Blizzard to Remove "Sexy" Tracer Pose in Overwatch - Update

[Alterego-X]

it show that the devs will cave to anything as long as enough people whine. It's not about the non-issue, it's about how the devs handled it.

And apparently that "enough people" is exactly one person making a politely worded comment in a feedback thread.

 

[Bad Jim]

I should defiantly clarify here, I meant the Mules/Chrono Boost/Larva Injection, the ones that you can only do well enough and have no alternate strategies or upward gain on them(nobody can chrono boost faster than the recharge rate allows, same with Mules and Larva). Since the only thing you can do is fail at them its just busywork that adds a wall that most casual players don't care to vault over.

Yeah. I thought it was odd that in WOL they allowed you to select and hotkey multiple buildings, put rally points on your minerals, and then added an artificial layer of busywork to replace the busywork they had removed. But there are still a lot of players that want the game to be macro intensive, presumably because they are good at it.

I suspect that they thought they could satisfy both sides of the argument by allowing noobs to get a reasonable mineral income without much effort, while maintaining a busywork intensive high level game. But if noobs can field similar sized armies to their opponents, the busywork will never make a difference between players of similar macroing skill.

 

[EMWISE94]

That's cool. I wish I could draw. I am horrible at it. I once drew a stick figure and someone asked me why the dragon looked so sick. Hell, even signing my name is usually considered an invocation of dark magics or a cry for help.

So I'm curious now. Do you ask as you're designing, or after the fact?

Main reason I ask is my first drafts are often rough but written in the moment. Part of it is just to keep going to the end, and part of it is the knowledge I'm going to change things later. Hell, when writing songs, I'll throw in throwaway or even gibberish lines (an idea I may have gotten from "Scrambled Eggs," or was it 101 Dalmatians...) just to get the general flow down.

I imagine when you're an employee as part of a large group, it gets even more potentially confusing. Not only do you have to do your job, but everyone else has to do theirs at the same time. Ideas might be carried along because one thinks that's what they're supposed to be doing and whatnot, and there may not be that hands-on a level of oversight. Thing is, I don't work in environments like that. I'm either the only person doing the work or I'm beholden to a small number of people.

It could be that because this is paid work, they didn't stop to ask why themselves.

Its a varying mix, sometimes I'll have a mental image prepared before putting in down on paper and then tweaking what's necessary until satisfied, other times I just rush out the image first and start questioning the design after I've let it sit for a bit. Which is a key thing I do, I tend to let my designs 'sit' for a bit before passing final judgment, sometimes I'll put out a design and be happy with it but then a bit later I look back and go "eh, maybe it could do with some changes."; sometimes I also have visual shorthands that I put out similar to the gibberish you mentioned with your lyrics, mine would be jackets with popped collars, like if I have a character wearing some form of jacket or heavy top apparel its got popped collars or a really loose neck sleeve (like Neku from TWEWY).

Also I've been on some collaborative projects in which I produced some assets for somebody to review and get back to me and usually there's no chances of something we both don't like going through to final phases, but then again on said projects I was usually the solo artist so mayhaps once I work on a gig with other artist (something that might be happening soon involving animation) maybe I might see how designs that the team didn't like possibly went through. I know at times the biggest culprit is time constraints, one example I can think off is Mick Gordon saying how he wasn't happy with Riptor's theme in Killer Instinct but he had to get something out in time and wanted to go revisit it if he could.

 

[Schadrach]

If they hadn't more or less immediately given in, this would have become a Twitter campaign causing a PR nightmare

Right, because this never cuts both ways *coughs while pointing in the direction of the Overwatch forums and subreddit*

"Overwatch is sexist" is a much bigger PR problem than "man-children mad that Blizzard removed jack-off material from Overwatch" -- you are ignoring how it will be spun. Blizzard isn't Rockstar, they don't have the right reputation to just say "fuck you all, we'll do what we want" on stuff like this.

