreds of people reflexively lose their shit about it, even if the changes and their reasons for making them make complete sense.
I was really puzzled when I watched the video of the differences. I honestly don't even know why the developers went through all the effort. You would have to use a magnifying lens to spot them.
The fact that they did change some panty shots *is* dumb, considering how Skullgirls has presented itself from the start, but no that's not it.
Most people are talking about stuff like how they got rid of the comb in one of Filia's animations where she has an afro because they didn't wanna seem racist. Not only is that weird, it's a change that's not going to please anyone.
Oh, and not to mention the harmless art of other artists in the game's gallery that they removed. Very classy.
One of the pieces of art removed was for a fundraiser for cancer.
One of the audio packs removed was one of the rewards for supporting the game through Indiegogo.
They EDITED the only thing that could be referred to as an art book for this game. The actual design documents. That is something people pay a lot of money for just to have it physically and they did it without even a hint of a warning. Just, here you go, we've updated it. Did you download it before? No? Screw you.
Nobody is dying on a hill. They are objecting to whatever the hell this is.
Because nobody liked changes to an game that makes no sense and benefits no one. Especially the fans that play the games and put money into it.
Like who is this benefitting to? The devs's imaginary audiences or non-skullgirl fans that never played the game?
People should object to changes they never asked for and complain about it rightfully so since its still censorship at the end of the day.
They did recolor some Filia's panties to darker colors in the game but other than that, everything else was mainly changes to story mode art and gallery images. Most of that had to do with the arm bands and then covering up Filia's panties and ass cheeks in some of the pics. They also removed an announcer pack that featured Mike Z.
Pretty minor shit I wouldn't have noticed was changed personally. Some of the changes seem strange and the devs also don't want any discussion about it and said they have no further comments to make on the subject.
I think the sheer strangeness is a big part of what's got people uppity. In addition to straight-up removing a few bits of content (which don't really matter but is a dick move) the vague motivation gives the impression that more of these changes could be coming, and who knows what will hit the cutting room floor next?
The 2015 patch that changed a couple of sprites felt much more self-contained. There were a few battle sprites that the creators didn't like, and they were fixing them. A few panty shots removed, but so many left untouched that it felt sufficiently pointed without much risk of further alterations. But here it's so scattershot that it's hard to say with confidence that they're done. There's a very real possibility that they are, but it sets people on edge.
People are more worried about the slippery slope that the censoring eventually takes than one panty shot being removed from one art, but people are focusing on that.
They are removing 10 year old content because it is "less ok" today than it was back then. Removing art, some even important to story like the two scenes removed from Big Band's story, is far more than "making the game less crude".
What about Peacock and Painwheel? They are both incredibly tortured, mutilated and mindbroken kids. Peacock even smokes cigars.
Is this more ok than one guy groping Filia and getting instantly punished for it?
What will be "less ok" tomorrow?
I don't get why they even bothered with this considering Skullgirls has been out for over a decade, hardly anyone complained about this then and now, and the game itself hasn't been actively played beyond its small community since its release window in 2013. However, the backlash from this is hilarious considering how insignificant the changes are. Just a sea of negative steam reviews of mostly people with <10 hours in the game complaining as if they're long time fans who the game was made for when it's self-evident that most of them haven't given a shit about this game until now.
Seriously, it's sad that, despite Skullgirls' extremely rocky start and all the shit it went through the game is still being worked on and getting new characters and balance patches to this day, you barely heard a peep from most of these people about that. I've heard more people talking about Skullgirls because of Fillia having less panty shots in the span of 2 days than I've heard people talk about Marie, the boss for the game that people always wanted to be playable since it came out TEN years ago, finally becoming playable since it was announced months ago. The only other Skullgirls related thing I can remember making the game the topic of discussion was when the devs made it so that there was a random chance Sonicfox would appear in the background for training mode. Which the funny thing is, I've seen a good number of "fans" who're complaining about these recent changes claim that as the catalyst for skullgirls' decline, as if Sonicfox was some outsider to the game's community and not someone whose been playing and competing in it since it came out. Definitely supported the game through its highs and lows more than they ever did.
I went on far enough. I definitely think there's a conversation to be had about developers changing aspects of their game long after it came out, but a lot of the people complaining about this don't want to have that conversation in good faith.
> People with <10 hours played on Steam might just not be playing their game on Steam.
Can confirm. I looked and I have 6 minutes of playtime on Steam, but I've been playing since the original, non Encore version, on the ps3 lol. But apparently steam time is all that matters.
I felt like I was going crazy in the other thread regarding this. Like yes, the game is really old and what's the point of making the changes now, let alone making changes to make the game less fetishy when that's kind of the tone of the game, waste of company time and resources ect. At the same time I find most of the changes inconsequential and the game still perfectly playable, yet I still get the "disagree button" treatment for not being overly-concerned about it, yelling "censorship!" and "anti-consumerism!".
Sometimes I have to check if I'm accidentally on the pcgaming subreddit, but maybe that's just the reddit stance generally. Makes me think that the twitter threads calling the critics of the updates pedophiles sound more sensible
I feel as the resident pillar of the Skullgirls community, I should say a few things about this since a lot of you are here. and before anyone questions my time with the community and game, hi folks! My name is Clawmaster, and I been playing this game since 2013 at a competitive level. I compete in multiple online tournaments and offline, recently got 4th at Dreamhack this past year, competed at EVO last year, and the person who made [playskullgirls.gg](https://playskullgirls.gg) as well as the twitter account @SGmolly for people to find all the resources for newer players to play in tournaments, events, and other things. As well as a weekly schedule I make for anyone to take a look at to see whats going on in the Skullgirls scene.
To give the viewpoint of the players who play the game at a competitive level, simply put, we are just here playing the game for its mechanics and fun gameplay. When I read the changes as well as the other players, we all agreed that this doesn't change anything for us mechanically for the game, and we can keep playing the game as is without much worry. We have gone through this before with the 1st round of changes back in 2015, and this was the lead dev, Mike Z, at the helm. Don't believe me, look up the team during that time, and you see Mike was still the head then. I will say many of us are saying that many of you who are complaining are people who never played the game and just jumping on the rage bandwagon. Of course you can be a fan of something without playing it, and your valid for that. (I don't play Mortal Kombat games but I love watching the story mode on stream)
But even if this somehow does indeed "kill" the game, what I have learned is that many of us will keep playing the game, and out here supporting one another in the community. People forget that there was a good 5 year gap of nothing happening, yet the scene was still striving, and keeping it alive all these years. As long as there people like me who support the game and the people who play it, then its still going to be around for quite some time.
