Lots of different issues being suggested in that post there. I'll address the points raised one by one:

1. I'm not buying into the idea that the phrase "for all we know" gives Ghostlight a carte blanche free pass to butcher the game, not disclose any reason for why they've done so, then be justified for doing on the basis that their defenders will use their silence as a springboard from which to fabricate fake but good-sounding reasons on their behalf for why the censorship is supposedly justified.

Thankfully, most consumers are not buying into that idea either, which is why this game if flopping very badly.

That is great news in these circumstances. Because if it didn't flop, then it's success would be sending the message that consumers welcome censorship, and hence cause more of it to occur in many other games too.

2. Valve having done other censorship-minded things in the past is a moot point; that has no relevance to this particular situation with the MS 2 game. There is zero evidence at all that Valve asked for it to be censored, and there is no reason to assume that they did.

3. If Valve did ask for it to be censored, then there would be no reason as to why Ghostlight couldn't publicly state that to be so.

Contrary to what that quoted post is implying, there is no such thing as an NDA between a dev like Ghostlight & Valve that would require Ghostlight not to make public statements if & when Valve asked them to censor a game.

Many other devs have publicly stated when Valve asked them to censor the game without any problem.

And they also hosted uncensor patches on their own web sites for free (which is also something that Ghostlight would be able to do with no problem, if Valve had demanded any Steam censorship).

4. If Ghostlight was asked to sign NDA with another party, like IFI as a hypothetical example, who asked them to censor the game, and then not to disclose who asked for the censorship, then Ghostlight still did that willingly and of their own volition.

So there being an NDA in that situation would not in any way excuse Ghostlight's behavior. NDA or not, it's still Ghostlight's fault for choosing to allow this to happen, and to participate in it deliberately.

5. If Ghostlight is so poor that they 'had to' censor the game because they couldn't afford to make both an uncensored real version and a butchered version too, then they shouldn't have agreed to handle the game.

They should have known that censoring the game is very insulting & disrespectful to the fans of the franchise, and that the fans don't want that. If they knew their financial limits would prevent them from giving the franchise and its fans the respect they deserve, then Ghostlight should have chosen to take a pass on handling the game at all.

And all of that is assuming that Ghostlight even had any sort of semi-legit reason in the first place to censor the game, which they probably didn't.

6. If, as that quoted post suggests may be so, Ghostlight's limited amount of money was the factor that led them to make only one censored version, and have no money left over an uncensored version too, then that decision has backfired.

Now, as a direct consequence of having butchered the game, Ghostlight will be taking in far less money than they would have been otherwise been taking in had they left the game uncensored and complete, like the Switch version is.

So, if they were only going to make one version, then the smarter thing to do, the thing that would have been in their own best interest, would have been to make it the original intact version.

Conclusion: no, Ghostlight is not defensible in this situation. On the contrary: their censorship actions are totally inexcusable.

The only good news in this situation is that the backlash and the massive flop that is MS 2 on PC may prevent similar censorship from occurring in the future, since IFI and other publishers are going to see the financial failure that happened here and be wary of repeating it with their own future releases.