The Stick of Truth's Censorship Disabled by PC Mod - Update

[NuclearKangaroo]

dont be ridiculous

what kidn of backwards ass country would censor user made content? (except maybe mine all things considered)

is it really that different from playing some free flash game with nazis in it?

The issue was (as it was with Hot Coffee and Oblivion getting rerated M) was that the content was still on the game disc. Apparently, the fact that user-made content was required to unlock it was irrelevant.

you MIGHT have a point there

then again they did nothing about L4D2 and the blood patch

 

[Therumancer]

[

dont be ridiculous

what kidn of backwards ass country would censor user made content? (except maybe mine all things considered)

is it really that different from playing some free flash game with nazis in it?

Once content has been declared illegal it's different. Most "user made content" has not been made illegal, and typically every piece of material to be "banned" must be reviewed individually. Thus, since your typical flash game is not likely to show up on the radar, as it will never get enough attention/complaints to get the government involved it's not a big deal. On the other hand "South Park" already got government attention, and this content was considered to be obscene, and banned in this areas. The user made patch allows access to this content, and is thus by definition illegal in a very real way because it's being used to spread obscene/banned material.

That's the big issue in this case, the ruling has already been made, like it or not.

To give some perspective on this, as a Criminal Justice major I can explain the process in the US. The specifics might not apply to Australia for example, but it's really semantics because they already made the ruling in their own way. In the US by definition "pornography" is illegal, what we call "porn" in common use is not "porn" in a legal sense, technically it's labeled as "adult art films" or something similar. In the US to be declared "pornography" a work must be declared obscene and without redeeming value in a social, political, or artistic sense. Each particular work must also be reviewed individually, you cannot engage in a blanket ban of material based on type or a specific behavior. Typically to come under review the government needs to have a work brought to their attention, at which point it's reviewed by a panel of legal experts (one of my instructors was a former head of the Connecticut State police and sat in on several of these) and if it's found to be obscene and without redeeming value, it can be banned. However the creator of the work, or a representative, also gets an attempt to defend it's merits. This is by the way why so many porno movies, at least in the US, have some kind of banal plot attached, because then it can be defended as "art" (maybe bad art, but still art). The US porn industry also relies on sheer volume, they can't review and ban everything, so in the end it takes something very special that gets a ton of complaints to come up for review. As a result banning something like "South Park: Stick Of Truth" isn't likely to ever happen in the USA because taken as a whole the work can be argued to have redeeming value, as crude as it is. All of that political and social satire actually works in it's defense (believe it or not). In Australia however they can obviously force the censorship of specific scenes, and say declare things like the Anal probing scene inherently offensive, and make it illegal by not approving it for viewing in Australia (which seems to be the case). This means giving it to people within Australia is arguably the same as dealing drugs, or passing around illegal guns, or any other banned and unlawful substance. A patch is a method of doing this. This is going simply by observation and the fact that Australia has been able to "line item" censor a lot of things over the years.

Now where things get unusually touchy here is whether those scenes were actually on the game discs/in the code as far as the version presented goes. If those scenes were part of a rather large patch, then the people making the patch, or assisting with it's distribution, could be in a lot of trouble if Australia chooses to pursue it. If the patch just unlocks content that was already there, those people are still criminally liable, but probably to a lesser degree, however Ubisoft is likely to take the brunt for still having the material in the game where it could be accessed by modifying the code (much the same way how Rock Star has gotten in trouble over things like "Hot Coffee" sure the content wasn't generally accessible, but it was still there, and thus that's the same as distributing that content).

How likely these countries are to pursue it though, that's another question entirely. Your right that it seems "rather ridiculous" because right now nobody has done it so far, but it technically could happen, and really if Australia *did* demand that the US hand over Gabe Newell, or France hand over the head of Ubisoft, that could be awkward because technically we're obligated to send them there to stand trial, there is actually a crime here, even if it's not one that's usually enforced. Sort of like the situation with "Kim Dotcom" a few years before it happened going after someone like him for what he was doing was unthinkable, sure it was illegal, but nobody seemed to care.

