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Stellar Blade Patch Introduces Uncensored Outfits

Video Games

| May 24, 2024 |

Have gamers won another battle against Sony? That’s in the eye of the beholder, but Mark Kern, the former Blizzard producer who goes by Grummz on social media, is declaring victory. To recap, Stellar Blade, a new game from upstart Korean developer Shift Up and distributed by Sony, features a classically beautiful female protagonist named Eve who, in the game’s trailers, wore some sexy outfits, much to the chagrin of games journalists. Shift Up also promised that the game would not be censored anywhere in the world. The game was a huge seller upon release, but the very first patch Sony released censored some of the more revealing outfits, which angered customers who believed they weren’t getting what they were promised (which they weren’t; feel however you want about the outfits, but I don’t see how you can argue that this wasn’t blatant false advertising, even if it was retroactive). So, Kern, an advocate for getting woke interference (and other customer-unfriendly business practices) out of gaming, started a campaign to get the changes undone, with a strategy consisting of a petition, canceling PSN accounts, and sharing the hashtag #freestellarblade.

Today, that campaign bore fruit: a new Stellar Blade patch introduces a number of new features (like being able to replay boss battles without having to go through every level again, which, I have to admit, sounds really cool and should become a video game staple). It also releases new outfits, two of which are variants of a couple of the censored outfits – uncensored. The outfits are called Midsummer Alice and Midsummer Redhood, and they “can be purchased from Roxanne in Xion with the patch installed,” according to Push Square. You can see the outfits in Grummz’s post below:

Grummz and many others are very happy with this development, and indeed, it’s a big step and a show of attrition from Shift Up and Sony, who must’ve realized they really pissed people off with their No Sex, Please, We’re British attitude. Others are disappointed and consider this a half-measure, as opposed to the restoration of all censored outfits. Initially, I kind of agreed with the latter; it felt like a very minor bone thrown at angry customers to appease them – like a phalange. But Grummz’s posts about this make sense, too:

That games journalists see this as a huge loss is a strong argument in favor of calling this a win. If it weren’t, they would be celebrating it as a stick in the eye of gamers (whom they hate). It’s a common social media trope to say that the quality or value of something can be measured by seeing who it makes angry, but it’s true. When the bad guys are mad, you know something is going right. (And if you’re wondering who the bad guys are, note that the censored outfits are still in the game, and gamers are fine with that as long as they have a choice; games journalists want there to be no choice.) Also, Grummz clarifies that he’s not done with this campaign yet:

In this light, today’s new outfits feel like a much bigger deal. (Also, remember that Grummz has worked in this industry and knows how it operates; he understands when something is important and when it’s not.) And it does seem indicative of a shift towards video game companies realizing that they have to make their customers happy, which is the opposite of what games journalists want them to do. Let’s look forward to a lot more of this.

Grummz’s petition is still available to sign right here.

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