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Censorship EU Nintendo Games

Nintendo Pulls Dead Or Alive Over Porn Fears In EU 350

cpu6502 writes "The new Nintendo 3DS game Dead or Alive: Dimensions is being pulled from EU member states Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The distributor said an in-game photography mode allows players to look-up the dresses of 17-year-old Ayane, Koroke, and Kasumi — which could be considered 'child porn' by local police."
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Nintendo Pulls Dead Or Alive Over Porn Fears In EU

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28, 2011 @09:36AM (#36273126)

    Norway isn't a member of the EU.

    • by Carewolf ( 581105 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @09:57AM (#36273294) Homepage

      And nudity isn't considered pornographic or even indecent in Denmark. Some parent groups are starting to act weird, and child pornography is banned in Denmark, but child pornography in Denmark does not mean under US legal-consent teenagers, it means tweens or younger.

  • by DWMorse ( 1816016 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @09:39AM (#36273146) Homepage
    More like Dead on Arrival then?
  • OH NOES! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gilbert644 ( 1515625 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @09:41AM (#36273158)
    How can us Scandinavians be smug about American prudishness now?!
    • This isn't about prudishness in the "ZOMG A BREAST!!1 THINK OF THE CHILDREN!! AAAAAAH!!!111one" sense.

      This is about the usual child porn hysteria. Here in Sweden our politicians were chasing easy points with the public and pushed through various laws against child porn that basically made erotic drawings of someone who could be considered to be a child illegal. That is, it doesn't have to be a real person. In retrospective the only people who seem to like this law are the politicians.

      • Re:OH NOES! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Securityemo ( 1407943 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @10:06AM (#36273358) Journal
        Place the blame where it should be, in the lap of Beatrice Ask [wikipedia.org]. Just read this interview [svt.se]. She's evidently in favor of thoughtcrime; literally, she says that "children and childhood mustn't be offended" when she's asked about why drawn "child pornography" should be illegal. She's also the one who came up with the crazy suggestion that people who visit prostitutes should have mails with brightly-colored envelopes sent home to them, so that they couldn't keep it a secret from their family (or anyone who saw the letter being delivered). Fortunately, this suggestion wasn't well received by anyone else AFAIK.
        • Re:OH NOES! (Score:4, Interesting)

          by mmcuh ( 1088773 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @10:16AM (#36273420)
          People who are suspected of visiting prostitutes, even.
          • Which is making an accusation without proof. Cute. What happened that caused her to take this kind of position.

            • Which is making an accusation without proof. Cute. What happened that caused her to take this kind of position.

              It's not what happened, but rather what didn't happen. To my knowledge the woman hasn't taken a single course from the law school curriculum and she's obviously not sufficiently aware of the extent of her own ignorance. If she was she would have asked an adviser with the right competence who would have told her that it's an atrocious idea.

              • by DrBoumBoum ( 926687 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @01:42PM (#36274828) Journal

                To my knowledge the woman hasn't taken a single intercourse

                FTFY

              • by makomk ( 752139 )

                It's not what happened, but rather what didn't happen. To my knowledge the woman hasn't taken a single course from the law school curriculum and she's obviously not sufficiently aware of the extent of her own ignorance.

                Of course, anyone complaining about this violation of moral and legal principles must be a woman-hating rapist themselves, because that's the only reason that someone would complain about this idea. There's a reason I don't support feminism. (Actually, there's numerous reasons, most of them related, but that's one of them.)

                Oh, and like all the really unjust feminist-proposed ideas, it was suggested safe in the knowledge that neither the person proposing it nor any other people she had any empathy for would

        • by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

          Since nothing stops you from buying your own brightly colored envelopes, you could have a lot of fun with that. Just mail all your bills, birthday cards, and similar in such envelopes.

    • Re:OH NOES! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Carewolf ( 581105 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @10:02AM (#36273314) Homepage

      I think someone confused Sweden and Scandinavia. Swedes are prudes, and have really weird laws. Denmark on the hand has legalized prostitution, and considers nudity acceptable most places, and sex in public legal as long as you "try" to be discrete.