Hope this gives you folks some insight from the competitive players prospective!
I know my opinion on FFXIV's story doesn't mean much because I spam click through quest dialogue and skip most cutscenes to play and grind faster.
ESports competitive gamers weighing in that non-gameplay changes aren't a big deal is odd. Like as you said, the game can literally be killed off and it wouldn't impact you. So alrighty then...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't removing stuff from art books kinda illegal since people bought that art? Also, wasn't some of the fan art for a cancer research drive which would make it even more illegal since that's more or less fraud?
Asking this cus someone on Discord mentioned that the devs could get in trouble for this either due to legal issues or because fans could pursue charges, especially since they're based in California.
I have never played this game and I generally dislike fan service style games, but i find myself agreeing with people that are unhappy about the changes.
If people bought the game in part because of the art style and fan service, it's pretty lame to change it after the fact.
Ultimately I think the review bombing is an overreaction, but I get the sentiment
Cool, more sanitization. I'm sure it was totally worth it to make this change and potentially invite a significant backlash. I mean, someone could've seen a red armband or an exposed pantyshot, and we can't have that. Not in the year of our lord, 2023.
I still dont like what they did to big bands story, I actually find that weird that we can‘t see a black man get beaten down by crooked cops.
That is one of the few changes I do question, it lessens the impact of Big Bands story to understand what happened to him.
After reading through the changes, this is exactly why I came to the comments. Ben was an honest cop, and got maimed by his dishonest coworkers. Other than the imagery on the surface, there's nothing racially inflammatory about that image at all...
They what I used to really like Skullgirls, even played Big Band...
It's story stuff, and I'm annoyed.
I feel like the same people who would see Big Band getting murdered by crooked cops and somehow feel it's a racially charged moment are the same kind of people who see fantasy orcs and immediately assume the creator is attempting to depict a caricature of black people. Controversies from literally nothing.
> fantasy orcs and immediately assume the creator is attempting to depict a caricature of black people Not even the craziest thing I've heard connecting make believe races to black people. This sticks in my head. The logic used to connect Star Wars to supporting enslaving black people by this one person is just, wow. A black woman wrote an editorial about this. Here is her train of thought. When she was growing up, she had a black barbie doll. She did not have a black ken doll but did have a 12inch Chewbacca doll. Chewy and barbie did all the things that ken and barbie would normally do. This made chewy a black man. The wookies were black people. Years later when she was an adult, she found out that in Star Wars lore the Empire enslaved the wookies. This meant Star Wars was in favor of enslaving black people. This is why she wrote her article, to spread the word. This was an absolute jaw dropping moment of WTF!. I really wish I would have saved the article. It was a wild ride to read. A fictional government enslaving an imaginary race of space bigfoots is in support of enslaving black people in real life all because of the toys she had growing up.
Or that Elves (or Lunarians in Touhou) are basically Nazis. Strawman argument at it's finest.
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Thats their secret. They aren’t actually gamers.
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I have seen people getting mad about warhammer Orcs, you know, the football hooligans?
Millwall fans are truly the most oppressed minority. Everyone hates them, but thankfully they don't care.
Didn't a Millwall fan stop a terrorist attack a couple years back?
Yeah he said "Fuck you I'm Millwall" as he took the terrorist down on London Bridge. Then to the surprise of noone was Milkshake Ducked like 3 hours later.
Wtf? How are you coming across people that are so monumentally stupid that Trazyn would want to capture them for his rock collection?
Literally the best Orcs bar none too. Folks will be outraged about anything.
For most depictions I've come across in fantasy media, orcs mostly act like warhungry barbarians, which when usually depicted are mostly white. Like viking berserkers or cavemen, usually the club weilding animalistic man is ( at least from what ive come across ) usually white. I can see where your point is coming from, with the mad lib exaggeration some people use when trying to make rasict jokes or whatever. But orcs being a stand in for black people seems pretty far fetched from what most people think when they see them. Most people just see them as a war hungry monster tribe. The only people that usually try to make that point are the people who love to bring race into any and every discussion. There are both white and black people like that but I've noticed thats usually a small group of people. I live in north Philadelphia, ive been around black people my entire life and almost none of them are obsessed with their race or mine. We're all just people and treat each other as such. For the record im Hispanic but have blond hair and blue from my moms side.
I've never once connected Orcs to anyone other than barbarian vikings if anything. People see what they want to see. That's the greatest aspect to art. No matter how you try to protect it, the brains of a racist is going to associate whatever they want to their vision.
Yeah, the only black orcs I've ever seen or heard about were from that Netflix movie Bright(?). And when watching it I thought it was a cool twist for them because yeah, they're always barbarian's
>huh, it's kind of weird how the authors, who I don't believe are intentionally racist, have inadvertantly tripped into using the same kind of phraseology to describe the actions of these Orcs as historical racists did to describe black people ...Examples? >routinely stereotyping every Orc as a 'Tyrone', making them speak in ebonics, and doing 'WHERE DA WHITE HUMANS AT' jokes I have literally never seen this, as someone who is terminally online in multiple Fantasy, gaming, and roleplaying communities. Ever. What are you even talking about?
Right? I was reading his post and wondering what the fuck he was talking about. I've been into fantasy shit for years and am subbed to all sorts of Warhammer/Tolkien/fantasy subreddits. Maybe we're just in better groups?
They read Twitter 24/7 and see dumb shit and feel the need to "have a conversation" with those that do none of the aforementioned things.
they are basically referring to imaginary things so they have something to "have a conversation about"
The entire discussion is a pseudo academic self flagellating pile of garbage attempting to find meaning in a racist facile interpretation of fantasy media. Creating fictional cultures and peoples is not racist, full stop. The belief that orcs and elves some how “inform” reality is so fucking smooth brained it hurts. It’s hilarious to me how these people bend over backwards to explain to themselves that they’re not racist for seeing orcs as lesser and then connecting it to black culture, it speaks absolute volumes about their personal views and nothing else. Dude wrote a fucking novella of gibberish trying to pretend it’s not him that thinks black people are or orcish, it’s obviously the creators of fantasy media who are at fault for creating a race of violent, stupid, undeveloped orcs.
