Killer7 SINdicate

[anthony]

Shamelessly stealing this thread's OP from a /v/ post because the thought is wasted on that place.

DEFINITION OF STREISAND EFFECT:
>"A phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information, often via the Internet."

I want to see if there were other Streisand Effects in video games aside from picrel. Be it a developer DMCA'ing (and unintentionally confirming) leaks or even a developer trying to shut down fan-made games/mods only for them to explode in popularity, I'm genuinely curious as to other instances of people unintentionally signal boosting a game, leaks of a certain game or even just fan content in general.

Before you ask, yes; I only chose "Elizabeth Comstock's bimbification by SFM porn animators being caused by Ken Levine" as the picrel for this thread about vidya-related Streisand Effects just to get it out of the way right out of the gate so we can actually have discussion that isn't horny. Also, that time Blizzard tried and failed to DMCA all Overwatch hentai, which is now the only thing kind of keeping it afloat in a roundabout way.

Even though Ken Levine didn't go out of his way to DMCA hentai featuring his "sister", BioShock hentai is among greatest examples of the Streisand Effect because of its impact on SFM hentai, porn animation and the Internet in general all starting with an anti-horny tweet from BioShock's creator.

[Cat]

Prior to its publication, Rule of Rose was the subject of a moral panic in Europe.[22] At E3 2006 Atlus announced that it would be releasing Rule of Rose in the United States,[23] following Sony's decision to pass on an American release, as the game "wasn’t really in sync with their corporate image" and the company had wanted the game to "be a bit tamer, if it were to have the Sony name in the U.S."[2] The developers disagreed with this, saying that "the theme is supposed to be one of intimate familiarity" and that they had intended to portray how children behave "without the filter of guilt or sin."[2] Rumors of violence towards children in the game tied into a larger discussion of morality and violence in video games appeared in the Italian magazine Panorama in November 2006, and were quickly picked up by the British media, which alleged that the game had scenes of "children buried alive underground, in-game sadomasochism, and underage eroticism."[22] These allegations were untrue.[22] At the time, Rule of Rose had already been rated by various video game advisory boards as suitable for an older teenage audience: in Japan, it was rated 15+; in the majority of Europe, 16+; and in North America, 17+.[22]

...

505 Games' Australian distributor, Red-Ant, cancelled the game's Australian and New Zealand release,[29] and 505 Games later cancelled the United Kingdom release as a result of complaints by Frattini and other EU officials, and "largely misleading"[30] commentary from the British press, although review copies had already shipped to video game journalists.[31] It was released in the rest of Europe.

At the time I was a teenager and didn't have the money to import a copy to the UK.

The going prices as of now:



Perhaps contraband is another discussion altogether but this was an instance I was reminded of.

[Cat]

A little girl simulator where players meander about the city dealing with creepy men around every corner, Yohjo Simulator was bizarre enough upon release. Within just days of release, however, Yohjo Simulator was suddenly pulled from Steam without explanation. It quickly became clear that the reason likely stemmed from quite the sour Easter egg that players soon discovered, in what can only be described as a highly-disturbing scene depicting a young female character laying on the ground with a male character standing over her, and a pair of undergarments lying beside her.

About a week has gone by since the game was removed and Sekai Project has today broke its silence, confirming to Hardcore Gamer that this was indeed the reason for its removal from Steam.

Apparently an overwhelming amount of complaints were filed for Yohjo Simulator’s removal from Steam and when Sekai Project realized that the scene in question was included in it, the game was yanked. Before re-releasing the game, Sekai Project will be working with the developer to remove the scene in question as well as anything that “even remotely” resembles it, and will also be looking to add additional gameplay features and in-game content.

You can now buy the censored version of physics kusoge Yohjo Simulator on Steam, but during the period it was unavailable Steam keys for the "pedo" edition became highly valuable. I'm unable to find price history on tracking websites because they essentially restarted tracking in 2016 and it's possible they didn't allow sales at the time. It's easy to find 2015 forum posts with offers to sell, trade or buy, but for unknown sums.