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The story
The official X account for the dark fantasy game “Dawnwalker” issued a statement titled “To Our Japanese Community,” announcing that it has begun addressing the content that had been criticized in the Japanese version, including adding other language options. The move appears to be a response to the growing backlash in Japan over the game’s blood depictions. In 5ch live discussion threads, users debated the legitimacy of changing content after it has already passed CERO review, explained that CERO isn’t a legal censorship body but rather an organization that provides industry self-regulation guidelines, and brought up past cases — like FF14 and the Atelier series — where a rating changed after release.
Translation: To Our Japanese Community
We take the feedback we’ve received from all of you seriously, and we’re writing to let you know that we have begun addressing the points raised regarding the Japanese version.
・Adding other language options
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
Can CERO even review something after it's already shipped?
There's still a chance Bandai Namco, the domestic publisher, steps in to stop this.
Are they going to full-on war with CERO?
CERO isn't going to slap a rating restriction on something just for blood.
Because games are on the LDP's (ruling party's) radar, so the industry has no choice but to self-regulate.
Movies have the Eirin rating board though. And there have been films banned from release outside of that too.
According to Square Enix's Wada, they'd rather keep a low profile than draw attention from above.
so it gets sent back again and again,
until the developer goes 'screw this, I'll just cut it all.'
Is this the result of that?
This reminds me of that dating sim that got 'Sony-fied' (slang for Sony pressuring devs into censoring content) lol
What's actually going on with this, I wonder.
Never heard of a CERO re-submission before, so it might just be pretty loose in practice.
Wouldn't changing content via a patch require a re-review?
Assassin's Creed Valhalla managed to pull it off.
It's a self-regulation rule set by the industry.
This one's already rated Z to begin with though.
The censorship of stuff besides blood is annoying as well.
Exactly this.
CERO has no power to force overseas publishers to leave Japanese out of the international version.
If every Western developer just made that the norm, anyone who wants to play uncensored could simply make an overseas account and buy it there —
that would effectively neuter CERO entirely.
If they were trying to squeeze into a B rating, sure, but this was rated Z from the very start.
More like they just didn't do their job.
The developer making a statement on X about it is pretty wild in itself…
They don't 'impose restrictions' on a work themselves.
They just 'provide guidelines' for what content can go through distribution channels.
So according to CERO, the restriction itself is just the publisher 'self-regulating' based on those guidelines.
Their stance is: 'We (CERO) aren't the ones forcing the restrictions.'
Basically: 'If you're unhappy, feel free to strip out all the restrictions — we just won't be able to get it onto shelves, that's all.'
And since you can't sell without getting onto store shelves or storefronts, it's not viable as a business, so publishers end up having no choice but to follow the guidelines.
So the logic is: if you have complaints, take it up with the publisher, not CERO, since it's the publisher doing the self-regulating.
CERO originally started as an internal division of CESA, and was spun off as an independent outside body once the public grew sensitive to games' potential effects on minors.
Game companies alone weren't seen as credible enough to fend off public criticism, so they brought in figures like a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and educators from famous schools to boost their authority.
And CESA, as you probably know, is the symbol of the third-party publisher alliance from Japan's PlayStation golden age.
It's an organization publishers created to protect their own interests.
Since it's a regulatory body backed by CESA, which functioned as that third-party alliance's secretariat, almost every domestic game publisher is a member.
Not sure about Xbox,
but PS will probably stay as is.
Yeah, that's my guess too.
Background and Discussion Points on This Topic
CERO originally began as an internal division of the game publisher association CESA, and was later spun off as an independent third-party body in response to growing social criticism over the effects games might have on minors. It is not a legal body but an industry self-regulation organization — CERO itself doesn’t impose “restrictions”; rather, it sets guidelines for content that retailers and distributors will carry, and publishers adjust their content to fit those guidelines. In the thread, some questioned, “If content can be changed after review, what’s the point of the review?” — but there are precedents of ratings changing after release, as with FF14 and the Atelier series, and how a patch is handled is largely left to the publisher’s discretion. It’s an easy point to misunderstand that Dawnwalker’s PS version is still being sold under its original Z rating, meaning CERO’s review standards themselves haven’t actually been shaken. Some raised a political angle, suggesting the game is “on the LDP’s radar,” but this is speculation from some posters and hasn’t been backed up by any official statement or by those involved.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Hardware & Industry board, aka “Geha”) thread “Dawnwalker’s Official Emergency Statement Amid Blood-Depiction Backlash: ‘To Our Japanese Community’.”
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