That said, I very much doubt Aussie's equivalent of SWAT (not sure what they call them down under) will be kicking down doors over this. If something is done it's going to be an attempt to make an example out of people who are generally a big deal.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

[

dont be ridiculous

what kidn of backwards ass country would censor user made content? (except maybe mine all things considered)

is it really that different from playing some free flash game with nazis in it?

Once content has been declared illegal it's different. Most "user made content" has not been made illegal, and typically every piece of material to be "banned" must be reviewed individually. Thus, since your typical flash game is not likely to show up on the radar, as it will never get enough attention/complaints to get the government involved it's not a big deal. On the other hand "South Park" already got government attention, and this content was considered to be obscene, and banned in this areas. The user made patch allows access to this content, and is thus by definition illegal in a very real way because it's being used to spread obscene/banned material.

That's the big issue in this case, the ruling has already been made, like it or not.

To give some perspective on this, as a Criminal Justice major I can explain the process in the US. The specifics might not apply to Australia for example, but it's really semantics because they already made the ruling in their own way. In the US by definition "pornography" is illegal, what we call "porn" in common use is not "porn" in a legal sense, technically it's labeled as "adult art films" or something similar. In the US to be declared "pornography" a work must be declared obscene and without redeeming value in a social, political, or artistic sense. Each particular work must also be reviewed individually, you cannot engage in a blanket ban of material based on type or a specific behavior. Typically to come under review the government needs to have a work brought to their attention, at which point it's reviewed by a panel of legal experts (one of my instructors was a former head of the Connecticut State police and sat in on several of these) and if it's found to be obscene and without redeeming value, it can be banned. However the creator of the work, or a representative, also gets an attempt to defend it's merits. This is by the way why so many porno movies, at least in the US, have some kind of banal plot attached, because then it can be defended as "art" (maybe bad art, but still art). The US porn industry also relies on sheer volume, they can't review and ban everything, so in the end it takes something very special that gets a ton of complaints to come up for review. As a result banning something like "South Park: Stick Of Truth" isn't likely to ever happen in the USA because taken as a whole the work can be argued to have redeeming value, as crude as it is. All of that political and social satire actually works in it's defense (believe it or not). In Australia however they can obviously force the censorship of specific scenes, and say declare things like the Anal probing scene inherently offensive, and make it illegal by not approving it for viewing in Australia (which seems to be the case). This means giving it to people within Australia is arguably the same as dealing drugs, or passing around illegal guns, or any other banned and unlawful substance. A patch is a method of doing this. This is going simply by observation and the fact that Australia has been able to "line item" censor a lot of things over the years.

Now where things get unusually touchy here is whether those scenes were actually on the game discs/in the code as far as the version presented goes. If those scenes were part of a rather large patch, then the people making the patch, or assisting with it's distribution, could be in a lot of trouble if Australia chooses to pursue it. If the patch just unlocks content that was already there, those people are still criminally liable, but probably to a lesser degree, however Ubisoft is likely to take the brunt for still having the material in the game where it could be accessed by modifying the code (much the same way how Rock Star has gotten in trouble over things like "Hot Coffee" sure the content wasn't generally accessible, but it was still there, and thus that's the same as distributing that content).

How likely these countries are to pursue it though, that's another question entirely. Your right that it seems "rather ridiculous" because right now nobody has done it so far, but it technically could happen, and really if Australia *did* demand that the US hand over Gabe Newell, or France hand over the head of Ubisoft, that could be awkward because technically we're obligated to send them there to stand trial, there is actually a crime here, even if it's not one that's usually enforced. Sort of like the situation with "Kim Dotcom" a few years before it happened going after someone like him for what he was doing was unthinkable, sure it was illegal, but nobody seemed to care.