I'm not sure a game company can actually get big and develop that reputation these days, since Rockstar built it against "think of the children" stuffy right-wingers as opposed to the "think of the women" hipster left-wingers that are their counterparts these days. Proof of horseshoe theory, I guess.

Kind of like how the "Punch Jack Thompson" game was totally fine and worth a snicker, but the "Punch Anita Sarkeesian" game was evil misogynistic harassment, if not itself a threat of violence being made against her.

Apparently you haven't if you're going the route of "these people" and applying it to a group other than "people who use the internet". This woman received death threats just for poking fun at the name of a lipstick colour on her Twitter page. [https://medium.com/@parkermolloy/5-things-the-media-does-to-manufacture-outrage-ba79125e1262]

Yes, that kind of thing happens, and the news coverage is often a self-fulfilling prophecy (this doesn't hurt my point at all, you just gave an example of the role media plays in creating the problem). Here's a question for you: once it started doing the media rounds, how many people were out there complaining about the name of that lipstick color? It wasn't just her, even if she was the origin point and given too much focus thanks to the media pointing her out as the origin point.

Note by the way that the lipstick color was deemed "problematic" because it was "underage red" and thus was promoting/causing/celebrating/whatever-the-fuck-they-decide-to-call-it-this-time-to-denote-responsibility-without-having-to-demonstrate-how-ing "the degradation of women, statutory rape, sexual behavior, human trafficking, underage drinking, or even idealization of fleeting youth." Also, this color of lipstick was accused of supporting rape culture more than a few times. That one tweet may have been the flashpoint, but that wasn't where the controversy went, much like WWI wasn't "about" Archduke Ferdinand in any meaningful way.

Doesn't matter to me. Nobody has any right to use a private social media platform. If they want ban people for their opinion of "kill all the kikes" then let them.

If it was only people yelling "kill all the kikes", no one would care. What is actually happening is that they establish a set of rules under which people are supposed to act, then certain people are arbitrarily immune to those rules for political reasons, PR reasons, or both while others are held to much tighter standards because they say unpopular things that don't actually violate the rules.

People get annoyed when you establish a policy, then have secret hidden rules that determine who the policy actually applies to.

Dunno, how many people sent threats of violence against or exposed sensitive information of Hillary Clinton and her supporters? How many of her supporters sent threats of violence against or exposed sensitive information of people who are against it?

In #WhichHillary? A small minority, if even that. Most of it was posting her publicly saying something alongside her publicly saying the opposite on a different occasion. She's been both pro- and anti- a pretty shocking number of positions, sometimes just weeks apart.

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft. Yes, sure, GamerGate, a movement about complaining about games journalism, is so very important that its having a direct and significant impact on the presidential election.

Only in the way that the Nobel prize is about newspaper errors.

I'm not saying GG is influencing elections or anything ridiculous like that. I'm saying that Twitter developed approaches for "defusing" hashtags they find problematic in response to GG and related tags, most of which was deployed in mid-to-late 2015 (some of those "anti-bullying policies" you wonder why folks get opposed to). They in turn have used those same techniques and policies to "defuse" anti-Clinton hashtags, because they already have the tools in place for "defusing" hashtags semi-quietly, why not use them?

It's the same way that spam bots are responsible for a fantastic tool for "no platforming" people on Reddit, the shadow ban. Shadow bans were introduced as a way to block spambots while making the spambot think it isn't blocked. Basically you get flagged, and once you are flagged any post you make on any part of Reddit must be approved by a moderator for anyone else to see it. You see your own posts as though this wasn't happening, and the only way to know is if a moderator informs you. You have to petition the admins to have it removed, and until/unless it is, all your posts require explicit moderator approval in all subs. Again, created as an anti-spam measure, and then used for other things entirely.

It was really only one person. A few people in the thread read the post and went "yeah, I see your point" while many disagreed.

Everything starts with one person.

You say it was only one person, who wants to bet that if we look we'll see an awful lot of folks talking about it (not just in the forum thread, but also in social media), and in increasing numbers leading up to when Blizzard submitted?

