When everyone assumed Sony was the puppet master forcing costume censorship on developers, Stellar Blade director Kim Hyung Tae stepped up and said: "Actually, this wasn't Sony's call." One sentence, and the entire player community's rage did a complete 180.
The original poster summed up the collective disbelief with a simple "Wait, you're actually serious?" — and attached a screenshot as evidence. They also made sure to note that Shift Up is the studio behind NIKKE: Goddess of Victory — a connection that would prove crucial to the drama spiraling out of control.
For context: after Stellar Blade launched, a day-one patch massively toned down character outfits, sending the community into an uproar. But at the time, most players directed their fury at publisher Sony, convinced that the company's "politically correct" censorship pressure forced the developer's hand. This narrative became gospel — until Kim Hyung Tae shattered it himself.
By publicly stating the censorship wasn't Sony's decision, Kim essentially admitted it was Shift Up's own choice. The community erupted. One highly upvoted comment dripped with sarcasm: "'Helldivers 2 forcing PSN account linking also wasn't Sony's decision!'" — invoking another Sony-related controversy to highlight the absurdity of Kim's claim.
What made it worse was that this wasn't an isolated incident. Multiple commenters pointed out that NIKKE, Shift Up's mobile gacha game, had also been trending increasingly conservative in its content. The community had previously blamed NIKKE's Chinese publisher Tencent for these changes. As one user put it: "People used to blame Tencent for NIKKE's weird content changes — now we all know who was really behind it." Another added: "The crossover with NIKKE keeps getting more 'Myanmar-ified' (缅北化) — a player slang term for content getting progressively stripped down and sanitized."
The revelation effectively "cleared" Tencent's name, with one commenter jokingly writing: "Tencent: Don't forget to wash me clean too." As for why Shift Up would voluntarily censor themselves, one player raised a pointed theory: in South Korea, wouldn't this amount to supporting radical feminism? After all, there seemed to be no other reason besides reducing the so-called "male gaze."
But for most players, the real issue wasn't who ordered the censorship — it was the censorship itself. One commenter nailed it: "Regardless of whether it was Sony's decision or not, daring to do day-one censorship is straight-up false advertising. Your company has zero credibility from now on." This resonated widely: using sexy character designs as the core marketing hook pre-launch, then slashing them on day one, is fundamentally a bait-and-switch.
Another user's exasperated take probably captured the community mood best: "Can't these producers even pretend to be dead anymore? They just had to come out and show off their 'brilliant wisdom!'" Some truths hurt more when spoken aloud than when left buried.
From Sony taking the blame to Shift Up outing themselves, from Tencent being wrongfully dragged to players collectively losing faith — this saga perfectly illustrates one golden rule in gaming: the most dangerous thing isn't getting scapegoated. It's when a developer can't resist the urge to "clarify" things — because the clarification is always wilder than the original story.
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