Hello, everyone! Today I want to talk about censorship–with the news of DDLC Plus coming to consoles like PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, it’s something that a lot of you have asked about. People are worried that based on the game content, DDLC might have certain parts of the game censored, or otherwise altered, in order to comply with the regulations of these platforms.
DDLC contains some highly sensitive content material that is designed to have specific psychological effects. We feel confident in the nuance of DDLC’s content, but we also know that certain platforms might have regulations that we wouldn’t be an exception to.
I had already decided long ago that if I was required to remove specific scenes from DDLC in order to publish it to a platform, then I would not publish it to that platform. And as you know, DDLC Plus is coming to all major consoles, so you can be assured that no scenes have been removed!
However, the PlayStation version of the game has some visual changes to one of the scenes. To avoid spoilers, it’s the scene towards the end of Act 2 in the classroom, just before the weekend starts. I designed the changes myself, and I feel confident in them because I don’t consider the psychological effect of the scene to have been diminished in any way; I wouldn’t have accepted that kind of compromise.
Basically, the change is not a big deal–I just wanted to make everyone aware of it in advance, because I know that DDLC fans will notice it as a difference from the original game. I wanted to avoid a scenario where people would spot the difference and think that the game was unfairly tampered with by some other company.
The DDLC Experience
Back in 2017, soon after DDLC was first released, a bug was discovered where the game would eventually enter a crash loop during Act 3, forcing the player to “move on” rather than getting to spend as much time as they wanted during that scene. It was a really unfortunate bug that prevented me from delivering the intended experience to some players. So, I quickly prepared a patch for it.
Then, I got an email from a fan. The email was a plea for me to NOT fix this bug - it turns out that the bug had a profound effect on the player’s experience with the game, because they emotionally had to come to terms with being forced to progress past that scene. They felt so strongly about their experience that they wanted me to keep the bug, so that other players would have a chance to experience that same feeling.
How cool is that? Nobody ever could have expected that!
I did end up patching the game, but I will never forget that player’s experience. It taught me that the uniqueness of each player’s experience goes far beyond what I originally assumed. Our unique experiences with video games bring us together and enable us to learn from each other.
Aside from the visual changes described above for the PlayStation version, some fans are worried that part of the essence of DDLC will be lost with it being ported to consoles. It comes down to this: If I couldn’t make DDLC Plus without it being a “worse” experience, I wouldn’t have made it at all. DDLC Plus exists in the first place because we had some really cool ideas that we wanted to make! That’s the Team Salvato way.
My request is that you trust the thought and care I put into the design, because there are some very cool things that I feel proud of and would love for you to experience. Whether someone plays DDLC Plus or the original game, they will have an experience that’s unique to them, and hopefully very meaningful to them as well.