Over two days later they made the change. I don't know about you but I personally imagine in that span of two whole days that they probably talked it over with some people in the creative departments to see how they felt about the pose, maybe got some outside opinions and decided that they didn't accomplish their goal with it.

For a massive corporation with deep pockets, two days is not a long time. Especially since you are starting the clock from the forum post, and it's fair to assume that no one at Blizzard outside the forum mods saw the post for a bit.

Now they could've caved to one person, thats entirely possible, but given Blizzard fetish for asking player feedback, its huge development teams for its gigantic projects and its concerns about lore I think that its more likely that they sought second opinions after doubts having been raised. After all, on a project this big things slip through the cracks.

As a long time WoW veteran who finally shrugged off that dragon after MoP, Blizzard has a fetish for asking for player feedback and then ignoring it.

Want to guess what class I played? I'll give you a hint: For most of an expansion, we had a rather important class ability (it contributed significantly to both survivability and DPS) that upped our threat generation by ~35% that wasn't supposed to generate threat at all. People brought up roughly biweekly that this was where the problem was, even did comparison runs using and not using that ability to demonstrate that it was the cause. Second to last raid tier of the xpac before they admitted that something funny was going on with our threat, last raid tier of the xpac before they finally fixed it. There was a patch during the same xpac where they fixed one of our DPS specs so it was roughly competitive in PvE, and everyone warned them that they put way too much of the damage output in one ability and that would cause PvP issues -- it made it to live and that spec stayed competitive in PvE for roughly 48 hours before they hotfix nerfed that ability to be OK in PvP which cut total DPS for the spec by ~25%. Rather ironically, they had exactly the same problem with another spec in the same patch, but they left it that way much longer and fixed it in a way that only impacted PvP (rather amusingly using a solution a bunch of people had suggested for the other spec).

You and I clearly have *wildly* different experiences with Blizzard listening to player feedback.

If you bothered to look at the poster's profile[footnote]Whom is a man might I mention so that you can rid yourself of those preconceptions you made up in your mind to bed.[/footnote] they've played the game and have shown concern about many of the game's mechanical aspects multiple times. They're invested in the game and not just looking for something to be offended about.

To be fair on the gender thing, many of the articles about this described that person as a mother, so presuming that is less preconception and more assuming the media could get basic details straight. On the other hand, you're right, we should all know better at this point than to assume that the media could get basic details straight. Especially here.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I hope Blizzards removes the female character completely or puts all of them under burkas. They are too sexy. We can't have that. It's degrading to women. Women can't be sexy so any sexy female character is absolutely haram. While we're at it, lets ban all the female users of facebook or other social networks that have posted such images. That's absolutely inexcusable.

Also it's quite a funny message that she's sending to her daughter for whom she apparently does that. A 8 year old daughter to be precise.

"Listen Honey, it's okay to kill people. There is nothing wrong with that. Also just so you know, you can't be sexy and a strong female character. If you're sexy, you're a slut. If you're sexy, all your achievements go down the drain. So don't be sexy Honey. Also go kill all those bastards!"

The fact that she admits that she doesn't play the game but is worried that her 8 year old daughter that plays it will get the wrong message because funny girls can't also be sexy, only the bad girls can be sexy is pretty damn retarded and someone should send her some social worker to check up stuff before she fucks up her child even more. An 8 year old child shouldn't be allowed to play and online FPS in the first place. The message some character could potentially send her is one of the least worries the mother should have.

Cue the cries of "censorship" and "SJWs ruin everything" (which, naturally, wouldn't occur if we were talking about something like a male character thrusting his ass at the camera) in 3, 2, 1....

Just because you wrote that sarcastically or ironically or whatever doesn't mean it's not true. Also most people, male and female included, don't find the same things on a man sexy that they find on a female. Females with a nice butt is hot, a man with nice muscular body is hot for me. Thanks god we don't have muscular men in games.

