In response to adult games being removed and hidden on Steam and itch.io en masse, Japan's association for freedom of expression has published a statement.
Take a quick look at DLsite and Pixiv, Japan hardly censors anything other than pixelation of specific body parts. If anything, it feels like the west is heading towards much more intense censorship.
They take what censorship they do have incredibly seriously, though. To the point that many Japanese companies stopped selling uncensored versions of their games in the West because their domestic audience was using VPNs to buy them and that was enough to get the government on their asses.
Even the possibility of Japanese users bypassing censorship was enough to put them in a worse situation than the West is currently in with payment processors.
I think it’s quite different though. Companies self censoring themselves is quite a hot different from a separate entity implementing censorship by terminating payment systems. Indie devs can still make such content. The mastercard/visa situation on the other hand effectively kills it for any team producing such content and I think that is far worse.
Take a quick look at DLsite and Pixiv, Japan hardly censors anything other than pixelation of specific body parts. If anything, it feels like the west is heading towards much more intense censorship.
They take what censorship they do have incredibly seriously, though. To the point that many Japanese companies stopped selling uncensored versions of their games in the West because their domestic audience was using VPNs to buy them and that was enough to get the government on their asses.
Even the possibility of Japanese users bypassing censorship was enough to put them in a worse situation than the West is currently in with payment processors.
I think it’s quite different though. Companies self censoring themselves is quite a hot different from a separate entity implementing censorship by terminating payment systems. Indie devs can still make such content. The mastercard/visa situation on the other hand effectively kills it for any team producing such content and I think that is far worse.