I can understand removing scenes from the VN only because steam implicitly doesn't sell content thats sexual under principle generally anyway. I think its a bit ridiculous myself, but unlike Hatred it isn't surprising. Just another case of society being more scared of sexuality than violence.

So is this confirmed for GOG release?

Far from it.

Okay, you have responsibilities but you aren't a store that sells music, DVDs, video games, books etc Whenever I say "store" in my posts, I'm not talking about every single business out there. Because not all businesses are even capable of censorship.

"If said CD is glorifying some really nasty crap - and we can all think of some things that fall into this category so I'll just leave it as random nastiness - the store is under no ethical / moral / legal obligation to help spread that message."
Who are you to decide what is really nasty crap for other people? That is called playing god. If it's nasty crap in your eyes, fine. But let others have the freedom to get their hands on that nasty crap and enjoy it. LOL It's not like that nasty crap will turn them into serial killers or rapists or whatever. I see no ethical reason for a store to take part in censorship.

"To force the store to do so is wrong on multiple levels, including a violation of that store's own Freedom of Speech. Watching the trailer for this particular game, the content could easily be construed as really nasty crap."
It's not wrong at all and it doesn't violate the store's freedom of speech. It just prevents the store from taking part in censorship. The owner of the store can still express himself or herself. The owner of the store could post a sign underneath the shelf with the "nasty crap" games and write on the sign, "This game has disgusting content and are for sick people." or something like that.

And about your hypothetical situation. Yeah, I didn't censor you but that is because I'm not a store and you weren't trying to get a product sold. So it wouldn't even be possible for me to censor you.

"But that's not selling something." Okay, instead suppose I'm there to sell my poster on the subject of [choose-something-you-heavily-oppose]. You still would not be censoring me."
No because it's not even possible for me to censor you because I'm not a store. :)

"If you don't like what I have to say, it's not my right to force you to allow me to spread my message from your property - be it physical or virtual, business or personal. If Steam doesn't like the content of a title, it is the company's private property rights and those are not to be trampled simply because the publisher decides that it wants Steam to be the primary point of distribution for the message." I don't know why you are bringing rights into this discussion because we aren't talking about rights. We are talking about what is right and what is wrong here based on what is good for humanity, freedom and all that other good stuff etc.

"What you're asking for is that a business has no particular say in which legal products it can and can not place on its shelves, within the realm of the products it already sells."
Not every business. Just businesses that deal with information and speech like Walmart, Steam, Amazon.com, book stores, DVD stores, music stores etc. Those businesses have a responsibility to uphold the freedom of speech for the good of humanity. It would be impossible for your business to take part in censorship. So then if you refused to sell a product it would be for practical reasons and I see nothing wrong with that.

"Put another way, here's what you're proposing: "Hey, HereForTheBeer - we're sending you a box of books promoting the joys of Fascism. By law, you have to sell them." Note the irony. "
If you are a store that sells books then I see no problem with that. And you make it sound like it's so horrible to sell books. I'm not suggesting, the owner of the store should read the book 1000 times and then twists his own nipples 1000 times. It's not like, the owner of the store has his right to bear arms, taken away. Even today in the USA, most book stores sell books like Mein Kampf and The Turner Diaries and the chances are high, the owners think the content of those two books are "nasty crap". But they still decided to sell the books. Probably because they have morals.

"To say I disagree with that position is a big understatement. As a business owner, there's no fucking way I will accept that I do not have the right to tell a vendor that I will not buy, promote, and resell their product if it happens to be in opposition to my own views." Well if you are the owner of a business that deals with speech and information, then you are being extremely immoral because censorship is evil. It's as simple as that. Only an extremely immoral person would get mad if someone took away their right to suppress information and speech. Someone who doesn't enjoy playing god over other people wouldn't care.

It's kind of strange that someone who values freedom so much is pro censorship and against the freedom of speech... Maybe because all your thoughts come from your ego and emotions? OR maybe you think anything less 100% freedom for everyone is wrong? But you are forgetting that freedom can be used to take away freedom.

Definition of Freedom of Speech: "Freedom of speech is the political right to communicate one's opinions and ideas using one's body and property to anyone who is willing to receive them."

Following this definition Steam (or any other store) has every right to not sell the game without violating the Freedom of Speech of the developers. The developers are not using their body or property (instead they want to use someone else's property to communicate their oppinion and ideas. And when a store decides not to sell the product they are obviously not willing to receive the opinion's and ideas.