Cue for you replying that it's a power fantasy and it doesn't count in 3, 2, 1...

 

[Cati]

And that would all be relevant, if the people disagreeing with the change, would owe up to these points.

You not hearing a single thing when a tree falls doesn't mean it didn't make a sound when doing so. People in disagreement with the change have been making those points, even in the threads here on the subject.

 

[Alterego-X]

Just because you wrote that sarcastically or ironically or whatever doesn't mean it's not true.

However, when cries like that about fearing the SJWs censorous forum posts, are mixed with angry arguments by the same people about how Blizzard's recent choice is offensive to women, and with demands of what they should have done instead, that does mean that they are probably full of it.

 

[Alterego-X]

You not hearing a single thing when a tree falls doesn't mean it didn't make a sound when doing so. People in disagreement with the change have been making those points, even in the threads here on the subject.

The problem is exactly that they have been only making them, instead of coherently owing up to them and their main goal.

Anyone can say "Actually, you are the real sexists" as a cheap talking point. If the rest of the debate continues to be framed as censorous SJWs trying to force a studio's hand and the respecters of free speech defending it, all that does is positions these points as nitpicking about the particulars of the case in a way that just reveals that the larger outrage was hypocritical.

You either get to have a sex positive feminist outrage at the particulars of Blizzard's reply, that reveals them as problematic puritan censors.

Or you get to have a free speech outrage at the inherent problem of anyone (in this particular case puritan sex-negative feminists) trying to influence a game's creative direction with any form of outside pressure.

If you start out with the latter, then you mix in points of the former, all that you will acchieve is soundling like the stereotypical "Creative freedom to make what WE like!" crowd.

 

[shirkbot]

Problem is, there's not really much else consumers can do that actually has an impact. Give the game a bad score, and you just have a bunch of people laughing at you(we've seen this happen with multiple games). Start a petition, nobody signs it and the company just waves it off even if you do get people to sign it because it's a company and they get a million and a half like it a day.

Just wanted to chime in on this particular sub-issue because it's something that bothers me a lot. The problem is that this is just a fundamental flaw in the way we do business (though it applies to a couple other areas of life as well). Buy it or don't buy it, all the company sees is the income against the costs. They may have forums or other channels, but those will only ever see use from a relative minority of customers which is not likely to be terribly representative. Every company is, more or less, working blindfolded. Blizzard is an unusual case because they have a giant community that's been built-up over years, and one they've kept an eye on throughout.

I don't know if this was the right call, but it's the call they made. It's just a pose.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I wonder whatever happened to artistic integrity? You put time and effort in to making something you like, then people demand you change it. Why not just stand up and say that this was how we envisioned the character? Bioware stuck to their guns concerning Mass Effect. You might not have liked their decision, but you had to respect their conviction.

 

[Erttheking]

Not outraged per-say, but I'm very upset at the devs who are being such spineless wusses for caving in to such a non-issue.

If it's such a non-issue, why are you upset?

Because it show that the devs will cave to anything as long as enough people whine. It's not about the non-issue, it's about how the devs handled it.

Yeah this is an argument that falls apart the second you realize people are blowing up the internet about taking the pose out yet Blizzard hasn't put it back in yet.

If they "cave" (I'm really getting tired of that word. Blizzard said that they've been thinking about changing the pose for awhile and people keep saying "they caved" like it was pulling teeth, taking away any agency Blizzard had in the matter) if enough people whine, how come they haven't caved again? People love to keep bringing up how one person made them "cave" so why can't a legion of outraged people make them "cave" again?

The answer I've come up with. Because they wanted to make this change and they're standing by it.

 

[Lightknight]

Wait, so this was just one of multiple optional poses that players don't have to acquire or use?

What is the argument here then? Girls and guys can be sexy too. We want to be sexy. Having "sexy" as an attribute does not make people sex symbols and being a sex symbol does not preclude you from having other qualities and abilities.

