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Comment by teg4n_ | Hacker News Reader

Why the hell are they punting erotica to a different store. God I hate this major corporation puritan bs.

Sony has been strongly against it for some time. They have previously demanded that game studios like XSEED censor their games to allow a western playstation release (e.g. senran kagura's "intimacy mode") as part of an effort to clean up. A cursory search reveals this had happened to a number of titles. I've seen many examples of Nintendo doing the same.

Apparently they're also targeting extreme violence too, which I hadn't heard about. https://www.gamepressure.com/newsroom/playstation-censorship...

It's disappointing that Sony et al feel that they have a right to control the user in this way, albeit unsurprising. Fundamentally, consoles aren't open platforms, and principled user rights advocates shouldn't support them.

> It's disappointing that Sony et al feel that they have a right to control the user in this way, albeit unsurprising.

Do they have to produce content they don’t want to have a hand in making?

They can make - aka pay for - whatever games they want, but in terms of allowed software, ideally the platform should be an open system instead of one with a hard whitelist. That would be best for user freedom and autonomy. I'm not discussing the online store side of things either, they can run that as they wish, and that can be their whitelist for all I care.

Countries have laws and ratings systems that govern content. We don't need to be subject to the patronizing whims of corporations to boot, creating useless, single-purpose, locked-down hardware and moralizing on our behalf.

Nobody has any obligation to make their platform an open platform, nor any obligation to you besides what they're compelled to do by law and their ethics. Clearly Right Stuf has decided for themselves that the benefits of being bought out by Sony is more valuable to them than maintaining an open platform, and that is their right. You are subject to the patronizing whims of Sony, because you're trying to buy from Sony, and Sony has no obligation to do things that you want just because you feel entitled to it.

If you want an open platform, then please either patron somewhere that wants to be an open platform; lobby governments around the world to mandate that platforms should be open; convince Sony executives that it would be in their interest to make their platform open; or make your own open platform if a suitable one doesn't exist, and try to sustain it with people who want what you want. If enough of those people don't exist, then it should become clear to you that your opinion is yours alone, and that you're entitled to exactly nothing.

I don't think superchroma claimed they were entitled to anything. They were just explaining why they don't like Sony's decisions.

A hand in distributing, not making

Typically the line for consoles for publishing and allowing releases is drawn at AO only games. Nintendo for example Published the M rated Eternal Darkness, and allowed Manhunt 2 to release on the Wii, despite political pushback including from senators through the CCFC. At the same time I don't believe they've ever produced anything M rated.

It's common to joke about the puritanism coming from the major-corporation side of these acquisitions, but in fact Funimation's ex-CEO Gen Fukunaga, years before Funimation was acquired by Sony, himself founded a Christian film studio and hired former Senator Rick Santorum to be CEO [0]. The two companies shared office space [1] and at least one common staff member outside of leadership.

Of the venture, Santorum said in 2013, "This is a tough business, this is something that we’re stepping out, and the Devil for a long, long time has had this, these screens, for his playground and he isn’t going to give it up easily.” [2]

[0] https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2014-01-24 (second Q&A)

[1] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2013/08/02/rick-santorum-chr...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R63yutg7cjo

I'm shocked, shocked to find religious extremism as the root cause.

I remember having to slice open part of the catalog to get to the adult section. That must have been 20 years ago now. I'm actually impressed that they managed to survive the transition to streaming.

It's universal, too. I don't get it.

It seems to be enforced by the credit card companies and processors, who likely charge more to process transactions for companies that involve pornography. (Probably due to the spurious chargebacks.)

Nothing to do with transaction risk. Congress and the executive branch have a myriad of ways to harm a large business if they don't get what they want.

Visa's issues with religious fundamentalists started in the Tipper Gore days. During the Bush presidency it was nearly impossible for a porn site to get a US payment processor.

I meant “universal” as in “every government”, not as on “all across America.”

Every government does this.

>It seems to be enforced by the credit card companies and processors

Who are an unofficial arm of the US government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

Can we make them public utilities too so that they can't discriminate?

If that's the case, then why was Right Stuf able to sell it before?

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