That said, I very much doubt Aussie's equivalent of SWAT (not sure what they call them down under) will be kicking down doors over this. If something is done it's going to be an attempt to make an example out of people who are generally a big deal.

then this shouldve been banned

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/45875/?

the thing is, is your damn product whatever you do with it its your business, admitedly im not german, but i find ridiculous and kind of authoritarian (ironic isnt it?) that the government has the power to tell you what to do with the stuff you buy, i mean if you cut swastikas in your sandwiches would the government come after you?

i believe the german government cant do anything about it

 

[Therumancer]

[

then this shouldve been banned

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/45875/?

the thing is, is your damn product whatever you do with it its your business, admitedly im not german, but i find ridiculous and kind of authoritarian (ironic isnt it?) that the government has the power to tell you what to do with the stuff you buy, i mean if you cut swastikas in your sandwiches would the government come after you?

i believe the german government cant do anything about it

Well, it's not that they can't, it's more likely that it will never come to their attention, or have enough pressure behind it to be reviewed. It's sort of like how porn in part survives due to volume in the US, the government can't police it all.

What makes the situation different is that "South Park" came to the attention of the governments as an outside product and was put before them for review and they said "okay these bits are not allowed". Due to awareness the control over incoming products from other countries being more extreme than what's going on with things released inside the country.

That said if someone was to take that fan made patch for "New Vegas" and bring it before the German government with a petition and they reviewed it, yes it would likely be banned, and those hosting the mod and making it available in Germany could get in trouble. The creator too perhaps, if they could find them.

Ideally I agree, it's none of the government's business, but I'm not talking about ideals here. Australia, Germany, etc... have been out of control with censorship, especially of incoming products, for quite a while, with complaints going back years now.

 

[Geisterkarle]

And the censorship ban worked for all of half a week! HURRAY THE SYSTEM...works?

Damn, I had my hopes on one day! So it was quite slow

Doesn't surprise me even a bit!

 

[FalloutJack]

With the existence of the internet and other forms of globalization, does country-specific or region-specific censoring even work anymore?

I guess this mod proves that it doesn't.

My brother told me a fun little thing about Australia, about how Australians were getting around ahh...I think it was Newscorp he said...regional restrictions and such so that they could watch media through Netflix. They wanted Netflix to refuse their business. You know, of course, what Netflix said to that...


Globalization is kind of a double-edged sword at times, but right now its heart is in the right place.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

-snip-

That's nothing, in New Zealand there is an ISP that is providing a free way to bypass geolocking.

http://www.slingshot.co.nz/products/global-mode/about-global-mode/

It's been going on since June 2013.

 

[Isalan]

Wasn't the PC version supposed to be uncensored anyway? I know the German one will have had the Nazi's cut out of it, nothing like an old wound. If the UK version had the abortion/probe scenes taken out I might have to have a look at this.

 

[Stu35]

Good on them. This is just another one of the many reasons why censorship of adult content is bollocks. If people are determined enough, they'll bypass the censorship one way or another.

This.

In Britain our government seriously does not understand how this newfangled "internet" thing works - thanks to the haranguing of idiot mothers (who also don't understand how the internet works), they're putting a block on internet porn (so people have to "opt in" to access it). The block also happens to affect plenty of non-pornographic sites (including education, advice and support sites for LGBT teenagers and other 'at-risk' groups), and ignores the fact that the average pubescent boy (and possibly girl? I don't know how girls handle puberty - aside from the ones who used to let me finger them behind the Gym in high school) will be getting his/her dirty, cum-stained paws on pictures of naked ladies regardless of the governments best efforts.


Anyway, I've drifted off topic: Yaaaay for overcoming censorship. I'm generally on the side of the government when it comes to laws, and the enforcement of those laws, but censorship is the true acid test of freedom in my opinion - when people feel things need to be censored, we lose freedom, and it shouldn't be allowed.

What I think really grips me in this instance, is that the UK censorship of this game isn't actually being enforced by any UK agency, but a European one (unless I've misunderstood this? In which case can someone correct me?), and I have a very typically British mistrust of the EU and their attempts to control how things are done in Britain.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Wasn't the PC version supposed to be uncensored anyway? I know the German one will have had the Nazi's cut out of it, nothing like an old wound. If the UK version had the abortion/probe scenes taken out I might have to have a look at this.

