Is only the Steam version censored, or will we need this de-censor patch for all versions including the gog one?

With no prior background, I browsed through the link you posted. I saw a group of committed players discussing their reaction to one part of the game with developers interested in hearing why they feel the way they feel. I saw a lot of long comments that went into nuanced detail about the intended and perceived message and the effects of tone shifts. I didn't see anything in there about reporting the content to Steam or personal attacks on the developer, so either those were buried by the numerous constructive posts I was reading, or they were removed from the forum at some point.

Responsible artists and developers consider the reaction to their work as well as the work itself. They consider whether they conveyed what they meant. Sometimes they even change their minds about what they want to say after hearing others' thoughts.

At minimum, the people voicing complaints appeared to be active players of the game with much knowledge of what it contained. They were informed customers, not protesters invading a community in search of a cause.

I can't speak for the developer or the Maj'Eyal community, but I can say that your link showed me healthy communication between mature human beings. Calling it censorship is, at worst, a call for censorship on productive discussions that don't match your own viewpoint.

I realized after posting that this thread goes back a long way. That's the risk of diving into GOG game forums for a quick check before buying. So I apologize for dragging up a dead and buried discussion.

Why even GOG? We know that morons are at Steam, not here.
The ayatola was asking a Steam censorship. GOG has been sold to Gabbe?

I forgot that's a server game. The dev could have just duff the stuff for the Steam version:
the game would show mylittleponey on Steam (removing puces), and the true one on GOG (killing babies), for the same thing.

No, calling it censorship is calling a spade a spade. It's hardly a productive discussion if the 'healthy communication between mature human beings' that you refer to suddenly devolves into accusations of misogyny towards the writer or the dev (page 6). How are the creators supposed to respond to the insinuation that they have created something which reveals their alleged hatred of women? How is the community who enjoyed that content supposed to respond? It's no surprise that the discussion devolved into quite vociferous reactions. There is a difference between moral castigation and subjective expressions of taste. Either way, I'm firmly opposed to the idea that games should be written by customer focus groups.

People aren't calling for the original discussion to be hidden or shut down so its disingenuous to present an argument to the tune of 'actually you're the censor because you didn't like the way that discussion went'.

It's unfortunate that DG decided that the best remedy - which is to say, the best remedy for the community rift, rather than the remedy to any actual problems with the content - was to remove it altogether. The game is lessened measurably by this censorship - not only artistically, but mechanically, because due to the removal of the breeding pits there is no way to decrease the amount of very difficult orc patrols which roam the eastern continent. That's not the result of a productive discussion, but a destructive one.

Anyway, despite this unfortunate episode, any potential players of ToME should be aware that the breeding pits are restored easily through a free add-on. They are restored in a semi-censored form, but the original vision of the area and lore is largely intact, and they serve the purpose of deepening the story of the orcs while allowing the player a way to make themselves safer in the East. There is also an add-on which restores them in their original unadulterated form but it's glitchy and the creator recommends not to use it.

They responded in ways like this: And this: Public figures sometimes tell jokes that cross the lines of their own audience's tolerance and get a lot of flack for it. This happens in private life as well. Directors and authors fumble a controversial viewpoint and make everyone angry. A careless idiom turns out to carry racial baggage. When ordinary people find themselves in the position of getting a negative reaction to something they did or said, they realize what they were saying didn't carry the message they intended. Whether they are hurt, embarrassed, or exasperated, they commonly apologize and use the experience to refine their message for the future.

The creator's intent is important when judging and interpreting someone's work. But so is how the tone and content comes across to an average viewer, regardless of intent. If the creator decides, upon reflection, to alter or remove something that got an unintended reaction, it's not censorship, it's editing. Customers demanding a change of content isn't censorship either. In a business relationship, it's up to the creator to decide whether lost money outweighs personal expression. The creator is free to walk away from the customer's money at any time.