Most ppl depict them as barbarians my guy
Americans are weird.
Where are you finding Ebonics orcs?
In his mind, so he has something to rage about.
Specifically it's because Gary Gygax was a huge fan of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and his orcs are based on Conan's enemies, not on Tolkien's orcs. For instance the orcs in Tolkien are squat, with the largest being the height of a man. The hobbits disguise themselves as orcs successfully, giving a relative height of them - a hobbit sized orc is not unexpected. Orcs are clever and cunning, using mechanical traps to trick, trap, and kill their enemies. They're far closer to how D&D views goblins or kobolds than they are to D&D orcs. In contrast Howard's barbarian tribes were large, feral, brutish, and, um, black. Howard was a friend of Lovecraft y'see, and they had some pretty similar views on race. So when Gygax picked up Howard's barbarian tribes and dropped them into D&D, he didn't quite file all the serial numbers off. Or even that many, given the various bone in nose orc art pieces.
I refuse to believe anyone that sees those similarities with an Orc is actually black. Motherfuckers on the internet just love speaking for us.
Not missing the point, I'm here with you on it - but the ebonics point seems incorrect? Games Workshop are British, I assumed Orks speak with Cockney dialect?
The original complaint the poster up there is referring to came out of discussions of Orcs in Dungeons and Dragons, not Warhammer (40k). And the Orcs in that setting don't speak ebonics. But the racists who have noticed the parallels and enjoy playing up shitheaded stereotypes use ebonics when depicting those Orcs. They are ultimately a small chunk of the overall playerbase, but they didn't land on this stereotype out of nowhere or invent it themselves, and it's ultimately their finding it that prompted other people to look and go, "Oh, I see how this is happening, we should probably fix that."
>inadvertantly tripped into using the same kind of phraseology to describe the actions of these Orcs as historical racists did to describe black people Yes, please absolutely do not give any examples to actually support your point. It's always the same round trip. Only conjectures, scholar theories weaponized into the race/culture war and never facts nor evidence.
Saying it's a nuanced conversation while simultaneously presenting an argument lacking any and all nuance? Check. Assuming that everyone who disagrees with you simply couldn't understand your argument? Check.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
What the fuck are you talking about. In most fantasy media that isn't LOTR, orcs are stereotypically tribal barbarians. You're reaching so fucking hard and it's obnoxious. I don't doubt you when you say the edgelords hold onto racially motivated stereotyping, but Holy fuck just let fantasy be fantasy for fuck's sake. There is nothing wrong with the Orc Fantasy Race.
People don't have that nuanced conversation because it isn't nuanced - it's short-sighted. Removing orcs because "racist people will be racist" is accomplishing what? Making them not racist? If you take away enough things that they can use to be racist, you'll end racism? It doesn't work that way. They'll still be racist and project that onto other things that then need to be removed. Where does it end? The only thing you accomplish is taking something fun, innocent, interesting, and flavorful away from far more people to enjoy who are not using it in any malicious way. In the end, there will still be racism; just not orcs.
I'm so tired of people comparing real people to objectively evil creatures and then thinking they're not racist for making this comparison.
Bro so desperate to sound anti-racist that he ends up being racist himself. Orcs are mostly based on barbarians
Or, hear me out, Brutal violence without compassion, represented in a humanoid form. You know, like the Welsh
The most popular depictions of orcs, including the original creator's depiction, are not really depicted the way you describe. The next most popular is probably warcraft orcs, which are all over the place in their inspiration, including warhammer orcs, which I aslo have a hard time seeing as overwhelmingly influenced by or referential to any specific non-white cultures. And then there's is DnD which primarily depicts orcs as more barbarian or in basic "medieval" looking armorhttp://grognardia.blogspot.com/2021/07/a-very-partial-pictorial-history-of-orcs.html
Wait so there are people who think fantasy orcs are racist now?
The problem with nuance is that you can't clearly state someone is right and wrong, and that's what most people are concerned with. If I have orcs in my campaign despite agreeing with your points, am I wrong? Some will argue yes, others no, and both may be valid. But if there's a space for me to be *right* and people want me to be *wrong*, it's easier to make me *extra wrong* by calling me a racist.
The hell are you talking about?
Or, not every orc is an orc, some are orks based off football hooligans and trying to tie it to a specific race and make logic jumps like "oh they speak different, must be making fun of slang speaking minorities" is some self hating sadness. Racists being racist isnt a reason to call everyone racist, I know, hard concept.
I thought Orcs were generally based on Mongol Hordes - still racist caricature, but nothing to do with Africa or Black people.
A black man getting attacked by police in any context is apparently offensive and political lol.
Idk about offensive but you'd have to be living under the largest rock imaginable to not see how that is political.
> "are fetishized and/or have sexualization imposed upon them," That is sort of the entire point of the game's style, no? It's sort of cleavage and upskirt the game, no matter how you slice it.
Devs shocked the game they made collabing with rule34 artists has sexualization in it.
I get behind sanitizing anything to do with underage characters but if an adult was designed to be sexy, stick by your guns.
Just make her older, then. I'm pretty sure that's the girl in the picture. She doesn't even look like a kid.
Just be like Japan and put a disclaimer that all characters are over the age of 18 at the beginning. Problem solved.
Or draw an ID card 🤣
Switch in menus. Done. Fans are happy, people thinking that's tasteless can just switch it off, everyone happy
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The original devs left aparently and i was reading about it and it is more complicated that expected.
I mean...it isn't the first time they "sanitize" it. Last time [they made a similar change was the removal of...pantyshot](https://skullheart.com/threads/skullgirls-pc-beta-updates-discussion.407/page-190#post-268947).
Sex negative puritans. I thought this weird mentality was gone. Guess not.
