Stellar Blade dev says censorship changes had nothing to do with Sony
Developer Shift Up has addressed Stellar Blade's controversial censorship changes
🗣️ Stellar Blade’s censorship controversy has finally been addressed
🙅♂️ Developer Shift Up says “This is the final product we want to show”
✍️ A petition has been launched to revert the changes
😳 Several of EVE’s outfits were made less revealing in a day-one patch
Stellar Blade developer Shift Up has finally cleared the air regarding the controversial censorship changes to some of the game’s outfits.
Changes were made to several costumes via a day one patch, which led to a ‘Free Stellar Blade’ petition being launched, demanding that the outfits be changed back to their original design. It’s currently amassed over 88,000 signatures.
Unpatched physical versions of the game show what the outfits originally looked like, before they were covered up, with many gamers blaming Sony for the changes.
However, Shift Up’s CEO Kim Hyeong-Tae has finally clarified the studio’s approach (thanks, Gameabout) and why it made changes to some of Eve’s outfits.
“I don’t think that just because the costumes are vulgar doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good, so this is something that was modified for quality,” he said. “As a result, there are parts where eroticism is lessened or emphasized. This is the final product that we want to show as the intended result.”
While Kim’s explanation will placate those who believe the redesigned costumes were always the developer’s original intention, it still won’t appease those who will point to the unpatched version of the game as proof that the designs were changed after the fact.
Whether you believe Stellar Blade has been censored or not, it’s still a fantastic title and one of the best PS5 games we’ve tested. I gave the game a perfect score in our Stellar Blade review, saying, “I wanted to keep playing Stellar Blade even after the credits rolled. It never grew tedious or felt like a chore to play, something that has become a common occurrence with other titles I’ve reviewed in the past.”
Stellar Blade received a day-one patch that, aside from covering up more of EVE’s modesty, introduced a New Game+ mode, more outfits to unlock, reduced the game’s input lag, and added several other pleasing tweaks that made the game even better. It’s also achieved one of the highest user scores on Metacritic.
Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.