Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Question about censorship in Japan

Hi,

I am living in Japan and would like to know whether BG3 will be censored in our region? I wasn't particularly worried about it, but then I saw the final Panel From Hell and the dark urge stuff got me wondering. Previously, games have been censored in Japan for excessive violence and nudity.

As the game has not been localized into Japanese, does this mean that the local ratings boards here don't need to review it? If anyone (ideally officially) could shed some light on this it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

In a country that allows rape themed games I would be a little surprised but that's why VPN have become a thing

To be clear, the scene that got Larian banned is not in the actual game .. they hacked their own game to remove the filter

I'd rather this thread didn't become a big discussion about the ethics/hypocrisy of censorship here, but yes, the choices of what to allow and what not are certainly... interesting at times. What do you mean the scene that got Larian banned? I haven't been following development of this game close enough to know what you're referencing.

The scene that got Larian banned is the bear on vampire romance and most people assume it was banned as so kind of stand against bestiality or gayness but it was banded because they hacked the clothes of the druid in his human form i.e he was nude because Larian removed their own filter

China and Japan have very different laws regarding nudity and sexual content. Also, where Japan is bit more liberating on what sexual content allowed for public, censor for genitals is an absolute requirement regardless on what kind of content actually is. Failure to provide one generaly means game will be banned.

So, BG3 is actually banned in Japan?

If you referring to Ussnorways comment: Larian was temporarily banned from TikTok for the bear scene. I think, that was, what they referring to.

true but beside the point because he wants to know about Larian getting banned... tiktok banned them for full nude on the release stream and tiktok was correct to do so because thats against their rules

now back to the main point of will Japan censor BG3 = who knows, i personally expect not but strange stuff happens

Oh, I see. Thank you for clarifying.

As far as I know, plenty of games that have has blood, gore, nudity and sex have been censored in Japan. I believe developers do this only for the Japanese version of the game where they will cover or remove certain content from the game. For example, the bear sex scene might not even be a included in the Japanese version od the game. Depending how strict Japan is on censorship.

You're right, they have been. However, BG3 isn't actually being released in Japan. If you search the playstation storefront, for example, the game doesn't show up at all. I intend to play this on PC, so I'm hoping it wont be an issue. Other games like Dead Space Remake (which were outright banned here) are available to buy on my Japanese Steam account, so I'm assuming that means BG3 hasn't had to go through any censorship. However, this is all just speculation right now. Would love to have an official response.

i know China has an issue with graves or human skulls so you would be more likely to have the crypt and a certain someone removed than a random sex scene

facepalm
Or they just, you know, used the modesty filter settings that are in the release build.

Yes, from what I saw, there were three filters available in the options of the game that seemed to roughly equate to "no nudity" (ie no genitals), "no sex" and "safe for streaming". I suspect that what we also saw in the course of the PFH is that those filters could probably do with some tweaking before release! My understanding was that the ban of the PFH stream from some platforms was due to the fact rather more could be seen by a careful observer than their rules permitted.

That's even more than what I expected, that's cool!

I find it odd what the rules are.

The Hollywood 'rule' is typically similar to US tv network rules and does 'no frontal nudity', but then .. Watchmen comes around for instance, and wags its tail in your face for forty minutes. Then, HBO comes and gives us Game of Thrones.. which has extensive amounts of nudity. But it's fine because... it's not on regular tv ? Also, pornography is everywhere, the internet is filled with it, and there's no rules against that anywhere. So...What exactly are the rules?

Nowadays games don't come from anywhere *but* the internet, so what's the fuss? I live in a place where none of these things matter - if it's for adults, you can show what you want. But..

Now in comes Japan. I'm by no means an expert or interested in Japanese things so I don't know what their rules are. I do know, though, that if you set Steam to 'allow adult content' the Japanese are suddenly VERY well represented. So what are we talking about here? I don't get it.