Today the Japanese website Game Spark published a report following up on the recent article bt the Wall Street Journal on Sony’s crackdown on sexual imagery in games published on PS4.
According to this new report, a Sony spokesperson mentioned to the outlet that no new rules or policies regulating sexual imagery have been introduced internally at the house of PlayStation.
The company’s policy is to have executives checking games on a case-by-case basis for rare cases in which overly sexual content is considered offensive while respecting the ideas of the creators.
On the other hand, the gaming industry introduced parental controls and provides information on each game in compliance with regional rating boards like CERO, ESRB or PEGI.
However, it also appears that in Japan Sony doesn’t simply comply with CERO standards, but it has begun to work in line with global standards that are generally stricter in reaction to sexual imagery.
The rep concluded by saying that Sony is making an effort to make PlayStation a playground that welcomes all gamers.
This pretty much matches what I heard from multiple Japanese development and publishing sources, who told me that the policies that are being applied nowadays have existed for a long time, but Sony has started to enforce them in stricter ways on a global level. While they technically aren’t new regulations, they have been applied in a rather relaxed way until recent times, and that attitude has now changed.
