TencentInvestor: It's more like rating boards refusing to rate these games as something below "adult". When you share your age rating with porn movies and such, you lose the Walmart audience. So game publishers will employ self censorship in order to meet the rating board's standards and reach the audience they need to achieve their bottom line.

In the end, it's all about the money. Back in the day, German rating boards would not rate games like Gears of War and Left for Dead 2 based on "violence". Gears of War never sought release until the political climate changed. Nowadays, you can get these rated 18 without censorship in German stores. Left for Dead 2 went down the dark path of self censorship, giving blood effects a nasty green instead of red. To this day, steam will only sell this version to a German customer in Germany. "German low violence versions" are a testament to an era I will always loathe with every fibre of my being. Is there a political responsibility for forcing self censorship? Yes, certainly. Is there a responsibility for publishers and developers to stay true to their artistic vision? Yes, certainly.

In the end, the problem is more complex. What matters is that everyone involved signals what product you will get depending on where and who you are. Steam gives me an ugly yellow bar, warning me of a lesser version of the game being sold to me. I don't think CDPR did enough to inform me about the content of their game.

Before launch, they described it in a way that barely resembles the product they launched.

thefallenalchemist: Yes, breasts and a hanging dick are considered pornography. Look, we live in an age where bikini DLC content is censored in Japanese games and character costumes are even censored. What in the heck makes you think that hanging dick and exposed breasts will make it? Start doing your research.

thefallenalchemist: Also, let us add some context. Gal Gun Returns just got cancelled for Xbox because of the content. It will still be on PS. So if a game where you shoot anime waifus with a love gun gets banned for the lewd content, then how in the bloody heck do you think dicks flopping around and breasts bouncing up and down is gonna work in an RPG? Good lord, sir. Use your imagination. They censor these games pretty hard in the west, as soon as I found out Cyberpunk was not going to be the first AO game, I expected all the censorship. And I expect more.

But that's fine, as I have lewd and adult content as it is. Not everything has to stimulate me. As it stands, the game is visually stimulating enough with no need for some kind of sexual stimulation. People running around nude will not make the game better, it'll get it banned. The thing is sold in Walmart for crying out loud.

The context for why that is important is quite simple. Walmart still sells edited music and they have also edited the covers of films. Deathgasm came out a while back, and in order for the film to be sold in Walmart, the name of the film and cover had to be changed to "Heavy Metal Apocalypse." I know, because I have that version of the film. The movie itself remains unchanged.

Mark my words, if they wanted to sell this game at Walmart with all the nudity that you're talking about, it would not happen. And trust me, CDPR wanted that Walmart money because there were OH SO MANY loose copies of the game while I was working freight. That's unheard of. I've sorted loose freight for years and I have never seen so many damn copies of one game pouring in. It is worth mentioning that all of those were pulled off the shelves, probably went to the bargain bin. But make no mistake, they wanted that Walmart money, so they censored the game.

midrand: It made it into this game into the inventory screen - and lo and behold it has not been censored there. You have both tits and dicks in this game - just in some awkward places and situations and then for some reason not other very similar situations. You also had nudity in Witcher 1/2/3, and in a number of other titles - in a much more cohesive manner. None of those games had rating issues. It makes no sense in CP 2077.

The mere fact that you consider nudity as pornography (whether in a game setting or in a movie) shows how far this world has gone down a cliff.
midrand: You are clearly missing my point about reference, appropriateness and the right setting vs nudity / sexual themes - instead you keep on referring to people runnign around nude with dicks. This is not going anywhere so I suggest we close the subject. Like I said, it would be perfectly acceptable to have no nudity in this game altogether by removing locations / themes where nudity is part of the background of what happens in that setting. Instead we have this half baked approach.

