On the recent update of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe v1.1 Nintendo has removed the hand gesture of Splatoon Girl because some people might feel offended by it.

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This is insane. Even Mario Kart isn't safe from what this or that might be considered "offensive."

Splatoon Girl was only doing the hand gesture "YES!" and this is deemed unacceptable.

For those that may defend the censorship, there are people who may indeed find it disrespectful but that's them and in real life, this is a fictitious, harmless video game that should be left alone from being censored.

Source: Nintendo Everything

 

[rotomington]

On the recent update of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe v1.1 Nintendo has removed the hand gesture of Splatoon Girl because some people might feel offended by it.

View attachment 87127
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This is insane. Even Mario Kart isn't safe from what this or that might be considered "offensive."

Splatoon Girl was only doing the hand gesture "YES!" and this is deemed unacceptable.

For those that may defend the censorship, there are people who may indeed find it disrespectful but that's them and in real life, this is a fictitious, harmless video game that should be left alone from being censored.

Source: Nintendo Everything

Fun fact: This is a VERY obscene gesture in italy, the equivilent of flipping someone the bird. No wonder the hand was removed

 

[NintendU_the_great]

Pardon my high level of perversion if anything, but for some reason I see that picture and I can only read "I will fist you!" on it.

I CAN'T UNSEE IT!!

 

[Tomy Sakazaki]

Question for any programmers out there. Is it possible to run animations client-side? As in, when playing multiplayer, your system simply gets told to play an animation, and the system itself chooses the animation to run?

Would it have been possible to just censor this by checking the region that the player is in, and if it registers as EU (where this would be considered offensive), to play the replacement animation, while if it registers anywhere that doesn't consider it a problem, it runs the original animation? If you play online against somebody in the EU while you're in the US, for example, while you both get the generic "play animation" command, the EU player sees the edited animation, while the US player sees the original animation?

You know that there's going to be an uproar over unnecessary censorship, so you would think that a system like this would minimize it as much as possible while still allowing any edits to be made in the appropriate countries.

I'm guessing that hitboxes of the racers on this game are way simplified (boxes of the size of the vehicle), there wouldn't be any impact in the gameplay itself, so it would be doable.
However, there's some other problems with this approach:
- Ratings boards ins some countries could raise the age rating based on the fact that the game offers the possibility of enabling the offensive gesture. In some cases having the assets to said gesture could still raise the rating, so when patching the game, devs should guarantee that the asset is not usable with an updated version, the GTA San Andreas case is a reference on this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_mod
- Enabling the possibility of having the gesture in some regions will lead to having versions of recent gameplay captures showing the gesture on sites like youtube, raising eyebrows of concerned parents that live in regions where the gesture is offensive (older videos will eventually be outside of main page so that won't damage the franchise/Nintendo image too much).

tl;dr It's tehcnically easy to have both gestures and lock with region/age checks, but Nintendo didn't want to tackle this way because the focus actually was brand image control.

 

[V0ltr0n]

Really nintendo... Smh

Switch needs to get hacked so the gesture can be restored. Maybe add the middle finger to complete it.

 

[wolfmankurd]

It's Mario kart Nintendo want it to be as wholesome as possible.

You act like censorship is okay in real life but video games are off limits. You need to check your priorities mate.

 

[Bladexdsl]

5 pages of this shit...really?

 

[F4LK]

For those crying about such a small change:

GG, amazing photoshop skills

 

[AmandaRose]

Just going to put this here for people who don't get why the gesture was removed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras_d'honneur

 

[jt_1258]

correct me if I'm wrong but is splatoon girl trying to do something similar to this?

 

[The Catboy]

Today on culture differences! That gesture is actually considered offensive in some places, mostly in the US. Because to the US, it basically stands for, "Up your's."

correct me if I'm wrong but is splatoon girl trying to do something similar to this?View attachment 87168

There is a difference in hand placement. Notices how she's grabbing her sleeve and not directly placing her hand on her arm? That's the difference between them. One is rolling up her sleeves to do some hard work, other is placing her hand directly on her arm and comes off as, "Up your's."

 

[Mushkin]

I live in Europe, and that gesture is really a fuck you here. I played Mario kart and didn't notice it, and yet now that I know i don't get offended, there are people with to much free time on their hands to worry with such tiny things.
Probably kids playing the game wouldn't even notice it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[RadioShadow]

Oh no, the Inkling Girl doesn't put her left hand on her bicep any more! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! THAT MINOR DETAIL WILL UNBALANCE THE GAME, CATS AND DOGS WILL FALL FROM THE SKY AND THE SEGA DREAMCAST 2 WILL COME OUT!

Never knew the jester was offensive in some countries. Don't think it's offensive in the UK. Good job Nintendo for fixing that. Now if only the douchebags would stop crying over nothing.

 

[Deleted User]

Unless you hang a confederate flag outside your house, I don't think this is offensive.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Today on culture differences! That gesture is actually considered offensive in some places, mostly in the US. Because to the US, it basically stands for, "Up your's."

Her middle finger isn't extended.

 

[xtheman]

Unless you hang a confederate flag outside your house, I don't think this is offensive.

(in reply to someone who said the same thing)
There is a difference in hand placement. Notices how she's grabbing her sleeve and not directly placing her hand on her arm? That's the difference between them. One is rolling up her sleeves to do some hard work, other is placing her hand directly on her arm and comes off as, "Up your's."

 

[hobbledehoy899]

Perhaps they didn't like how it implied that she didn't have any hands on the steering wheel...

 

[The Catboy]

Her middle finger isn't extended.

Actually that's not completely required, that's basically piling on a middle finger to an already considered crude gesture here in the States (and maybe other places.)
Basically this gesture

Is considered offensive.
Again with Rosie the Riveter, it's about hand placement. She's directly rolling up her sleeves
Notice hand placement

And the one that's "offensive"

They aren't the same, one in indicates rolling up one's sleeves to get some work done. The other here in the States is deemed, "Up Yours"

Edit: Holy shit, America actually has some explainable culture differences!

 

[CathyRina]

The Problem is not "how dare they change that" but "how in the flying salamander did they not know that this gesture might be offensive"?
In Paper Mario games even the tiniest words were adjusted for the British English release because they were offensive words. How come they didn't bother to check with this one?

 

[Tomy Sakazaki]

I live in Europe, and that gesture is really a fuck you here. I played Mario kart and didn't notice it, and yet now that I know i don't get offended, there are people with to much free time on their hands to worry with such tiny things.
Probably kids playing the game wouldn't even notice it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The problem is that Nintendo cares about brand image, especially with their kid friendly range of characters (Mario and Splatoon). So while the gesture by itself in a racing game wouldn't be a major problem, Nintendo doesn't want concerned and angry parents not buying their games because their kid started imitating a offensive gesture. Also, as I mentioned before in another reply, this may be an issue with some rating boards (not that it may throw the game to unrated/AO, but wouldn't be an "Everyone" game anymore).

 

[Mushkin]

For those guys I would do the same that the squid girl before the update


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[sarkwalvein]

The Problem is not "how dare they change that" but "how in the flying salamander did they not know that this gesture might be offensive"?
In Paper Mario games even the tiniest words were adjusted for the British English release because they were offensive words. How come they didn't bother to check with this one?

Did you?