This is stupid. Just include the pose with everything else and let players decide if they want to use it. Demonizing this is like telling a girl in booty shorts that she needs to put less revealing clothes on because she's objectifying women...

This puritanical tirade against portraying sexiness is silly. Things like the prohibition spring to mind on the tactics being used to get other people to behave the way they want them to. Who actually benefits from this being taken away? No one. I guess we're just lucky that portrayals of human sexuality aren't contained in kegs or some lady would walk in with a hatchet to smash it up and let it spill on the floor... (another prohibition reference).

Just because sexy poses makes some writers feel weird in their pants should not then mean that their puritanical views then have to imposed on the rest of the population. St. Augustine already introduced that shit via the Catholic Church and we see how damaging that has been. Humans are sexy by nature and like to be sexy by nature. Stop trying to get us to go against our nature.

 

[Erttheking]

I wonder whatever happened to artistic integrity? You put time and effort in to making something you like, then people demand you change it. Why not just stand up and say that this was how we envisioned the character? Bioware stuck to their guns concerning Mass Effect. You might not have liked their decision, but you had to respect their conviction.

Politely pointing out you don't like something isn't demanding it be taken out. People can use words like "Demand" and "caved" to try and twist what happened, but at the end of the day here is what happened. One person made a very polite post about Tracer, the devs agreed with them, and they made a statement saying that they had been talking about taking the pose out for a good long while.

And artistic vision isn't really something that goes with a team of hundreds. There was no one singular vision.

http://techraptor.net/content/tracers-shoulder-victory-pose-removed-complaint

 

[Something Amyss]

Because it show that the devs will cave to anything as long as enough people whine. It's not about the non-issue, it's about how the devs handled it.

But since it's a non-issue, why should it matter if the devs cave?

I mean, even assuming for a moment that a polite, thoughtful post asking the devs to think about their character is whining. Why not, as the saying goes, let the baby have its bottle?

What reason is there to fight over a non-issue?

Its a varying mix, sometimes I'll have a mental image prepared before putting in down on paper and then tweaking what's necessary until satisfied, other times I just rush out the image first and start questioning the design after I've let it sit for a bit. Which is a key thing I do, I tend to let my designs 'sit' for a bit before passing final judgment, sometimes I'll put out a design and be happy with it but then a bit later I look back and go "eh, maybe it could do with some changes."; sometimes I also have visual shorthands that I put out similar to the gibberish you mentioned with your lyrics, mine would be jackets with popped collars, like if I have a character wearing some form of jacket or heavy top apparel its got popped collars or a really loose neck sleeve (like Neku from TWEWY).

Also I've been on some collaborative projects in which I produced some assets for somebody to review and get back to me and usually there's no chances of something we both don't like going through to final phases, but then again on said projects I was usually the solo artist so mayhaps once I work on a gig with other artist (something that might be happening soon involving animation) maybe I might see how designs that the team didn't like possibly went through. I know at times the biggest culprit is time constraints, one example I can think off is Mick Gordon saying how he wasn't happy with Riptor's theme in Killer Instinct but he had to get something out in time and wanted to go revisit it if he could.

Yeah, deadlines can make you put out content you otherwise wouldn't. I imagine that designing to someone else's specs can make this an issue, though. And since we're talking being part of a larger team, I can see it potentially slipping through the cracks. Especially if you have, say, one team working on the actual animations and another on the skins. Or perhaps the character gets changed mid-project anyway.
But like, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with ass-hugging tights. I'm a fan of comic books, after all. And it doesn't really seem like it was contentious until it was put into this specfic context.

You know?

However, when cries like that about fearing the SJWs censorous forum posts, are mixed with angry arguments by the same people about how Blizzard's recent choice is offensive to women, and with demands of what they should have done instead, that does mean that they are probably full of it.

The thing is, there is actually a rather serious conversation that can be had on this matter. There is an inherent conflict when an artistic medium is commercialised, and there's an argument of free speech vs commerce. Things change when art becomes business, and the issue becomes "how do we reconcile these two elements of this one product?" or whatever you want to call it, if not "product."

