Stellar Blade, the massively successful game from Sony and Shift Up Studios, has once again found itself mired in controversy. This game was widely anticipated prior to launch, in large part due to it's "fan service," a concept that seems to be in short supply in the modern gaming industry. The game features fast-paced action and loads of jiggle-physics, two things sure to please the majority of gamers.
The protagonist Eve, who was modeled after the beautiful Korean model, Shin Jae-eun, has also generated quite a buzz online for the past few months. Prior to release, many of Eve's outfits that were featured heavily in the promotional material and tutorials were inexplicably censored and altered in ways that did not improve the aesthetics of the character one bit.
This of course sparked a backlash from many of the people who had preorded this game, with a majority of them simply wanting to know why Shift Up would feel the need to alter her designs for a day 1 patch. Although Shift Up denied that this was Sony's decision, many people have come to the conclusion that Shift Up was forced by Sony to make these alterations in order to not offend the "modern gaming audience."
It is also important to note that none of the outfits which were censored featured any actual nudity.
A petition even circulated online titled #FreeStellarBlade, which gained almost 94k signatures in an attempt to convince the developers to revert Eve's costumes back to what they had been prior to the day 1 patch. Despite being delivered to the Shift Up office in Korea, it is currently unknown if this petition had any meaningful impact.
Despite this controversy, as well as numerous attacks on the audience by games journalists, the game was a huge success, crushing records left and right for Playstation. Shift Up even went public yesterday, raising a massive $320M in it's first day on the stock exchange. Sadly, the story doesn't end there, as now it seems that Shift Up is embracing the ideology of ESG, which stands for environmental, social and governance.
Shift Up is hiring. Do you have skills in ESG to please all the new investors? Apply today!https://t.co/D8ELctKOYS pic.twitter.com/y47u1SnL2i
— GIGABEAR (@Pandacausal) July 11, 2024
In a new job listing from Shift Up for an IR Manager, one of the many job responsibilities listed is to "Lead other team member-related tasks such as public disclosure of listed companies, committee work, and publication of ESG reports." This is a very bad sign for gamers, since Shift Up, as well as a few other Chinese and Korean studios, have been viewed as the last line of defense against the woke ideology that has infected the Western gaming industry.
What long-term affects this will have on Shift Up remains to be seen. However, in an industry that is already hostile towards it's core customer base, this is a huge step in the wrong direction.-Shift Up goes publicly listed
— Perma Banned (@GiveMeBanHammer) July 12, 2024
-now needs to make ESG Reports
Welp, it was fun while it lasted Shift Up. https://t.co/JrHghvQZ7C pic.twitter.com/kakl7u3WoA