Yep its once again people being out of touch with what their fanbase actually want but rather just jump on the next big thing to satisfy the kind of people who would never play the game anyway.
Exactly. These people that they are trying so hard to ponder are never even gonna play these games but hey, let's just annoy the fk out of the people that actually play the game.
Man this reminds me [Hyper Universe](https://mmos.com/news/english-version-hyper-universe-features-censorship-changes) (HU) all over again. HU was a side-scrolling MOBA, it felt different, fresh, looking great and, most importantly, the *artwork* was fan servicey and the in-game 3D models were quite representative of those art. The game itself was great, gameplay was tight and balance was in the right place. The game had a small but growing fanbase. The dev had a booth at some game expo and some random *social justice warriors* made comments about how fan servicey the artwork looks. The dev immediately started changing all their artwork. The in-game model was mostly untouched (from what I remember). The community was annoyed, demanded that they kept the game the way it was since they paid for that. Dev didn't budge. Actual players started to bleed out since the dev wouldn't listen to the people that paid for the game and instead was trying to cater to a new audience. The new audience never showed up after all the change were made. The game died a very fast death. Freaking sad.
[Insert surprised Pikachu meme] Seriously, how out of touch do you need to be with your community?
Honestly I say good riddance, we need more games made by passionate devs and not that type there.
I actually quite liked it, didn't know what the fuck I was doing but won some matches lmao.
Sounds a bit like what happened with western comic books over the last few years. The made massive changes to long established characters, a race swap here, a gender swap there, a sexuality swap or two. All on the goal of attracting a new audience that never turned up, while attacking and alienating their traditional audience who complained. Now they have a smaller business entirely, while Manga is cleaning up but just having a book for everyone to begin with.
Honestly it's such an annoying trend for western developer/publisher to "sanitize" their games like this gonna appeal to a broader audience. There's so many KR games (including Hyper Universe) that are brought over to the West just for them to be changed in an attempt of "diversity" or being politically correct. Those games are already popular out there and the dev embrace their audience in the home country but western publisher force those censorship when bringing it over... they're literally dumbing down one facet of the game's success (sex sell, plain and simple). The latest Publisher doing this is Amazon Games, they brought Lost Ark to the western market and I believe they enforced a lot of gameplay change that helped the game being LESS p2w (which is good) but then they changed certain things and two of the most jarring thing being: People being randomly black and a class change to not let the transformation turn the character white. Both of those creates inconsistency in the game and it's plain awful. Also, I picture a conversation with a KR and Western player of the game talking about one of those character turned black; I imagine one describing that one black dude with thick black beard while the KR going "Uh no? He's pale as fuck and have blond hair!" (literally one of the character they changed) bleh Amazon Games is now tinkering with Blue Protocol next, apparently there's going to be stuff that gets censored in this one. Yaayyy
It's worse. They could make both happy just fine. Just leave the switch in the menus. Hell, name it "horny mode" for lulz
I wonder how one can force something in a completely made-up and not real character as if the character had some sort of agency outside one's creation.
That's the paradoxical argument you'll hear often when discussing sexualization in games. People will argue sexualization is bad because the characters don't have agency over the game's camera etc. and as such it it's being imposed on them, but at the same time people will also argue that an inherently sexual character like Catwoman for example can't have any agency over her attire, behavior etc. because she isn't real. Basically people will turn and twist it any way because in reality they just don't want to see anything sexual.
It's not a paradox, because game development has many authors with competing views. A writer creates a woman character, and then the cutscene director zooms in on her tits. An artist designs a costume, and then the marketing manager pushes for skimpier costume options in the DLC. Contradictions are inherent to the process. There are multiple, competing factions in any team development effort, and sometimes certain voices win over others. Over a long enough period of time, a character like Catwoman will go through different versions depending on whose voices win out at each iteration. It's not about "agency." It's about intentional decisions that designers make at various points along the lifecycle of their IPs. It's OK to criticize those decisions.
>That is sort of the entire point of the game's style, no? Correct, that's the main reason I got this game on release 10 years ago
Wasn’t the game designed to be sexual and fetishized? Now suddenly they’re afraid? LMAO
Well, this comment section will be divided between folks that think is a justifiable change because nothing of value is lost. And people that are not content in having the game that they bought years ago receive those chances that have a pretty clear "sanitizing" objective. Personally, I find it odd that the developer even went there in the first place. Some of the changes are indeed minor, like removing the armbands, others do change the tone of the scene being depicted and a bunch a literal sanitization of what could be considered fan service. But no matter what is being changed, doing so for a 10-year-old title is weird in itself and extending that to an already-published art compendium is pretty shitty as is posting those changes on their forum and straight up locking the thread.
It's not the same devs that made the game, that's why.
My only question is: who is this for? Skullgirls is both a niche and old game. I don’t see this attracting much of a new audience. Seems like all this does is annoy fans.
The mobile game had been popping off. So maybe they think people are going to find it from that or fall off from SF6 and try other fighters.
There’s a mobile game? Since when? Like a fighting mobile game or gatcha thing? I somehow doubt anyone is dropping the best fighting game out there for Skullgirls.
It's both really. The mobile game's been out for over 5 years or something now, and it has surprisingly solid mechanics. But it is a gacha
>>I somehow doubt anyone is dropping the best fighting game out there for Skullgirls. Yeah, like anyone could ever put down Thems Fightin Herds for even 20 minutes 😎
Oh absolutely. No fighting game out there is as bold and singular in its equine/bovine vision as them fighting herds. That vision alone should guarantee it a spot in the fighting games hall of fame.
See, I'm not sure if you guys are being facetious because Them's Fighting Herds is genuinely a fucking S-Tier game and deserves more love.
Not mocking the game. Just poking fun at the fact that it’s not on SF6’s level
Or SF4, SF5, even MVC - the series the gameplay is inspired from.
I was suddenly unsure if this was rgaming or not and checked my url. Theres always whole bunch of bad faith conversationalists trying to subtly denigrate alternate game spaces. TFH gets this a lot.