Agreeing to work for money immediately limit your creative freedom, for example. I'm pretty sure almost everyone who's done anything creative for money before has run into this. Well, provided they weren't doing it completely solo. Then there's the issue of marketing something. You can do whatever you want with your work, as long as you haven't signed a contract and don't care if anyone buys it. The thing is, you live with the consequences that people might not buy it.

One of the folks behind the Postal series did a rant blaming essentially "SJWs" for their games not selling like gangbusters. But one has to wonder why Postal and Hatred aren't bigger titles if there's actually a market. One would think that we would see huge sales from these games if that was the only issue. Instead, we see sales which apparently do not satisfy the devs. Maybe people aren't that interested in games marketed solely around the concept of offense. I mean, if they were, how can "SJWs" stop them from purchasing? Is Gabe Newell leaking their personal information to the ambiguous "SJW" legion out there and surgical strikes are being offered up? Or, outside of a rather limited base, do people just not give much of a crap about these games? In fact, the devs should probably expect this. You chose a limited audience. That's fine. But you limit your potential market in the process.

Then there's the fact that the consumer does have the right to criticise artistic products and even make demands of commercial ones. This doesn't even seem to be controversial until we start talking about T&A or similar.

The problem is, the minute we treat "censorship" as an absolute[footnote]except not really absolute, because again, it doesn't come up when a male is covered up, or LGBT individuals are removed, or similar[/footnote] monster, we've closed the door on talking about the conflict.

 

[thewatergamer]

Yeah...great job Blizzard, if this is the kind of attitude I can expect where you remove things because one moron complained about it, (just because she was polite about it doesn't make it ok) then I'm not touching your game with a ten foot pole, I think I'll just get Battleborn instead

Oh yeah and as for the "Update" I find it hilarious that they only decided to "edit" it AFTER someone complained about it, also her argument is ridiculous, "Think of the children" In this T for Teen rated game...parent of the year right there!

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Wait, so this was just one of multiple optional poses that players don't have to acquire or use?

What is the argument here then? Girls and guys can be sexy too. We want to be sexy. Having "sexy" as an attribute does not make people sex symbols and being a sex symbol does not preclude you from having other qualities and abilities.

This is stupid. Just include the pose with everything else and let players decide if they want to use it. Demonizing this is like telling a girl in booty shorts that she needs to put less revealing clothes on because she's objectifying women...

This puritanical tirade against portraying sexiness is silly. Things like the prohibition spring to mind on the tactics being used to get other people to behave the way they want them to. Who actually benefits from this being taken away? No one. I guess we're just lucky that portrayals of human sexuality aren't contained in kegs or some lady would walk in with a hatchet to smash it up and let it spill on the floor...

Apparently it's for the benefit of a little girl (playing an age inappropriate game) who seemingly hasn't expressed any negative opinion on it anyway, and a father who suffered arousal that made him feel guilty. /flippancy.

I imagine people are annoyed because when companies give an inch, people inevitably end up wanting (or expecting) a mile. Any sign of weakness is going to be undesirable to see for some. I can't say I blame anyone for feeling this way.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah this is an argument that falls apart the second you realize people are blowing up the internet about taking the pose out yet Blizzard hasn't put it back in yet.

If they "cave" (I'm really getting tired of that word. Blizzard said that they've been thinking about changing the pose for awhile and people keep saying "they caved" like it was pulling teeth, taking away any agency Blizzard had in the matter) if enough people whine, how come they haven't caved again? People love to keep bringing up how one person made them "cave" so why can't a legion of outraged people make them "cave" again?

The answer I've come up with. Because they wanted to make this change and they're standing by it.

Or because they value constructive criticism over internet outrage.

Or because they value opening the market over closing it.

But none of these involve caving. Good point.

 

[Lightknight]

Because it show that the devs will cave to anything as long as enough people whine. It's not about the non-issue, it's about how the devs handled it.