Censorship is when changes are imposed on the author with credible threats of punishment if the author refuses. This was a case where the designer freely decided the content was not having the desired effect, leading him to remove it in favor of a future replacement. He may have been unhappy about the reactions he was getting, but he didn't feel strongly enough about what he was removing to place it ahead of his overall vision for his game and community. That's a personal choice he made, using his freedom as creator of the game.

This isn't my battle and I won't carry it farther than this post. But reducing what people were saying to "SJW Censorship vs. Creative Freedom" does a disservice to the diverse opinions I saw represented in that thread. People were apologizing for misunderstandings, offering ideas to alter the zone without removing it, or explaining why they wanted the zone to remain without changes. The designer was unhappy at the reactions but chose to give them weight in his decisions. I've seen far worse interactions from all sides in other communities.

Not really sure what you think the significance of these quotes is, but I'm guessing that you're showing them as examples of 'healthy communication'. Everything you quoted was subsequent to the decision to censor. It's easy for people to be civil when they've either got their way or been shown that they've lost a battle. Nothing is at stake then.

You left out the most important response, which was the action of removing the content from the game completely. You also omitted the responses from Grey (the writer, who did not make the call to remove the content) and DG such as "I can understand how the zone could be considered misogynistic" and "this thread makes me sad, I miss being trusted as a good person". That is precisely the point I was making when I asked 'how are they supposed to respond?' They responded by attempting to save their reputation, in the face of unsubstantiated accusations against their character. They responded by self-censoring.

'Editing' is something that typically happens before a creative work is released for consumption, unless there are fundamental mechanical problems with it. Design by committee and focus grouping are bad enough in and of themselves, and they have deservedly bad reputations when it comes to creating quality works of fiction. When they happen post-release, on the basis of moral outrage, and the outcome is removal of content, that's called censorship.

To be clear, when someone tells a writer "this is disgusting, I won't buy it", I respect that response. I respect it less when people say "this is disgusting, you should change what you have made". "This is disgusting, you must change it or I will call you a sexual pervert/misogynist/corrupter of children" - is a response I have zero respect for.

In this case, the 'credible threat of punishment' you refer to is the damage to a person's reputation when they become associated with genocide, sexual perversion, rape (see previous page of *this very thread*) and hatred of women. In the linked thread it also took the form of a more literal, prosaic threat to report the game to Steam for '[allowing] 10 year olds to see descriptions of graphic nightmare-fuel'. If you want to get abstract, there was also the figurative 'threat' that the community would be polarised and divided by the argument, a threat that didn't materialise until people started making personal attacks based on the content. What happened to this game is censorship. Equivocation doesn't change that.

That will be my final word, because rebutting these arguments gives me the appearance of someone who is unhappy with ToME or angry with its creators when I'm not. Said all I want to.

So, if I turn off the "censor boot" is all the content you folks are talking about re-enabled and I'll be experiencing what the writers intended, or are there things permanently changed that didn't use to be the way they are now with no hope of going back? If so is it possible to get an older archived version (you can contact GOG for these in some cases I think?)

That's related to something else. The removed content was the Orc Breeding pits. If you want to play them you need to install this add-on by Aura of the Dawn. It is not the original unaltered form of the content, but it's the closest you get without playing an older version of ToME, which I wouldn't really recommend considering all that's been added and changed since then. The add-on which restores them in the unaltered form has a glitch which Aura has been unable to trace, so is not recommended.

EDIT: just in case you didn't know, I'll point out that add-on's in ToME need to be installed and switched on at the time of character creation in order to have an effect on the run.

Thank you very much that is all very helpful and informative. I hope the unaltered version gets working and available soon.

Ditto. Looked neat, but if they're going to censor a game because of a vocal minority then it's probably not worth playing. Rather buy Lego Worlds anyways

Don't over-react. 1st, you can restore the content, and 2nd, it's stilla good game. Normally I might agree with you two, but in this case, I don't. Try it, and get the restored content, it's easy enough.