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NEWS: Final Fantasy XVI Game Banned in Saudi Arabia

It always comes down to risk vs investment. Square-Enix censored Kingdom Hearts 3 for China (Winnie the Pooh) because that market is big and would be bad to not capitalize on. I don't know how big a market for FFXVI Saudi Arabia was but it's probably not worth the effort on their part to censor things. Especially if it'll require more than just painting over a cartoon bear and the whole game is full of religious and violence and sexual things.

Now SE has no excuse to just not sell a game in China when Xi comes a knocking for them to censor their game.

Part of localization is understanding that sometimes things need to be changed to fit the new target audience or a different country's moral and cultural standards. It's a natural part of the process. At least that's what translators here say when people complain about changes made in English versions, but I'm assuming it applies to other countries as well.

I remember Ocarina of Time got in trouble for using an Islamic symbol and hymm in the game back in the day.

Square-Enix has also censored their games for American and European markets too. I wonder how people would react to them just not releasing games in the west due to the need to censor it for our sensibilities and not wanting to.

That's what Nintendo did with games like Captain Rainbow and Mother 3.

As for why exactly both games never came stateside as far as anyone knows it had zero to do with the content in either game.

What strikes me as odd is how the article truncates the ESRB summary. All the descriptions of violence are reduced to one word points, whilst the description of sexual content is partially quoted giving it a much larger impact than it has when reading the ESRB summary.
Inserting such a selectively summarised piece of information between two other paragraphs which describe the harsh standards of Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Media seems to me, to be a deliberate attempt to lead readers into associating two seperate pieces of information together and drawing the ‘correct’ conclusions. Or at the very least fuelling the hatred of those who already have strong bias.

Overall I’m pretty disappointed and kind of feel like my (and everybody else’s) intelligence has been insulted, and I hope to see a higher standard in the future.

edit:
Unless I’m completely mistaken and there is some innocent reason for this editing decision, in which case I would really appreciate it if someone should take the time to explain it to me.

There's really no other explanation why Mother 3 isn't released here at this point

There's been no official statement on what content caused this ban, people are just speculating. But one random no-name gaming website is being cited by a lot of people on social media that it's because of an "intimate gay sex scene". The website itself does not list any source at all beyond the standard 'anonymous leaker' attribution so take it with a huge grain of salt. I've also heard other "leaks" say it's a straight sex scene. And others still that this 'intimate gay sex scene' is a scene of one guy getting caught in a brothel with another man and it's played off as a joke. And then the people who aren't focusing on the sex part of the theory is saying it's about the general violence or offensive religious themes and depictions of Middle Eastern culture. We won't know what the real reason is until we get more info on the game or it releases.

Content is the only realistic reason we never got Mother 3 at this point.

We saw with Operation Rainfall that Nintendo is not afraid to take a chance with lesser known RPGs if there's enough demand.

and Mother 3 has always had a lot more demand than either the original Xenoblade or The Last Story did at the time.

We've also seen Nintendo release long lost games like Star Fox 2 and Earthbound Beginnings (Mother 1) with no real issue.

I bet that an adult gay man kisses another on the cheek while parting. Something a US kid's cartoon could show for half a decade in a daytime slot and for longer in the EU.

Anyway, based SE and Final Fantasy Type-0 HD had an M-rating. These mean nothing. It´s called Rated M for Money for a reason. The EU ratings will be more interesting. FF VII and XV got a 16. The M means nothing if the Pegi rating isn´t an 18. That one is still pending. Skyrim is an M and so is the updated rating of Oblivion (mostly due to the assasin´s guild). The content there compared to The Witcher is night and day.

Forgot: Stranger of Paradise is also an M. Lol. I think we all forgot that one.

Anyway, based SE and Final Fantasy Type-0 HD had an M-rating. These mean nothing. It´s called Rated M for Money for a reason. The EU ratings will be more interesting. FF VII and XV got a 16. The M means nothing if the Pegi rating isn´t an 18. That one is still pending. Skyrim is an M and so is the updated rating of Oblivion (mostly due to the assasin´s guild). The content there compared to The Witcher is night and day.

I want to hear from each and every single one of y'all who was talking like MBS was going to save anime and video games from the woke mob.