I don’t think society is actually more prudish; you couldn’t have had 80% of the shows that are made now, 50 years ago. I think there are just several things that combine to make it appear otherwise (note that these are all 100% my opinion):
Corporatism has run rampant, and corporations detest liability. Independent movie stores didn’t have to worry about being noticed by political groups, but big chains did, and big corporations’ shareholders only care about stock prices are much more reactive to ‘threats’. And big corporations killed most independent stores, even before digital took over. Digital is all big corps.
The US has sanitized violence in media to such an extent (e.g. superhero movies where logically thousands of people die, or where all violence is ‘bloodless’ but not cartoonish) that I think sex has become the only metric by which to delineate ‘kid’ vs ‘adult’ media for a lot of people. That has a feedback effect on large media creators, who will be less likely to depict sex in anything not squarely targeted for adult consumption, which in turn makes any sexual content in e.g. young-adult media stand out even more, which will get it outsize attention by the wannabe morality police types.
Prudish political groups made a lot of strategic inroads into positions of policy influence by using “protect the children” rhetoric, with sex being the #1 thing they actively demonized. It’s much less common to see pro-sex groups making any kind of public messaging or policy impacts, so it can seem like the prudes are the majority.
WRT the current thread: Steam doesn’t ban sexual games at all; at this point it’s one of if not the largest adult games distributor just thanks to its user base. They even implemented a ‘private’ feature for games so people could buy adult games on their Steam account but hide them from others, to encourage people to buy adult games. This particular game is really just an unfortunate case of edgy content accidentally running up against a legitimate guardrail. I won’t be surprised if Valve does walk back the ban soon based on the amount of media coverage.
It’s a game where people are put in animal masks, chained up, and ridden around naked.
what the studio calls “grotesque, subversive imagery” of a ranch where nude human beings in horse masks are treated as animal livestock.
To pretend that said “grotesque, subversive imagery” is not in this case functioning on it’s proximity to sexual degradation, is disingenuous imo. I don’t blame Valve for not wanting to wade into an “art vs shock-sploitation” debate.
One thing I recommend for horror games is to play with a friend (i.e. in the same room). You can even figure out a way to do old-school controller-swapping (for a VN, maybe each chapter, or after a fixed time interval e.g. every 10 minutes). My partner is a huge horror buff, but also has a hard time with the longer periods of stress that horror games impart vs movies, so we play games this way.
Santa Ragione received an automated message from Valve stating Horses would not be approved for distribution on Steam and could not be resubmitted. The ‘why’ came as a shock to the studio. “While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us,” Steam’s automated response read, “we found that this title features themes, imagery, or descriptions that we won’t distribute. Regardless of a developer’s intentions with their product,
we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.
While every product submitted is unique, if your product features this representation—even in a subtle way that could be defined as a ‘grey area’—it will be rejected by Steam.”
I don’t think is an unfair line to draw by any measure, and while I sympathize with the studio I’m also not going to begrudge Valve taking a hard line on this, because there are absolutely games being submitted that will try to toe that line. I don’t think this studio is doing that, but I also think it’s fair for Valve to weigh art and impact vs peoples’ comfort, if they’re the ones being asked to host something.
I never got the PS5 because the PS3 -> PS4 jump was too underwhelming, when PC is pulling away so many games. And it’s not about or solvable with exclusives, because there are literally no games I can think of that would make me buy a whole console just to play. Imho PC gaming, especially in the Golden Age of Indies, is just too strong an argument unless you are a console-only gamer.
To be fair, the original Deus Ex is more anti-authoritarianism than it is anti-capitalist in the motivations of the villains. Grey Death wasn’t done for economic purposes, it was literally a means to kick off a worldwide eugenics experiment. They used the Ambrosia vaccine to select who lives, not really to make money.
They were always known as being a crunch-heavy studio. The only reason they weren’t pulling their current mtx-riddled, always-online modal before is that the tech wasn’t there.
Arma is pretty cool… despite BI. DayZ has been (for me) a continual disappointment. I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about Dean Hall, but I don’t get the impression he knows what’s wrong with DayZ, or how to fix it.
I was/am responding to something you said in your comment, specifically that they were copying HZD.
I think it’s entirely possible that Sony wins, though they shouldn’t. But it will be about whether this constitutes an infringement on Sony’s Horizon trademark, not copyright. I don’t think it does, and I do think this amounts to Sony wanting to own the concept, like Nintendo wants to own creature catchers, but it is obviously possible another court would make another bad ruling in the IP space, especially if that means siding with the non-Chinese corporation.
I will also remind you that you said it would be absurd to take Sony seriously, which is not the same thing as stating “there’s no trademark violations here”. The latter is literally what the court has to make a decision on. The former is about whether there’s any basis to go to court which already means you think you know better than Sony lawyers and, if the court doesn’t instantly throw out the case, also better than the legal system. Maybe you are some godlike lawyer who knows better than everyone else, but if you are I think you can understand why I’m calling bullshit on that.
It’s not copying it, it’s ripping it off, which isn’t illegal. Copying (i.e. copyright infringement) has a specific legal meaning, and it’s not being asserted by Sony. Sony is trying to claim that it being a ripoff means customers would be confused into believing it’s actually a Horizon game and purchasing it in error, which is stupid.
If Tencent had called this Horizons: Motiram, they’d be 100% in the right. But they are just trying to essentially claim they own the combination of style and theme of “colorful world with tribal humans vs robot animals”. That’s not how trademark works (this is trademark btw, not copyright, just in case anyone is getting them mixed up).
It’s not copyright, it’s trademark. Sony isn’t claiming they’re the same characters, they’re claiming that the style is so similar that people would mistakenly believe that Light of Motiram is actually a Horizon game, which is why this case is so stupid; it is a blatant ripoff, but ripoffs aren’t illegal, and no one is going to actually mix them up.