November 10th saw the worldwide release of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, the next entry
in the Assassin’s Creed series, which focuses on the Viking invasion of Great Britain.
The worldwide release was greeted with a positive reception in most parts of the world and it
also sold more copies in its opening week than any Assassin’s Creed game before it.
Over in Japan, on the other hand, things have been nowhere near as positive.
Ubisoft kicked off a pretty big marketing campaign for the Japanese release of the game,
including it taking centre stage during Ubiday 2020.
Ubiday is an annual Japanese event, where Ubisoft will promote their upcoming games
with a range of different shows and activities.
And it’s safe to say that a lot of gamers in Japan were looking forward to the Japanese
release of the game, with it also going on to launch at number 2 on Japan’s physical
sales chart, only behind Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
Western AAA games like these tend to do well in Japan, which is why over time more and
more effort has been put into Japanese translations and marketing.
And the Japanese version of Valhalla is also fully dubbed in Japanese as well.
However, shortly after release, things would quickly turn sour for what should have been
a positive launch of the new game.
Furthermore, this has then gone on to become one of the gaming industry’s biggest and
most contentious censorship-related stories all year.
But, to first take things back a little bit, and back to Ubiday 2020.
This event in October revealed to Japanese fans that some censorship would have to be
made to the Japanese version.
This presentation slide revealed the changes that would be made, with it including toning
down damage textures on character models, removing internal organs from torture scenes,
replacing decapitated heads with helmets and then lastly adding clothing to bare female
chests.
These changes are also despite the game being given the max Z rating in Japan, which means
18 years and over.
This is because, even with the max rating, the Japanese rating system has various levels
of content that aren’t allowed.
And so these changes were something that Japanese gamers were well prepared for.
What they weren’t prepared for however is other undisclosed changes being made to the
game that also weren’t even necessary.
Like explained, the Japanese version of the game was going to have be less bloody in places
due to the Japanese rating system rules.
So, for instance, one of the changes that have been made to the Japanese version is
a modification being made to a cutscene showing decapitated heads being fed to pigs.
In the Japanese version this was changed to feeding the pigs helmets instead, which is
quite an odd thing for even pigs to want to feast upon.
But this doesn’t mean removing all blood completely, yet that’s exactly what has
happened for the Japanese release.
Despite, like the rest of the world, having a blood on and off toggle in the Japanese
menus - this toggle does nothing.
Instead all blood during gameplay is disabled with no way of turning it in on.
The list of changes mentioned damage textures on character models, but what was meant by
this is just things like the actual damage textures following dismemberment.
It did not mean removing all blood completely and this would go above and beyond any changes
required for the Japanese ratings.
And so this, combined with all of the other censorship, has led to the game being slammed
with 100s of negative reviews that reference the censorship.
One Japanese player has even compared the censored version to now being more like the
TV show Vicky The Viking.
But, the Japanese release of the game also has the notable distinction of going on to
cause problems for many more gamers around the world than just the Japanese.
It was discovered right before the game was scheduled to launch that all Asian region
versions will have the same changes as Japan - including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea.
Unlike Japan however, none of this censorship was needed for these regions, and it appears
to just be a case of Ubisoft simplifying the process of having different versions for different
regions around the world.
Asian gamers had been seeing uncensored footage for months prior to release and were only
notified at the last minute.
This has then led to lots of backlash over on the official forums from players unhappy
about being forced to have Japan’s censorship in their versions.
This post from November 8th for instance has over 1000 replies.
In the post the fan says: “i post this information at a taiwanese
game forum, a great of deal of taiwanese fans of assassin's creed have immediately got [censored]
off!! and a lot of taiwanese are doing refund for pre-order!!!!”
“we have watched the trailers and demos of Valhalla for months, all of us feel impressed
by the Viking fighting style and character-------------------- bloody, violent, severed limb. we were looking
forward to become a real Viking warrior on 10th november.however, after we watch so many
bloody trailer, now we are told that asian version is adjusted??? we feel cheated by
false advertisement！！！！”
Despite the large outcry however, Ubisoft hasn’t responded to the backlash.
Ubisoft has responded to some of the backlash from Japanese gamers though, but that’s
also where the next big part of the game’s controversial release begins.
It’s very rare for the Computer Entertainment Rating Organization, Japan’s rating system,
to make a public statement about a game’s release.
But, that’s exactly what happened when Ubisoft pinned the blame on the complete removal of
blood on them.
CERO consequently issued a statement saying this was nothing to do with them and that
they weren’t contacted about the missing blood either.
A day later Ubisoft then updated their post to once again apologize and to now say that
the missing blood was the result of an internal error and they would post more info shortly.
On November 30th however, CERO would once more intervene and comment on the game.
This time to reveal that a version of the game with uncensored content, which actually
needed to be censored, had been made available to the public.
They didn’t state what version of the game this was but they did say that they have been
in contact with Ubisoft about the matter and that Ubisoft have now removed the offending
content.
CERO then demanded an explanation from Ubisoft on how this was allowed to happen.
It would later be discovered that the version in question was the PC version sold on the
Japanese Ubisoft store.
And only a few days ago on December 10th, Ubisoft have now posted a new longer blog
post trying to at last clear up the situation.
They have said that the forbidden uncensored content over on the Ubisoft store was the
result of human error within the company and that, like the missing blood, they will be
striving to correct their internal procedures in the future to try and make sure these things
will not happen again.
They have also promised an update that will restore the complete removal of blood and
thus fix the currently non-functioning blood toggle in the menu sometime in the near future.
This is currently still broken in the Japanese release however, and so far more than a month
after release, and even with the gameplay’s blood being restored, the game still has all
of the other Japanese censorship.
Furthermore, again, this censorship has been made to all other Asian builds of the game
too, despite not needing to, much to the dismay of many Asian gamers.
And to top that off, the past month has seen much controversy in Japan as things have gone
back and forth between Ubisoft’s and CERO’s statements.
And it’s extremely rare for CERO to get involved in a matter like this, which makes
their repeated intervention very notable and unfortunately Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
will now go to be remembered at least partly for all of this controversy.
And, once again, this is for what should have been a positive game launch in the country
after quite a lot of hype.
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until next time, thank you for watching.