Alias117: 100+ hours so far and not disappointed some bugs and errors at times, but it was nothing extremely bad and some funny bugs a long the way certain things yeah would have been nice, a haircut option during the game it self and maybe options to get the cars we have painted.
Transmog would have been great or option to hide head gear, game it self the story i liked the story and gotten through the second out of the 4 or so endings now, and i plan on playing another round just lower difficulty this time and getting some more of the achievements done.
Sure it sucks for console players with the amount of game breaking bugs and the outright lie of it running with out issues on current gen consoles and looking extremely well on next gen consoles, the game has optimization issues sure on all fronts, however it lived up to my hype for the game it self but then again i did not go overboard thinking this would be some entire universe set in the cyberpunk lore we could interact with i understood it would have limitations.

kayl1990: You, and a lot of other people on this forum, needed to temper your expectations of this game. You can only blame yourself for riding full speed on the hype train.

PITERDEVRIES2077: I don't know why so many expected the most amazing game ever made in human history. And then got mad when it became clear, that is not the case and then treat CDPR like the most evil people on this Earth. LOL So many drama queens out there. They are a business, of course, they are going to do some marketing for their next game and reveal ambitious plans. And like humans often do after revealing ambitious plans, fail to achieve them. I remember reading an ad for Daikatana that told me John Romero's about to make me his bitch. Well after the game came out, nobody became his bitch. And I wasn't surprised because I doubt anyone can make a game that awesome. And pretty much, most experienced gamers know, when a PC game comes out, it's most likely a mess. So a lot of gamers wait awhile before buying it. This is something PC gamers have had to deal with since the 90s. Only console gamers in the past had the luxury of buying a game and then receiving a polished product. But those days are gone. Console games in the past were polished products because in the past, if a console game was broken, they wouldn't be able to fix the game over time. So then people would just be forever stuck with a broken game. And stores would tell you to fuck off for asking for a refund if you played the game, even for 5 seconds back then.

thefallenalchemist: I have not played anything after Witcher 1, so I cannot comment on that. However, once again we refer to the waifus and bikini argument. They won't allow bikinis or scantily clad outfits on cartoon characters in many console anime games. And pretty soon they will probably censor the breasts in the character creator. Welcome to censorship sir, this is why we have mods.

leatherbound: Look, I get it. I waited for this game too. I wanted this game when games couldn't be this and when I loaded in on day 1 even in it's buggy mess It was still pretty damn amazing. It was beautiful.

It was also an empty promise. Not as bad as Anthem but at least as bad as No Mans Sky or Destiny 1. Worse, since CDPR traded on their reputation, hid the problems, lied about crunch and NDA'd reviewers from discussing the problems before launch.

...and then you get to the part where they just flat out lied about how CP77 could run on old gen consoles. Look, I "PC Game"(TM), I thought that was a crazy idea too. Those old consoles are relics of a meh generation. But CDPR said they could do it and "it's CDPR, we can trust them", so we all shrugged and said ok buddy.

Yeah it runs badly, yeah the AI is a joke, yeah the customization and origins mean nothing. Yeah, there are plenty of other issues, but bottom line? Cyberpunk 2077 isn't what CDPR said it was.

In my book that's not fixed with a patch, it's fixed with a refund.

midrand: I suggest you look at the videos then of the sexual themes in Witcher 3 to understand my point - much tastier and much more appropriate for a mature game. No issues with the rating in 2015 and no issues with ratings for DLCs which equally (Blood and Wine) had more sexual content.

CP2077 looks bizarre against its predecessors from the same software company and similar games. Just bizarre.

A society is sick if it allows decapitation to be viewed by minors, but not tits. I'm sorry.

thefallenalchemist: To be extremely fair with you, I do agree with your last point, but will add that The Witcher games are not necessarily for minors. They're M-Rated, which means that they're adult titles as they should be. I will also agree that yes, a lot of minors got their hands on these kinds of games, but they are technically for adults. As far as boobs and blood go, I saw that stuff when I was underage. I have no issue with it. But this isn't about what you or I want, it's about corporate legalities and the rating system here in the west.

sebastelian: got scammed with this game over on steam... save to say gog and cdpr will never see a single dime from me again