      • by hitmark ( 640295 )

        All the mentioned nations have their own odd laws regarding porn and sexuality.

        Speaking from a Norwegians perspective, we are allowed to own porn, but one can not sell it. End result is import from Sweden.

        As for sex, the minimum age is 18, tho the judge can show leniency down to 16 if both parties are of similar level of development or something like that. I think the rule of thumb is a 5 years age difference, max.

        What i think has happened here is that there is one distributor handling the whole region. And

        • by arcade ( 16638 )

          No. The age of consent in Norway is 16, not 18.

          And it's down to 14, not 16.

        • by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Eh, from all the things you got wrong I have to seriously wonder if you even live in Norway. Sale of hard pornography is legal and has been legal since 2005. The age of consent is 16, not 18 but any pictures or movies of people under 18 is considered child pornography. However, we also include drawings, stories and actors that "appear to be" under 18 in our definition, even if it is proven that all actors were in fact over 18. And yes, there are actual convictions to that effect.

          As for actual sex, anyone ca

    • Easy, this is just the distributor being unreasonably worried - not the authorities actually requesting the game be pulled. Anyway hentai isn't even illegal in Denmark, so why should an upskirt shot of some animated broad be a problem?
  • Don't RTFA (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28, 2011 @09:43AM (#36273172)

    Don't bother clicking the link. There aren't any pictures.

  • CHILD!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Windwraith ( 932426 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @09:50AM (#36273226)

    Child? You call those virtual plastic-y goddesses of bounce physics CHILDREN?
    What is becoming of this world...?

  • Simple fix... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ThoughtMonster ( 1602047 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @09:56AM (#36273284) Homepage

    Make them 18!

    • That's our solution in America, but to be honest I don't really get it. I can understand not depicting characters that are clearly prepubescent in pornographic situations, but once the characters start looking post-pubescent, I'm not sure what difference it really makes as there's no way of really knowing one way or the other and the description in that dimension isn't going to be particularly influential to the viewers.

    • by ktappe ( 747125 )

      Make them 18!

      Or wait one year until they turn 18, sometime in early 2012.

      And if you say "no, they don't age" then they aren't human and porn laws don't apply to them. You can't have it both ways.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28, 2011 @09:56AM (#36273290)

    Norway has ties to the EU through various treaties which force most of the EU laws on Norwegian citizens anyway.

  • Modern society (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Noughmad ( 1044096 ) <miha.cancula@gmail.com> on Saturday May 28, 2011 @09:58AM (#36273300) Homepage

    There's a game with the word "Dead" in its name, and people have a problem with it because you can look up women's skirts?

  • WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ephemeriis ( 315124 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @10:05AM (#36273346)

    You've got to be kidding me... This is so ridiculous I can't believe it's real.

    It's a video game. They aren't real people. It's pixels on a screen. No child is being harmed, regardless of where you position the camera.

    I also doubt if there's much to look at under those skirts. I doubt if the developers spent much time rendering realistic genitalia that'll likely never be seen... And if they were seen, would just generate outrage.

    Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood. Are you telling me that there's some magical transformation on your 18th birthday that renders you immune to the psychological harm of somebody looking at your crotch?

    But even if we accept that this is some kind of virtual child pornography that's somehow exploiting underage pixels... If we really want to make sure we protect the children... It's somehow OK to brutally beat them to a pulp? I mean, Dead or Alive is a fighting game. A "beat'em up". Like Tekken or Soul Calibur or Mortal Combat or Street Fighter... It's OK to pummel some virtual 17-year-old girl into a bloody mess, but it isn't OK to look up her skirt? How does that make any kind of sense?

    • ...Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood. Are you telling me that there's some magical transformation on your 18th birthday that renders you immune to the psychological harm of somebody looking at your crotch?

      Short answer according to the law? Fuck Yes.