But I'm sure monkeydelarge will tell me why I'm wrong in a minute.

Edit: Added a link.

You're not wrong, just that censorship is not necessarily the suppression of speech via the suppression of its creator's body or property. You can censor the distribution. So freedom of speech and censorship do not contradict each other perfectly, there's grey areas.


Edit: by the way, the game is back on Green light I believe?

The point being, unless it is the government (or some equally universal organisation or group of organisations) putting the limits on the distribution (i.e. banning a certain game from being sold), it doesn't count as censorship. Because as much as Steam fanboys may want it to be so, Steam is not the be all and end all of PC game digital distribution, and Valve, being a private company with its own thoughts and opinions, has has no (moral OR legal) obligation to distribute a game they do not wish to. If and when the game is released, Valve does not have the means to censor it, there are a million other ways for the devs to sell the game.

And yeah, it is back on greenlight now, so this discussion seems to be nothing more than academic.

You can of course censor the distribution. I never doubted that. I just don't believe that it can be done by a single store (as long as it don't have a monopoly). If a store don't want to sell your game, you can still sell it on any othe one who is willing to sell it. Or you can distribute it yourself.

If government of jurisditcion forbids everybody (including yourself) to sell the game it would be censorship of course.

I wonder where you drawn the line? In practice black markets and such exist, so even the government does not establish some universal (there's other governments in the world) or absolute (there's ways to distribute unlawful content) censorship.

So me I prefer other rules, instead of an arbitrary rule that non government actors are prescribed from censoring. It's not like these Corporation/NGO's actions, choices and motivations are indistinguishable from government censorship, except for the implied coercive violence of government which anyway is not usually applied, its threat being enough.

I rather another rule where we call a spade a spade; there's self-censorship, there's censorship, there's government censorship. They all have in common the suppression of expression due to third parties presumed objection to said expression. This suppression need not be universal, nor absolute, it will still be a form of censorship. Makes sense?

To me it makes sense, and it's quite easy to distinguish the three types of censorship. Whereas your approach has a significant downside, as it effectively whitewashes some types of censorship, just because they are less extreme. Of course I know that's not your intention ;) I'm sure you don't agree with the censoring motives, therefore you don't find this censorship good and you're not actually wanting to whitewash it :)
Some of us like academic discussions, moral political philosophy, etc...

I'll let him/her explain his point or not as she/he wishes. With you I don't expect dialogue to reach any conclusion... Thanks anyway.

Part of it makes sense for me. Of cours there is self-censorship, often seen in culture (like movie makers releasing a cut version of a movie to get a certain rating) for example. But I would say that's a different problem and it has it's own definition.

I also agree that there can be non-governmental censorship, but I would say that it needs at least be pushed by influential groups that have a heavy impact on the whole society. This can be churches, mass media or certain powerful lobbyist groups.

But a single person or company? I don't know. How should that work? For example I could tell you to change your forum title to "Support Anita Sarkeesian!". If you don't agree, you would certainly not do it, but for me you don't do censorship or violation of freedom of speech by not sharing my oppinion (jDisclaimer: It's just an example about a controversial topic and has nothing to do with my real personal oppinion).

For me it was more or less an academic discussion most of the time. I don't care about the game and I don't even use Steam, but I think it's interesting to discuss the definition and limits of censorship and freedom of speech.

If you need to retort to black (illegal) market, then it is censored. However, as long as you within your legal confines can get the product as is intended by the producers, then it is not censored.

Therefore, Steam (or any other store) not selling Hatred is not subjected to censorship, as the developers are free to distribute the game (via own website) as they want. Yes, they will hit a more marginal market, but they are also creating a product which is aimed towards a marginal market, and should not expect mainstream acceptance. If they want mainstream acceptance, they need to create a mainstream product - but this is a choice, not censorship. It would be censorship if they where told that they can not make what they want to make (even distribute it, though not via mainstream channels, it is still distributed), this is not the case here.

I may think this game is going to become a boring snoorefest, which is only going to sell due to shock and controversy, and I aill be glad for those reasons for every store to see through what the game is and not sell it, but if you want to buy it and play it, you will be free to do so (but maybe not via gOg or whatever), so there is no censorship.

Most German gamers would beg to differ. A game that does not get a USK rating or gets "indexed" can theoretically still be obtained legally, however, the distributional limitations (and especially the ones concerning advertizing) result in a situation that can be and often (if not usually) is considered de facto censorship because that's the practical nature of the consequences. And I believe that Steam excluding a game is analogous to that.

