MS Bans Indie Dating Game for “Sexual Violence”

Microsoft has banned a Japanese made dating game from its own Xbox Live “Indie Games” program for a romantic scene in which a girl is pushed onto the ground, showing her pantsu in the process. Microsoft calls this scene “reminiscent of sexual violence,” and so banned the game.

The game in question, それでも、私は愛している / Sore de mo, Watashi wa Aishiteru (“Even So, I Love You”), a short visual novel depicting a school romance, was released onto Microsoft’s Xbox Live distribution service “Indie Games” as an independently developed doujin title.

Not long after release, distribution was suspended and the developer was ordered to stop distribution of the game or have it deleted from the system and have his account terminated.

He managed to extract an explanation from Microsoft’s EU support (US support apparently never bothered informing him of the reasons) regarding the problems with the title:

Event scenes had the following issues:

A girl being grabbed.

A girl being pushed over.

Exposure of underwear.

These are condemned as “reminiscent of sexual violence,” or, in other words, it isa violation scene in the eyes of MS.

You can see the likely scene at issue below, though you will have to excuse the creepy otaku voiceover:

As these scenes are routine in such games in Japan (and indeed in games, movies and so on in the west), he asked if he could not restrict distribution to Japan only (the game is in Japanese only), but was merely told he must suspend distribution or be banned completely from the service (a problem for a publisher who releases other games as he does).

Based on the information at his command, he suspects that a certain feminist inspired furore in the UK has caused Microsoft to become incredibly strict.

The maker is currently working on providing a censored version with no scenes of schoolgirl tipping, which may allow it to resume distribution.

Of course, scenes of bloody carnage perpetrated against both men and women (but not involving anything so depraved as pantsu) are the staple of most major Xbox games, so the fairness of this decision seems questionable…

Via Ore-teki.