[Update #2:] According to the lead translator on the project, Andrew Hodgson, Valve had no hand whatsoever in the censorship of Baldr Sky. The translator claims that Sekai worked with GIGA to produce the version of the game that matched the developer’s vision.
I’m the lead translator on this project. Your article is rooted in pure fabrication. Valve had no involvement in content decisions for this release. We worked with Giga to create a version of the game that conformed to their vision for a western release.
— Steiner (@DistantValhalla) December 20, 2019
However, some users pointed out that Steiner made some questionable comments recently, on December 19th, 2019, admitting that whether people buy Baldr Sky from Sekai Project or not, it wouldn’t affect him.
Across several tweets, Steiner wrote…
“Sekai Project isn’t entitled to your purchase, no publisher is. But I hope people understand compromises are necessary sometimes. If your stance is “I would’ve rather had nothing than a version with cuts.” then eventually nothing is what the VN industry will be reduced to.
“So yeah, Baldr Sky won’t be getting an 18+ release in any official capacity. Just know that you’re only seeing the situation from the outside, you haven’t seen the process, or know what other demands might have been fought against successfully. Business is a complex web.
“I understand that this can be interpreted as me saying “You’re lucky for scraps” or “settle for less,” but the harsh reality of the situation is that we are beholden to the original licensor’s wishes for the most part. We work with and around that as best we can.
“It’s completely alright to be sceptical, Sekai has a bad track record. Not trying to guilt, either. Like I said, you don’t owe anyone a purchase. You don’t have to buy anything, it won’t affect me one way or another. My work ended the moment I submitted the files.”
While Hodgson claims that the censorship was requested on the part of GIGA, others pointed out that in the past Sekai Project has been responsible for the censorship, not the developers.
On December 19th, 2019 Twitter user Zakogdo linked to a Reddit thread regarding the censorship of Grisaia, which was on Sekai Project, not the developers.
In the thread, Frontwing points out that since they make games containing R18+ content, they have no problems with it and that they don’t mind releasing R18+ versions of the game. In the thread, one of the members of Frontwing described their interaction with Sekai Project, where they wrote…
“Normally I would leave something like this alone yeah, but seeing as it’s an AMA and this is a touchy subject for a lot of peple, here’s what I know:
I started about a month and a half ago, so I wasn’t here for any of the Grisaia dealings at all. I do remember seeing that post when doing some background research. From everything I’ve been told (and I don’t really have any reason to believe anything’s being hidden from me), it doesn’t seem like there was any resistance to 18+ releases on our part (mosaics aside). What I was asked to say is that all of our communication was with Raymond (Dovac), so we can’t really comment on things other people have said. I don’t know if there was some kind of misinformation or miscommunication at some point, or if we really were against an 18+ release at one point, but purely from a personal perspective it seems a strange accusation considering Frontwing had no issues putting out 18+ patches for Purino Party (a pretty dang raunchy game developed specifically for the West) and Corona Blossom.”
This still doesn’t explicitly answer who really is at fault for Baldr Sky’s censorship, but it certainly raises questions about the blame being placed on GIGA.
[Original article:] Sekai Project was forced to censor out all of the R18+ content for the Steam release of Baldr Sky, the isometric action-RPG with visual novel sequences. It was actually worse than that, and Sekai Project nearly had to censor all of the religious content in the game as well, but Sekai managed to limit the censorship to just the R18+ content.
The censorship was detailed in a post by Sekai Project that was published on December 18th, 2019, where they explained…
“Since Baldr Sky’s English release is imminent, we wanted to go into full detail on what won’t be present in the Steam version of the game. As you may know, Baldr Sky’s original Japanese release is rated 18+ and contains explicit sexual content. The English release however will have this explicit content removed.
“We want to make it clear that this was not our preferred choice. We had made an incredible effort to be able to provide an uncut version of the title. It was made crystal clear for us however, that our choice was between releasing a game with the adult content removed, or not at all. We did win some concessions, for example we were even originally asked to remove religious imagery, but the game will only be shipped without explicit content.”
They proceed to explain that 4% of the dialogue had to be removed that either referenced or was related to the explicit content that had to be removed, and all of the R18+ sex scenes were removed, along with adding in light rays or other objects to obscure nipples or genitalia.
Now the good part is that only the Steam release is being censored.
The tweet really gives everything away, though, as Sekai Project reveals that due to licensing requirements they can’t provide the R18+ patch in any “official capacity”.
Due to licensing requirements we are not able to supply any 18+ content in an official capacity. We’ve complied a list of changes in the blog post below, thank you for supporting us.https://t.co/GTnn5i42pw
— Sekai Project (@sekaiproject) December 19, 2019
I’m spit-balling here but the licensing requirements probably stated that they offer everything or nothing at all, but since Valve has dictated what they won’t allow on the store, it’s basically nothing at all.
[Update:] According to a Reddit thread from three years ago, there was confusion over whether R18+ content would be available in any capacity at all given that the deal Sekai signed with GIGA was for an all-ages Steam release. In a blog post by Sanahtlig from back in July of 2016, there were some fans rallying to encourage Sekai to license the R18+ version of Baldr Sky, but it wasn’t made explicitly clear why only the all-ages version was being licensed for release on Steam.
Moreover, there is some additional good news.
Twitter user Julian Uy has a link to a pastebin that reveals that the group Shadowwolf will have an R18+ off-site patch ready for the release of the game on Steam.
Good news: a fan patch will release within 24 hours of the game’s release, so everyone can get what they want https://t.co/Lzk5c5dZs9
— Julian Uy (@uyjulian) December 19, 2019
As they explain in the pastebin file…
“After learning that the English release of Baldr Sky would cut out the adult content, we organized to create a fully uncut version of the game. Though it’s taken several months of translation and hard work from our members, we’ve created a set of drop-in replacement files for game scripts, files and images most likely to be targeted by game cuts.
“Once the game goes live, we will need a short period of time to verify our patch functions correctly with the release version of the game. If everything goes to plan, we will update this post with download links. We are hoping to have the patch live within the first 24 hours after the game is released.”
These lads are doing the weeb’s work.
What we can’t ignore, however, is that this duly explains why Baldr Sky wasn’t axed in Valve’s clean sweep of various visual novels and Japanese anime-styled games back on December 12th. Sekai Project firmly committed to censoring the game out the wazoo in order to get it approved for release on Steam.
In the past we’ve seen Valve bully Asian developers before, with Valve’s software curators pressuring HappyHand to remove a character from Niplheim’s Hunter (although Valve relented in that case) to successfully getting Simon Creative to completely remove a loli character from Food Girls. They even tried to force GamesAndGirls Episode 4 to remove any religious imagery from the title.
The real scary part about it all is that content curation has been elevated to the point of moving up from solely demanding studios to censor explicit sexual content to demanding they remove religious imagery, too.
If this was all on GIGA (and hard evidence hasn’t quite surfaced that that’s the case), then it’s poor form on GIGA’s part. However, if Valve had any say in the matter then they aren’t just the “taste police” anymore, they’re turning into full blown digital dictators.
(Thanks for the news tip Narmy)