And of course it's something different in this case where Steam just happens to be the most popular distributional platform for games and not some government's organ, but keep in mind: media outlet's decisions on what content they release, what information they hold back etc. is also considered censorship. The people on TV networks who say what content in their films/shows is okay and which isn't are also called "censors". Heck, even if a content-creator decides to tone his own extreme content down for one reason or another it's called self-censorship. I believe that if that's the case then the term should as well apply whenever a distributor carrying a certain kind of products excludes individual products based on the nature of their content. The sole reason why the term "censorship" may not apply here is that its definition is obsolete.

Not to mention that Steam currently has more power over a game's and even the whole industry's fate than any censor anywhere. :P

I disagree. Ultra violent and provoking video games have been mainstream almost as long as they have existed. The kind of content which is limited to niche films is almost perfectly common in mainstream video games. More importantly, the percentage of Steam users interested in this game probably isn't any lower than for many games which fulfill mainstream requirements by your definition. And funnily enough the game basically hit mainstream the moment mainstream publications covered the game like any mainstream game.

And in my opinion it's still far too early to actually comment on the game's nature anyway. There's been an extremely provoking trailer, okay, but we still don't know the developers' true creative intention for sure.

Germany is interesting, yes. But then a lot of games there do get censored. However, this is local legislation and a retailer must adhere to them if they want to sell in that country. However, you can not judge all other countries by German standards (nor can we judge the openness and censorship of the Internet only by Chinese standards). At the best, we can only do generalisations (as each country have different laws) and as such I would not say that whether a game is sold via Steam or not is not censorship.

Regarding marginalisation of the game, and the market - it is clearly not set up to be mainstream, in fact it is selling itself so far as a bit anti-mainstream, did not even use words like "rebellious medium" and similar? When I talk about mainstream here, I am not talking about the consumers, but distribution channels. In any case, you may say it is better for the developers to be banned by as many mainstream retailers as possible, thereby getting more PR and making sure that more people are buying the game directly from them and making more monies (larger cut).

Which is exactly the point. You are advocating taking away my freedom to express an opinion through my private business, that being "I take this position on issue XYZ and refuse to support the opposing opinion." In the hypothetical case, some customers come to my store in part because of the products I sell. It is perfectly logical that they might also NOT come to my store because of the products I sell. For instance, I have a kid's book store and someone writes a book on the joys of man-boy love. The author / publisher drops off 50 copies and I should be required to sell that? "Well sure - it's a book about kids, and not spreading that message means you're evil and immoral and against freedom."

Uuuhhh...


Yes, the private property example applies. Because it's about private property and Free Speech, not about products. A store is private property.


Anyway...

Pick any topic. Suppose you and I have opinions on that topic that are polar opposites. Neither opinion is better or worse than the other. You have a store in which you express that opinion. I have a product in which I express the opposite. You propose that I should be able to force you to express my opinion in your store. In the process, gov't has allowed me to A) violate your free speech rights of freedom from my opinion, and B) violate your private property rights. Forced application of my single right has violated two of yours.

Who, in their right mind, would then choose to open a business if any schmuck can come in off the street, place their product on my shelf, and - with the backing of law - force me to sell a product that I do not want to sell? (That leaves out the bit about forcing me to buy the product in the first place - the wholesale purchase - which is whole other matter that makes the position even more unsupportable).


No, I am not pro-censorship. The problem is that you keep saying that this is censorship. It's not. It's my Free Speech right to decide what message is propagated via my private property / enterprise. I in no way say that my opinion needs to apply to every other store. For all I care, the neighboring stores can sell the product. For all I care, I might be the only one NOT selling it. But it's my choice, for my property, and my choice doesn't extend to others' private property. Censorship would be me saying you can't sell it in my store, and also you can't sell it in my neighbor's store. But I can't censor because it's his store, not mine, and I have no say in what shows up on his shelf.


No, I am not against Freedom of Speech. Read again and you'll see the opposite:

"It's your Free Speech right to not participate in the propagation of my message. It's my right to attempt to spread my message from my own property, so long as it's not intruding upon the rights of others. And it's other folks' right to ignore me and also ignore whatever message I'm attempting to spread."

What I am against is the arbitrary decision to force one person's Free Speech upon another person, at which point it is no longer Free Speech. That point is key to the whole thing. Free Speech guarantees neither your choice of soapbox nor an audience. It only guarantees that you can express your message.

Don't forget the maxim, "Your right to swing your fists ends at my nose." My store is my nose.