But since it's a non-issue, why should it matter if the devs cave?

The issue is the precedence of 'whiners' being able to impact the content that everyone else gets to enjoy. Just because one person's pants area feels funny when they see someone in an entirely optional sexy pose does not mean that therefore all other consumers don't get to have that pose.

This was a pose that if you wanted to you could acquire and then use. This wasn't the stock and barrel pose that everyone gets. Taking this away serves no purpose except to remove the content for use of people who want it without impacting the people who didn't and wouldn't have purchased it. Would we demand girls jogging down the road in little more than sports bras and boy shorts have to dress differently or is that their own damn business? The logic being applied to removing sexiness in media would be horribly demonized by feminists if applied to people in real life. It just doesn't make sense except along the same lines that puritanism did. One group imposing their moral/religious beliefs on other groups. It's 2016, that shit needs to stop. People are appropriating feminism in a way that is harming women who like being sexy and find power in it. They are valid human beings too.

The time to have removed this pose was before revealing it. The moment they released it into the public is the moment where then going back and removing it is just taking away content that has already been made and is entirely usable already without them expending further resources. So removing it then just ends up taking away content and options for the player for the sake of someone else's morality.

Wait, so this was just one of multiple optional poses that players don't have to acquire or use?

What is the argument here then? Girls and guys can be sexy too. We want to be sexy. Having "sexy" as an attribute does not make people sex symbols and being a sex symbol does not preclude you from having other qualities and abilities.

This is stupid. Just include the pose with everything else and let players decide if they want to use it. Demonizing this is like telling a girl in booty shorts that she needs to put less revealing clothes on because she's objectifying women...

This puritanical tirade against portraying sexiness is silly. Things like the prohibition spring to mind on the tactics being used to get other people to behave the way they want them to. Who actually benefits from this being taken away? No one. I guess we're just lucky that portrayals of human sexuality aren't contained in kegs or some lady would walk in with a hatchet to smash it up and let it spill on the floor...

Apparently it's for the benefit of a little girl (playing an age inappropriate game) who seemingly hasn't expressed any negative opinion on it anyway, and a father who suffered arousal that made him feel guilty. /flippancy.

I imagine people are annoyed because when companies give an inch, people inevitably end up wanting (or expecting) a mile. Any sign of weakness is going to be undesirable to see for some. I can't say I blame anyone for feeling this way.

Little girls need to be taught that sexiness isn't weakness and that it also shouldn't be self-defining. The way to do that is not omitting sexiness and pretending like humans haven't evolved to appreciate sexiness. It's portraying it while simultaneously portraying other positive qualities and competencies. It's also portraying less conventional forms of beauty because you don't have to be a Barbie to be beautiful.

I imagine people are annoyed that someone else's puritanical beliefs are robbing them of content they might like. I imagine people like me who don't give two shits about this particular issue are concerned that allowing this to continue would lead to assholes being able to take away other content too.

 

[Alterego-X]

The time to have removed this pose was before revealing it. The moment they released it into the public is the moment where then going back and removing it is just taking away content that has already been made and is entirely usable already without them expending further resources. So removing it then just ends up taking away content and options for the player for the sake of someone else's morality.

Props for this paragraph, it does add a lot to what would otherwise be a hypocritical mess.

I mean, it doesn't actually make much sense, after all the whole point of beta releases is to release things into the public while making it clear that you are still in the process of modifying them.

And anyways, I wouldn't necessarily agree with this even if we were talking about a fully published game. A work being "released into the public" shouldn't mean it's creator losing control over their ability to keep contributing to it at will, and that includes editing details into and out of it.

But yes, this is a large issue here in terms of perceptions. The game could have explicit slut shaming, desexualised heroines, and a subtextual pro-abstinance message in it, and the same people who are now clutching their pearls over what message removing a single pinup pose might send, would be OK with that as long as they didn't get to see a more promisculous early version that the newer one covered up, and didn't gain the perception that they were "robbed" of something that they used to have.