Right shame. I know it's a bit of a meme for starting as an MLP fan-game but there's some seriously good fighter chops if you can get past its origins (even though in its original form it was still a really fun game tbh.) Plus the characters were designed by Lauren mother-fucking Faust? Come ***ON.***
Made on the same engine too
The feeling I got from the article makes it seem like the devs did this as a reflection of their personal values, not for the purpose of pleasing or upsetting anyone else. They knew it would likely be a controversial decision.
I'd understand that if they actually made Skullgirls non-fanservicey, but it seems all they did in that department was removing a few panty shots from a game full of them.
Yeah that's my thing. I don't care about anime girl butt but I also don't care about anime girls full stop. So this change isn't going to help me decide on some game I've never wanted before or after the changes
This happens all the time. There is a niche product with a niche audience, the creators resent this, so then they destroy their product in search of a broader audience and lose the one they already had. You see this with stuff like Star Trek. They keep trying to make it into a dumb mass-market thing and failing because they don't seem to understand it'll never work. Star Trek is Star Trek, there is no possible way to make it a world-class IP like Pokemon or Call of Duty. Devs probably think they're losing people due to the "horny" aesthetic, when those people would never play Skullgirls in the first place. Sorry, your indie tag-fighter is not a few panty shot removals away from tearing up the steam charts.
At least with Star Trek all they are doing is making new shows that have nothing but superficial similarities to the old shows. They didn’t go back and change the old shows.
The better example would be episodes 4/5/6 in Star Wars. George Lucas constantly made revisions and then would claim the original film it was recorded on was lost when people would ask for them in their original form.
The leads and most of the employees of the new dev team are ex-devs of the original dev team. The lead of the last dev team fired everyone because he was pissed that he was accused of inappropriate workplace conduct. Edit: and what's up with all of the people saying the same stuff in this thread? "These aren't the same devs", "the game is long finished and done with", "maybe this is just pandering to finally get on Evo". All of these things are objectively wrong. It's the same devs minus the original lead, game has been in active development for a while, with 2 characters coming out this year, and it was at Evo literally last year. This thread is fucking weird.
As far as I know he didn't fire everyone per say, he refused to leave the company he made and everyone quit. The rights of the game were in the hands of the publisher so they just transitioned it to them.
Sort of, but not really. Alex Ahad was responsible for most of the look of the original characters and the original universe, and had been working on that stuff since at least 2005, well before even meeting Mike Z(aimont) in ~2009. Neither of those two are involved with the current iteration of SkullGirls, with both being pushed out for slightly different reasons, with Mike Z being the one involved in the recent sexual harassment suit and everything else, while Alex was pushed out earlier for reasons not made public...but whatever the reason is, the newly reconstituted company without Mike Z hasn't sought to bring him back on board.
> minus the original lead, And the main artist. Not to mention it's been proven the devs had a Slack group where they conspired to get him kicked out.
>the devs had a Slack group where they conspired to get him kicked out. For what reasons?
>The lead of the last dev team fired everyone because he was pissed that he was accused of inappropriate workplace conduct. This is a crucial aspect of this. I expect that they feel like it's cleaning the game of that douchebag's influence. More for them than for anyone else.
People should read the lawsuit going on. None of these people are good people. There's chat logs of how everyone acted while working there. A lot of the current devs said things of a sexual nature that isn't appropriate for a work environment as well
Lmao, there's legit fucking proof that these people made a concerted effort to oust him. The guy submitted Slack messages that they made on the server after he requested the logs because enterprise Slack allows that. The idiots thought they could use the same server the company owns to plan to backstab the guy and get away scot-free. This is a perfect example of how people like to just listen to the first news and take it as gospel, they never actually follow it up, so the accused, even if they're in the right, could never be vindicated in the public eyes.
And it works all the time too
I found out that they hired someone who did a porn parody of skullgirls to work on the game too, so they didn't really care about the sexual nature then too either: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fzs0VhhaUAY500n?format=jpg&name=large
>The lead of the last dev team fired everyone because he was pissed that he was accused of inappropriate workplace conduct. Patently false. I was led to believe so as well upon initial coverage, but the end of the affair, document reveals and the court ruling proved otherwise. I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your post, but this part is blatant misinformation, reeking of "I read the PCGamer headline at day1 of the event and called it a day".
In name, no, but in terms of actual staff, it's mostly the same people, minus the former guy in charge who turned out to be crazy.
Yeah While I disagree with the changes I could get over them if people didn't litearlly lose content they paid for the annoucner pack, the art gallery content, etc If you wanted to update to newer "Cleaner" versions you should have just left the old ones in as alternate stuff in the galleries I'm reminded of Crash Nitro Fueled, the devs got flack for the Rilla Roo character looking too weird, so a few patches later they added a "Fixed Rilla Roo" version They didn't delete the old version, they just added the option to use a "Fixed" version insted as a separate racer. Or Genshin impact which changed a bunch of default costumes for China reasons, Amber Jean Rosaria and Mona all got new outfits and outside of China you were allowed to keep the old ones as an alternate costume while the new ones would be the default in story cut-scenes going forward. Why couldn't the devs just do this, future stuff will use these new "Cleaner" versions but the old versions and art book stuff just stays as is as part of the games existence and time capsule.
I think they should have done the Fighting Game Thing and released Super Skullgirls 3rd Encore \^Extend\[est\] as a new, separate version of the game that had some new content and would be the supported version going forward. Then they could do whatever they wanted with it and there wouldn't be any complaints about them erasing parts of the game people bought that had been finished for 5 years. I fully understand why they didn't, but I definitely would have preferred it. Especially if they plan to make more of these changes going forward which I can easily see.
Pocky and Rocky: Reshrined should've done that shit with how they ruined Ame-no-Uzume. In the American and European versions, she's flat and covered up for no goddamn reason but in the Japanese version, she's allowed to be busty and show cleavage like her Japanese mythology counterpart when they could've just made it an option to cover her up in the non-Japanese versions of the game so people don't have to import to get the right version of the character in their game.
It feels weird. Like people can say "it's no big deal" but doesn't that go both ways? If changing was no big deal, then the change at all wasn't necessary.
The panty shot art was so offensive that the linked article couldn't even post it. Oh, wait. They did post it. They said it sexualized a 16 year old girl and that it needed to be censored, and then they went and posted that picture. Really gets the ol noggin joggin
I still think the skirt is too short if that’s their reasoning. But 16 is legal consenting age in a lot of places. It’s also art of a fictional person so it’s not like their real.
