ESRB range affect worldwide release. Major games seller and consoles societies doesn't accept AO rating, when the game is in development investors and publisher make a contract to devs where M is the highest rating allowed in order to sell it through mainstream channel. In case a game get the AO rating the game is censored before worldwide release, so the first released version that players can actually buy is the toned down M rated version and is the only version that investors and consoles accept to be sold. That M rated version is so the official version of the game and release the AO version is impossible until the contract with investors is still active, then developers could choose to release the game themselves or with another contract/publisher in its AO form but this is a second release and have a cost, also release an AO rated game have major taxes to pay. Other censored version like Japan ones with Cyberpunk for example aren't a second release because are all based on the M rated international version, so they only remain regionally censored. This also applies to movies. I though lack of nudity was just self censorship and not forced censorship but i'm reading that every update is bringing more censorship, so now it's getting so much bad. If had known before i wouldn't bought the game.
But after all, they already have a censorship switch in the settings, why not just make it non-switchable for those platforms and countries where the laws for this are harsh. At the same time, giving all other players the full experience that was originally intended for the game, with blood, nudity and all that gloom and hopelessness of the future world.
Gore isn't accepted, NC-17 and AO rating could also be used for this. There aren't many AO games for violence but there are many NC-17 movies for that reason.
If I had answers for that I would gladly give them. However CDPR are being purposely tight lipped about the reason they are doing this. Needless to say, whatever that reason is, it's not one that want to come forward and share with the rest of us.
USA has a way more conservative point of view in terms of nudity and sex. The way they legislate and rate content is proof of that. You can compare PEGI's (Pan-European Game Information) descriptions with ESRB's (funny how they don't even use "american" in its name, as if it was a "universal" rating board or something...). ESRB enters into details, such as the amount of "booobs", "cleavage" (omg tits!!!!!! hide the kids!!!!). Meanwhile, Europe rates games in a far more lax and relaxed fashion: sex, drugs, violence. Period, full stop. In Europe, we don't even care about nudity, there's no rating for nudity, only for sexualized content, because that's what trully matters.
I agree. The main reason Skyrim has staying power is because of how open-ended it was. This is very much an on-rails game, which can really kill a lot of peoples motivations for trying to fix it. It's just sad, because I love Cyberpunk as a genre and it's rarely explored in video games, so being able to play around in a cyberpunk world was something I was excited about, but at the end of the day this more or less boils down to just paying 60 bucks to read someone's fanfiction and occasionally play a minigame where you shoot bad guys.
Yeah, I'm actually supporting your view, buddy. I'm european too, from another countryLol. That is basically what I'm saying in my post.
You defintiely do still see blood, the white splatter is when you hit a body part that had a cybernetic implant. See below for 2 bloods and 1 cyber fluids..
Mainstream distribution is impossible
That happens because of publishers want to sell games with more mainstream ways possible.That might be true for American developers/publishers which CDPR isn't. I'm not saying that the ESRB ratings aren't important for games all over the world, but please don't fall into the usual American arrogance that we all bow our heads to the mighty US. The Witcher games are very much European games and it shows.
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Lol. That is basically what I'm saying in my post.
America isn't the issue here. Market rules and publisher choice related to money are the why we all get the same version when a game is censored in the US. However ESRB range is imposed by console owners and cloud gaming societies, so they basically are the guilty of this censor system.