Some PC versions are.

The Austrian, German and Australian versions are definitely censored, The US and New Zealand ones are not.

 

[Cerebrawl]

Potentially this could get awkward if it was ever pushed. If parts of Europe or Australia demanded the extradition of Gabe Newell, it could turn into the next "Kim Dotcom", and would invite certain comparisons to that case. After all it could be argued that as the head of Valve/Steam, he's responsible for what he knows is on his site, and depending on the prosecution and the exact laws they could go after him as a pornographer. To put it into perspective, we do have a scene of a 9 year old getting anally raped by a sex machine, which could be considered child porn (above and beyond it just being you know... adult material/porn), especially in countries that do not make a distinction between an actual child and the image of a child.

Yes that would indeed count as child pornography under Swedish law.

There was a case a couple of years ago where a manga translator got in legal trouble for that because the depictions in the manga were considered child pornography(the characters were supposedly older acording to canon, but they looked child-like).

By legal trouble I mean he was convicted in the first and second instances and didn't get his acquital until the highest court, 2 years later.

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Lundstr%C3%B6m (Swedish only, sorry, google translate or something).

 

[RoonMian]

It is pretty bizarre. Take the Nazi symbols, for instance: Movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark feature them and nobody cares because it's a movie, it's considered art. But a video game like Wolfenstein 3D gets put on the index in Germany and the game Raiders of the Lost Ark had all its swastikas replaced by black circles.
That said, that was the old way. More recently, our rating agencies more and more just hand out 18 ratings without putting games on the index, so it shouldn't even matter. From what I know, though, a bunch of developers and publishers are basically self-censoring in advance now, even if their game has a good chance of not ending up on the index anyway.
I know that's how it goes with a lot of the more violent games, but I dunno about issues related to Nazi symbols or whatever; that might be different still.

It has always been self-censoring. Games that are on the "Index" aren't banned. They just can't be advertised where minors can see it. You can still obtain and play them perfectly legally. There have only been like 25 games that have ever been banned here and those were either games that had a cut version to avoid confusion and loopholes or games like "KZ Manager" that violated laws against Volksverhetzung and stuff.

Art. 5 GG

 

[TwiZtah]

I bet it was Germany that made the European version censored, it is always the Germans.

 

[webkilla]

I bought the game via steam - I live in europe - both the alien probing scene and the abortion clinic scene was shown fully in the game...

Is the european ban specific only to certain countries?

 

[Creator002]

I bought the game via steam - I live in europe - both the alien probing scene and the abortion clinic scene was shown fully in the game...

Is the european ban specific only to certain countries?

Pretty sure the PC version in Europe (except Austria and Germany I think) is uncensored. Only the console versions are censored.

 

[croc3629]

Aaaand its gone.

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/-DT7bX-B1Mg/hqdefault.jpg

I was hoping something like this would happen, and I was not disappointed.

I did find the replacement message amusing, but on the whole, I prefer to have the game unaltered, if only for the principle of the matter.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Funny thing is, if you watched what was deleted its laughable that they were deleted in the first place. An those scenes being cut didnt make any difference at all really as they added nothing to the game. Which is a shame. You would think the mission with Mr Slave would be more ban worthy.....try explaining that to kids. lol

Modders did a good job though the PC version wasnt censored? Im guessing the mods there to allow the crazy Germans to see Nazi Cows and probes.

 

[Zipa]

I bet it was Germany that made the European version censored, it is always the Germans.

It was Ubisoft that did it actually to try to get a lower rating not PEGI.

 

[Zipa]

Wasn't the PC version supposed to be uncensored anyway? I've not been keeping up with this but the news i initially saw said the PC release would still carry this content for this exact reason; that it would simply be modded in later. I am slightly confused by this news.

Can anyone help me out here?

Some versions were uncensored on the PC like the UK while others were still censored like in Australia.