Yeah, like how much better is the panty shot if your only change is recoloring the panties?
Yeah they deleted everything on their Forums bashing the changes, and had a bunch of sockpuppets in their official Discord praising the changes. One dev even said "It's fine if we took content from your art book, it's still somewhere online!", even though it misses the point that you STOLE pages out of an Art Book that you've been selling for 10 Dollars
I'd respond "if I can find it online then why the hell should I have paid for it?"
It's not just some 10-year-old title. The game was recently being actively developed for and perhaps still is. Changes to the game were already happening prior to this. Some of you are acting like this game was just sitting there for ten years and the devs just randomly went back to make changes. Edit: apparently the devs are still working on releasing Marie. I thought she had already been released by now but I guess not. Also, the game is to receive an Xbox port soon too. So still active development as of now.
The only change I really have a problem with is the censorship of Big Band’s backstory. The devs seem to think that black people are too sensitive to handle the depiction of police brutality in a video game and that just comes off as infantilizing to me I don’t really give a shit about the other stuff
I think it's the police that are too sensitive to handle their brutality being depicted... But yeah. That's some real life people's backstory. Too real?
I’m pretty sure it’s just the internets response to white people making racially motivated backstories for their characters. Do y’all really think people won’t twist it to make it seem racist? Why would a cop care about this lol
This might be a unpopular opinion but despite MikeZ being a weirdo his simple minded passion for Skullgirls is what made the game possible. Without him its just a bunch of corpos milking a franchise. Without MikeZ Skullgirls is a corpse, and those left in charge purely are making these kind of decisions to get every last dollar out of it.
I feel this could be solved easily if Steam officially supported reverting versions of a game. Certain games do this with the Beta tab already.
Skullgirls is a fighting game though, I don't imagine you could play online without the game patched to the latest version.
This could have been an in-game option, its just swapping a few art assets.
They specifically blocked the ability to mod sprites
I'd still take it. A good chunk of the changes are only relevant to offline play anyway.
This should be a bare fucking minimum for any platform that supports updates/patching. Minecraft has done it for so long I can't believe this isn't demanded by the broader audience.
Java has it, but of course the version that came out after it became corporate (Bedrock) does not
Minecraft does it because the game was originally a passion project by a group of programmers and god knows we love our version control
Also, mods and fan-made tools and fan-made servers compatibility is a huge issue, so being able to play older versions of the game is very important for minecraft experience.
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> but it originally started just because Notch used a version control system for the launcher. It had been like that since the beginning and they just never stopped doing it The launcher did not originally support switching to old versions of the game, that came much later and they had to ask the community to provide some old versions of the game as they didn't have copies themselves anymore.
I would settle for being able to version lock your game instead of the publisher deciding if the user has that power.
It does, though it's not very straight forward.
Its fairly straight forward if the dev actually uses it, game settings - betas tab - pick which version you want. Thing is a lot of devs dont do it.
Very "shotguns replaced with walkie-talkies in ET". Why do this? The Nazi characters still look like Nazis. Fanservice seems to be a selling point for this game, so I can't imagine its fans being delighted about having less of it.
Steven Spielberg has already gone on record to say that was a mistake and he never should have done it.
I bet he just spent too much time with George Lucas and it clouded his judgement.
It was actually Schindler's List. Spielberg was shell shocked after working on an epic length holocaust movie and fell into a crisis of conscience with regards to Hollywood depiction of violence. Then he emerged from severe anxiety and realized what he did by altering Indy and E.T. was a crime against art. No such apologies from Lucas after the Star Wars edits, but I do want to point out that people often incorrectly assume Lucas is responsible for terrible decisions. A lot of bad moves on Phantom Menace actually came from other producers, and the most hated things in Indy 4 are actually, on recorded meeting transcripts, the fault of Steven Spielberg. Lucas pushed back, unsuccessfully, on many things he's now blamed for. p.s. Love the username.
I just like that they keep the cartoonish thighs and titties but slightly cover up the butt. So like it's really no less oversexualized but now it's ever so slightly worse at being oversexualized lol.
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The nazi's here were the black egrets which were good guys. They were like the monarchs secret police but worked with parasoul to defend the kingdom. I actually think it's reasonable to make them less nazi like cause its definitely weird to make them LOOK so much like nazis but make them good guy. A little revisionist history a bit.
It's satire. It's not even that nuanced. It's "haha isn't it funny if the lovable idiot good guys were resembling an organization that very much wasn't? So you think they're evil and all and then they turn out to be the comical sidekicks?". But alas, terminally online people in charge of decisions.
That's not what satire is. In what way is a comic role reversal automatically satirical?
Yea it's not satire. Its ironic but even so it's not particularly good about it.
Why is this suddenly an issue? Isn't this game old as fuck?
People owning it don't want it to suddenly change for something they didn't bought, that's all
Yeah I get that. I'm asking why are the designs of the game suddenly an issue? This game has been out for a long time. Why now are people making a stink about it? Seems like such a niche game.
the new team said it doesn't reflect their "current values" so, how long until one of them is outed as a sex pest? We all know how this goes
"We aren't planning to discuss these changes any further." Stunning and Brave of them to put their fingers in their ears and go "lalalalala we can't hear you!"
(Not directed at OP just venting) **Tl;Dr** Sexuality in video games is entirely valid. Go play something else if you don't like it. It's the same thing every time.Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, and now Skullgirls.Not sure about Soul Calibur but 6 flopped so the series is probably on ice at this point. Every time we get a fighting game that's even remotely sexy or fetishy the devs tone down the sexual themes at some point. And every time the same idiots say "it doesn't change the gameplay any, go play something else or watch porn you perverts". Oh so tearing a woman in half is fine but god forbid she show some skin. How about you whiny puritanical assholes take your own advice, fuck off back to your bland ass e-sports safe games and stop ruining other people's fun. Go play any of the once enjoyable games your kind have watered down and ruined. Don't like sex? Don't like anime or stylized animation in general? Can't separate fiction from reality for something YOU personally dislike? Shut up or get out. These spaces are not nor were they ever meant for you. Anyone in them with any power and self respect will not and should not cater to you.