 

[Lightknight]

The time to have removed this pose was before revealing it. The moment they released it into the public is the moment where then going back and removing it is just taking away content that has already been made and is entirely usable already without them expending further resources. So removing it then just ends up taking away content and options for the player for the sake of someone else's morality.

Props for this paragraph, it does add a lot to what would otherwise be a hypocritical mess.

I mean, it doesn't actually make much sense, after all the whole point of beta releases is to release things into the public while making it clear that you are still in the process of modifying them.

Here's the thing, it's an optional thing players who wanted it could have purchased and used. It's content they made and finalized that players are no longer going to get and the reason is someone else's morality. We've gone full circle from the sexual revolution that enabled women to be sexy and show a little ankle every now and then back to puritanism and what's bizarre is that the exact same group that pioneered the former is now pushing a return to the latter. Complete back tracking and totally double standard logic.

And anyways, I wouldn't necessarily agree with this even if we were talking about a fully published game. A work being "released into the public" shouldn't mean it's creator losing control over their ability to keep contributing to it at will, and that includes editing details into and out of it.

That's absolutely ridiculous logic when applied broadly to "a work". If Van Gogh was still alive today and decided that Starry Night would be better if he took a shit on it we wouldn't let him go into a museum and smear feces all over the work.

They aren't releasing it into the public, they are selling it to the consumers. Van Gogh doesn't own Starry Night (again, if he were alive), whoever the latest person or entity to buy it legally is the owner and they alone have the right to allow or refuse Van Gogh's desire to ruin/change it. It's the same reason why even games you purchase can't force you to update them unless you want to. For multiplayer games that usually means you can't play online anymore, but your product is yours as you own it at any given moment.

Taking away things from a consumer that paid for them is highly questionable. Online multiplayer games are a little bit of a grey area since they are expected to be updated, but needlessly taking away content that was purchased is still an ethical if not legal problem unless there's an objective reason for doing so. Like a piece of equipment that ruins gameplay.

But yes, this is a large issue here in terms of perceptions. The game could have explicit slut shaming, desexualised heroines, and a subtextual pro-abstinance message in it, and the same people who are now clutching their pearls over what message removing a single pinup pose might send, would be OK with that as long as they didn't get to see a more promisculous early version that the newer one covered up, and didn't gain the perception that they were "robbed" of something that they used to have.

There is certainly a line crossed for certain issues where public morality is greatly weighted towards one side as a portrayal being evil. If you're going to go reduction ad absurdum then do it right and say that the game could have child pornography in it that would technically be legal due to it not being real children but still horribly immoral by nearly everyone's perspective.

That's how you do reductio ad absurdum right. You provide a horrible example that would still fall under my argument so that I am forced to either abandon my argument, maintain that even the horrible thing might be justified, or clarify my position to illustrate why the horrible thing isn't included in my position's logic due to additional information or constraints on said scenario. Below I'll provide additional information (the third option):

The mere depiction of adult sexiness, unlike something as vile as child pornography, isn't a heavily stilted moral issue that everyone thinks is wrong. Hell, I'm sure nearly all the people advocating either side of this argument regularly partake in pornography and that alone should discredit anyone saying this is a bad thing on the lines of sexiness being bad as themselves being entirely hypocritical by enjoying it when it suits them personally.

If your personal argument is that this is a creative work and they have a right to do that. Sure, they do have a right to alter their work before someone buys it. No one is saying that they are breaking a law and if they are then they don't know the law. What people are complaining about is the ethically questionable area of removing finished content (the pose itself is a finished asset) from everyone due to complaints of the few. We as a society have already shown the evils of doing this and it deserves no foothold in our society.

Do I personally care that I won't have a character posing with her backside facing me? No, not at all. I'm still not even sold on the game itself despite the vibrant setting and characters. But you are quite right that had they not released this to the public that there would be no argument to be had because there would be no perception of loss and certainly no feeling that someone else's morality is controlling how they play their own damn game.