      18 = look all you want, no harm, no foul

      17 = could result in being a convicted felon(lewd and lascivious, indecent acts) and most likely a registered sex offender for life

      I never said the laws make sense, but don't sit here and just blow off 17 as "one year shy" like it's no big deal within the legal framework today. The difference between those ages, as I've pointed out here, can be permanently life-altering.

    • No child is being harmed, regardless of where you position the camera.

      But Nintendo can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view. The game developer can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view.

      Because there are no good answers.

      • Jesus Christ, because it's a FIGHTING game. FIGHTING. Not a puzzle game. Not a standing-around-doing-nothing game. The characters here are using kung fu and doing flips, kicks, twirling around, jumping, movement movement movement. That's kind of the point!

        Even if the camera was exactly static and the user couldn't move it at all, you'd still get panty shots every so often. Even the most innocent, kid-friendly game gets panty shots from time to time if the lead character is a woman who's actually doing actio

    • Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood.

      Just checking .... has anyone told you that Sweden, Denmark and Norway are NOT in the United States? Strange as it may seem to you, other countries do have different laws and the ones that the US enacts don't apply elsewhere.

      • Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood.

        Just checking .... has anyone told you that Sweden, Denmark and Norway are NOT in the United States?
        Strange as it may seem to you, other countries do have different laws and the ones that the US enacts don't apply elsewhere.

        You think maybe that's why I specified here in the US?

        A quick Google search indicates that the age of consent across most of the EU is between 13 and 18, so it isn't like the laws here in the US are completely out of line. It isn't like these 17-year-old video game characters are still decades away from being considered legally adult video game characters.

        Regardless... They're still video game characters, which makes this all kinds of ridiculous.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @10:05AM (#36273354)

    Next time just let their skirts ride up a bit while they get gunned down with the blood splattering the screen from the inside. That should be ok.

  • Factual error in the summary: Norway is not a member of the EU.

    Of course it's by now one of the very few countries in Europe that has chosen to stay out of the EU, still they're not a member and likely won't become a member anytime soon.

  • You see less when you look up their skirts than if they were wearing only bathing suits. They had no problem with the EU releases of Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball 1 & 2, which features the same girls in bathing suits.
  • The headline could lead one to believe that the EU is afraid of porn, which they certainly are not.
  • by Splab ( 574204 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @11:26AM (#36273940)

    This is Nintendo overreacting to some ass hat Swede who threatened with a lawsuit.

    Denmark has some of the worlds most liberal laws regarding pornography and game violence, granted, we don't allow child pornography - but we do for instance allow models from age 16 as long as they have their parents consent (and supervision) to pose nude.
    At no point would anyone consider throwing the book at Nintendo for making a game where you can see up a skirt on a 17 year old cartoon player.

    (It has become illegal to poses cartoons portraying child pornography here, but again - emphasis on pornography - a naked child does not porno make).

  • by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Saturday May 28, 2011 @02:14PM (#36275058) Journal

    Considering the short amount of time that the 3DS has been out, these characters are not even a year old yet, although they are masquerading as characters that are much older. In fact, this would apply to all characters in the game, not just the three "teenagers" mentioned.

    Therefore, not only could this be construed as child pornography, but it could also be said to actively encourage pedophilia!

    I trust that the absurdity of this argument makes my underlying point apparent. If not, I will try to emphasize it now:

    They are computer graphics, and are not real

    I don't condone child pornography for one minute, but if even the appearance of it is illegal where it clearly isn't actually happening, then something is wholly F*'ed up.

    For crying out loud, if fictional sexually oriented depictions of minors are illegal, then ought it not to also be illegal for a person of majority to make themselves appear much younger than they are and engage in any sexual act? And if the latter is reasonable to be legal, then I can see no even slightly coherent reason to outlaw the former.

  • by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Saturday May 28, 2011 @03:31PM (#36275470) Journal

    It's weird, but a quick google will show the age of consent in those countries is 15 & 16.

    So how is looking up the skirts of a 17 year old possible child porn?

    They aren't children at that age in those countries.

    Not to mention, it's not real people.

    Seriously, wtf!

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