I just noticed, why did they get rid of the Soviet announcer pack? That’s probably the weirdest thing to remove. IIRC it was even a stretch goal for the Indiegogo campaign. Also, what were the guest arts removed in the art book?
> I just noticed, why did they get rid of the Soviet announcer pack? Voiced by Mike Z. [Here are the fanarts removed.](https://youtu.be/s5PJL8VMxDo)
I don't know anything about this game but retroactively editing and censoring content is shitty. I understand content of games can age out, but that's all perspective. Would be better to just create a sequel that is toned down vs altering the original piece. Also, this shit always pisses people off. Devs know this.
Exactly why I think this is low key rage bait. Skull girls already had a small community, even smaller after these devs forced out the main director of the game who was kind of the cult of personality reason people were still into it in the first place.
Mike Z was what made people interested in SG, but he wasn't "forced out," he was sexually harassing people and they asked him to resign. In response, he made "unrealistically high and potentially illegal" demands. Then everybody quit, his company was dissolved, and SG got new devs.
Interesting to see all the people spamming "not the original devs" when anyone who's been following Skullgirls over the years knows that the current devs are a studio [founded by a large number of the original devs.](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/disciplines/future-club-is-a-new-dev-owned-studio-from-ex-lab-zero-staff) What do you want to bet that whatever culture war youtuber started this bitching used that line and people who don't even play the game are just parroting it now?
>What do you want to bet that whatever culture war youtuber started this bitching used that line and people who don't even play the game are just parroting it now? There's also a decent amount of "game has been finished for a long time" and "they probably want to get into Evo". Ignoring the fact that the game has been in active development for a few years now, with two characters coming out this year, and the fact that they got in Evo for the first time last year, before these changes. These things are easy to tell if you've been following the game or the fighting game scene even a little bit. Vast majority of this thread are probably people who have barely, if at all, played the game.
I see people attempting to whitewash Mike Z even. Lotta comments seem to be those types of people that really love jumping on culture war things they're not actually familiar with and like to enflame discussions for the sake of pushing their own ideals. I haven't seen anyone outright type out "this is woke" here in this thread, but the comments read an awful lot like that is what they want to say.
I don’t get why they make the changes now… I don’t remember people not buying Skull Girls because the characters are to provocative. Is there one person out there that is thinking to themselves, I’ve been waiting to buy this game and now I can because they covered up them anime cakes?
People are acting like they scrubbed the game of panty shots. They didn't even change any of the ingame sprites! All of the changes were to story mode art and gallery images! Most of everyone complaining aren't even aware what the changes are, they've just decided this is the hill they're dying on as part of some cultural crusade.
They did change some of the in-game sprites.
It reminds me of Mass Effect Legendary Edition removing ass shots of Miranda. People lost their shit about censorship. The game is still super thirsty and has sex scenes. They removed close-ups of Miranda's ass when she is talking about being traumatized by her father. Thematically those ass shots never made sense and were uncomfortable.
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"I'm playing both sides, so I always end up on top"
Radical commitment to the "more options always good" faction. Gotta respect it.
based and choicepilled
Hey, if you're skilled with Mirana's ass might as well put that skill to good use!
I wonder how easy that was for the modded to do since they’d already isolated the butt shots for the original mod.
redemption arc
> The game is still super thirsty and has sex scenes. I agree with your point about how those shots didn't make sense in those specific scenes... but I don't know that I would call the game "super thirsty," and the limited "sex scenes" it has are really mild IIRC. Bioware kindof caved and got rid of even the fairly tame nudity after a bunch of people with sticks up their asses made a huge deal about the pg-13 sex scenes in ME1.
Huh I thought ME2 and 3 were straight ports in the LE and they only touched ME1, are there any other cutscene changes? That's a pretty good one, those ass shots really were so bad.
Yeah just a few changes like that and giving tali a face not from a stock photo
I heard Tali has a new face in LE
Sort of. They only ever showed her face in a photograph that you get if you romance her. The original version was basically just a photoshopped stock photo of some generic model, and was widely criticized for that reason. The new version is a shot of an actual 3D model of Tali without her mask.
the original picture of "Tali" was so hilariously bad that I kinda wish they had kept it in
Yeah honestly it's not great, but it sure as hell better than the weird stock photo they put into the original.
Yeah, it feels like there are certain things devs aren't allowed to touch in the least little bit without having hundreds of people reflexively lose their shit about it, even if the changes and their reasons for making them make complete sense.
I was really puzzled when I watched the video of the differences. I honestly don't even know why the developers went through all the effort. You would have to use a magnifying lens to spot them.
The fact that they did change some panty shots *is* dumb, considering how Skullgirls has presented itself from the start, but no that's not it. Most people are talking about stuff like how they got rid of the comb in one of Filia's animations where she has an afro because they didn't wanna seem racist. Not only is that weird, it's a change that's not going to please anyone. Oh, and not to mention the harmless art of other artists in the game's gallery that they removed. Very classy.
One of the pieces of art removed was for a fundraiser for cancer. One of the audio packs removed was one of the rewards for supporting the game through Indiegogo. They EDITED the only thing that could be referred to as an art book for this game. The actual design documents. That is something people pay a lot of money for just to have it physically and they did it without even a hint of a warning. Just, here you go, we've updated it. Did you download it before? No? Screw you. Nobody is dying on a hill. They are objecting to whatever the hell this is.
People barely play this game yet there's always something going on with it.
Because nobody liked changes to an game that makes no sense and benefits no one. Especially the fans that play the games and put money into it. Like who is this benefitting to? The devs's imaginary audiences or non-skullgirl fans that never played the game? People should object to changes they never asked for and complain about it rightfully so since its still censorship at the end of the day.
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They did recolor some Filia's panties to darker colors in the game but other than that, everything else was mainly changes to story mode art and gallery images. Most of that had to do with the arm bands and then covering up Filia's panties and ass cheeks in some of the pics. They also removed an announcer pack that featured Mike Z. Pretty minor shit I wouldn't have noticed was changed personally. Some of the changes seem strange and the devs also don't want any discussion about it and said they have no further comments to make on the subject.
