Earlier in the month, Censored Gaming tweeted about the news that Neptunia:
Sisters VS Sisters will be receiving a patch that censors various lines of text.
The news has only been revealed by Idea Factory International on the news section
of their European website. And despite the tweet gaining a lot of attention, with it receiving 150
thousand views, and with the story being picked up by various websites and such, there have
been no further comments from Idea Factory. The situation is a particularly unusual one.
The European website, says: "Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters
for the PlayStation®4/PlayStation®5 and Steam® will have a patch update (Patch 1.01) that will
change several text and audio lines. This patch was made to comply with the T ESRB rating."
"Patch 1.01 is now live for PS4/PS5 in North America. To ensure parity across regions for
the Western release of Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters, the European PlayStation 4 and
PlayStation 5 versions will receive patch 1.01, due to go live later this month. The
Steam patch will go live at a later date." The affected text has then been disclosed in
the following comparison, which shows how the text is altered and whether there was also audio that
had to be altered for the text. And so, the alterations are:
Thus, even though it is due to North America's rating system, European versions are also patched
due to wanting to have parity across regions. Furthermore, the patch has come quite
a long time after release—with it originally releasing on January 24.
And it's also rare for a game to be patched post-release due to rating-related reasons.
However, despite Idea Factory not currently commenting further on the situation, it is
speculated that the decision is because, as shown on the right, the game has somehow been released
without the "Language" ESRB content descriptor. As shown on the left, this is something that can
be found for other games in the series, and as was shown in the comparison, the affected
text is mild and doesn't seem to require the game to have an ESRB rating higher than Teen.
However, all we can do is speculate when it comes to further details. It's possible that
there was a mistake when the copies were made or perhaps when submitted the title to the ESRB.
Censored Gaming is in the process of contacting the ESRB for more information about this,
however, and will keep you updated if there is further information.
Another thing to point out is that there have been edits to text that wouldn't need to be made.
One of the changes is to the weapon Bastard Sword, which is a real name for a real weapon, and,
owing to this, can be found in countless other video games—including games rated E For Everyone.
What are your thoughts on the situation? As always, let us know your thoughts
in the comments below, and until next time, thank you for watching.