Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

You want arbitrary censorship? By what standards? We are talking about banning stuff for adults. On what grounds? Restricting access to minors is all good and fine.  

But   if the activity is legal, why should a game or a movie be banned for adults?   Swearing, gambling, drinking is all legal for adults.

And even for illegal activities, games and movies are not the real thing. Murder is illegal. So every   crime series should be banned, because there is murder in it.

Know that Alien vs. Predator games? You can play as an Alien or Predator there, killing Humans.

Your wording is problematic.   "your character just has to kill people for no reason". It is self contradictory.   If the char "has"  to do that, that implies a reason, but you state that there is no reason. So why "has" the char to do it?

For the USA, you basically cannot ban a game for its content, as it falls under free speech.   There is that    AO, Adults Only    rating, but again, that falls under protection of minors. You will not find such a game in most stores, but that is not a ban.

Once you have the govs ban stuff, you will have countries  ban games on grounds  like "contains homosexuality".  Or "has Winnie the Pooh in it" ( I kid you not).  The "price" of freedom is to allow stuff (at least for adults), even if it violates your  sense of morale,  fashion,   taste or whatever. 

Its the ugly reality 😟

But the government does not care what type of content games contain. They just ban games when they think they can charge money from the developers to unban it

Uhm. That would be quite a corrupt country.   If they acutally ban something, the reason for the ban does not cease to exist, just because the devs pay some   ransom.

But maybe you are using the word ban differently than me.   Adults Only for example is not a ban. And Steam delisting something is also not a ban, at least not a government ban. A government ban would be for something that is against the law. And only that. Because the gov is all about law. If it does not concern laws, the gov has no say in it. You have to break a law with the game. And that is very hard to do, if it is hand drawn.   Stuff has been taken down for copyright issues. Or there is a famous example with some nudity of real life women, but the woman in question was 17 at the time of  filming. They used real images in the game. If you do that, you have all the problems with that, including privacy issues. Some games could be classified as hate speech, or be meant to incite   real actions that are illegal. If you make a game showing how to kill your teacher at your school, that is the kind of stuff that the gov would be interested in.

But banning for content you deem  bad ...  nah. That is censorship. And what is bad changes with time and place. In some arabic countries they really do ban games containing homosexuality, but tbf,  I think that is illegal irl there too. wich would bring me back to the gta game  example of depicting illegal acts in general. it is a game, not a manual or instruction to replicate this. 

So protecting impressionable minors from the "bad influence" , all good. Protecting adults, nah, that is censorship. On itch you have to explicitly click a button to see adult stuff.