I think the sheer strangeness is a big part of what's got people uppity. In addition to straight-up removing a few bits of content (which don't really matter but is a dick move) the vague motivation gives the impression that more of these changes could be coming, and who knows what will hit the cutting room floor next? The 2015 patch that changed a couple of sprites felt much more self-contained. There were a few battle sprites that the creators didn't like, and they were fixing them. A few panty shots removed, but so many left untouched that it felt sufficiently pointed without much risk of further alterations. But here it's so scattershot that it's hard to say with confidence that they're done. There's a very real possibility that they are, but it sets people on edge.
> Filia ngl that's literally the only one that stumps the hell outta me (i don't even play the game tho i happened upon the article)
People are more worried about the slippery slope that the censoring eventually takes than one panty shot being removed from one art, but people are focusing on that. They are removing 10 year old content because it is "less ok" today than it was back then. Removing art, some even important to story like the two scenes removed from Big Band's story, is far more than "making the game less crude". What about Peacock and Painwheel? They are both incredibly tortured, mutilated and mindbroken kids. Peacock even smokes cigars. Is this more ok than one guy groping Filia and getting instantly punished for it? What will be "less ok" tomorrow?
Don't give them ideas.
I don't get why they even bothered with this considering Skullgirls has been out for over a decade, hardly anyone complained about this then and now, and the game itself hasn't been actively played beyond its small community since its release window in 2013. However, the backlash from this is hilarious considering how insignificant the changes are. Just a sea of negative steam reviews of mostly people with <10 hours in the game complaining as if they're long time fans who the game was made for when it's self-evident that most of them haven't given a shit about this game until now. Seriously, it's sad that, despite Skullgirls' extremely rocky start and all the shit it went through the game is still being worked on and getting new characters and balance patches to this day, you barely heard a peep from most of these people about that. I've heard more people talking about Skullgirls because of Fillia having less panty shots in the span of 2 days than I've heard people talk about Marie, the boss for the game that people always wanted to be playable since it came out TEN years ago, finally becoming playable since it was announced months ago. The only other Skullgirls related thing I can remember making the game the topic of discussion was when the devs made it so that there was a random chance Sonicfox would appear in the background for training mode. Which the funny thing is, I've seen a good number of "fans" who're complaining about these recent changes claim that as the catalyst for skullgirls' decline, as if Sonicfox was some outsider to the game's community and not someone whose been playing and competing in it since it came out. Definitely supported the game through its highs and lows more than they ever did. I went on far enough. I definitely think there's a conversation to be had about developers changing aspects of their game long after it came out, but a lot of the people complaining about this don't want to have that conversation in good faith.
The game has been on a bunch of platforms. People with <10 hours played on Steam might just not be playing their game on Steam.
> People with <10 hours played on Steam might just not be playing their game on Steam. Can confirm. I looked and I have 6 minutes of playtime on Steam, but I've been playing since the original, non Encore version, on the ps3 lol. But apparently steam time is all that matters.
I felt like I was going crazy in the other thread regarding this. Like yes, the game is really old and what's the point of making the changes now, let alone making changes to make the game less fetishy when that's kind of the tone of the game, waste of company time and resources ect. At the same time I find most of the changes inconsequential and the game still perfectly playable, yet I still get the "disagree button" treatment for not being overly-concerned about it, yelling "censorship!" and "anti-consumerism!". Sometimes I have to check if I'm accidentally on the pcgaming subreddit, but maybe that's just the reddit stance generally. Makes me think that the twitter threads calling the critics of the updates pedophiles sound more sensible
I feel as the resident pillar of the Skullgirls community, I should say a few things about this since a lot of you are here. and before anyone questions my time with the community and game, hi folks! My name is Clawmaster, and I been playing this game since 2013 at a competitive level. I compete in multiple online tournaments and offline, recently got 4th at Dreamhack this past year, competed at EVO last year, and the person who made [playskullgirls.gg](https://playskullgirls.gg) as well as the twitter account @SGmolly for people to find all the resources for newer players to play in tournaments, events, and other things. As well as a weekly schedule I make for anyone to take a look at to see whats going on in the Skullgirls scene. To give the viewpoint of the players who play the game at a competitive level, simply put, we are just here playing the game for its mechanics and fun gameplay. When I read the changes as well as the other players, we all agreed that this doesn't change anything for us mechanically for the game, and we can keep playing the game as is without much worry. We have gone through this before with the 1st round of changes back in 2015, and this was the lead dev, Mike Z, at the helm. Don't believe me, look up the team during that time, and you see Mike was still the head then. I will say many of us are saying that many of you who are complaining are people who never played the game and just jumping on the rage bandwagon. Of course you can be a fan of something without playing it, and your valid for that. (I don't play Mortal Kombat games but I love watching the story mode on stream) But even if this somehow does indeed "kill" the game, what I have learned is that many of us will keep playing the game, and out here supporting one another in the community. People forget that there was a good 5 year gap of nothing happening, yet the scene was still striving, and keeping it alive all these years. As long as there people like me who support the game and the people who play it, then its still going to be around for quite some time. Hope this gives you folks some insight from the competitive players prospective!
I know my opinion on FFXIV's story doesn't mean much because I spam click through quest dialogue and skip most cutscenes to play and grind faster. ESports competitive gamers weighing in that non-gameplay changes aren't a big deal is odd. Like as you said, the game can literally be killed off and it wouldn't impact you. So alrighty then...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't removing stuff from art books kinda illegal since people bought that art? Also, wasn't some of the fan art for a cancer research drive which would make it even more illegal since that's more or less fraud? Asking this cus someone on Discord mentioned that the devs could get in trouble for this either due to legal issues or because fans could pursue charges, especially since they're based in California.
I have never played this game and I generally dislike fan service style games, but i find myself agreeing with people that are unhappy about the changes. If people bought the game in part because of the art style and fan service, it's pretty lame to change it after the fact. Ultimately I think the review bombing is an overreaction, but I get the sentiment
Cool, more sanitization. I'm sure it was totally worth it to make this change and potentially invite a significant backlash. I mean, someone could've seen a red armband or an exposed pantyshot, and we can't have that. Not in the year of our lord, 2023.