If you thought you could turn some 0s into 1s and get the censored scenes in South Park: The Stick of Truth to show, then you’d be mistaken. The actual scenes are completely removed, including the audio.
A Ubisoft Associate Producer explained the situation, and their reasoning was to ”avoid a “Hot Coffee” type situation,” by ripping out the ”20-second-or-so gameplay/cutscene” from the disc.
In place of the censored scenes are static images explaining what the actual scene entailed, along with a facepalming statue for European versions.
”I’m the Associate Producer on the game for Ubisoft. We did make a separate version just for Germany/Austria. There’s actually 5 versions: North/South America, Europe, Germany, Australia, and Russia. Only the North/South American one is completely uncensored on every platform. The Australian one is censored on all platforms, the European and Russian ones are censored on console only, and the German one is censored on console for anal probing etc as shown in this screenshot, and censored on both console and PC for swastikas, Heil Hitler arm salutes, etc.” said ‘walgiz’ on Reddit.
He went on to explain just how fearful Ubisoft is of achieving infamy like Rockstar Games did with their cut content from GTA: San Andreas, which was discovered and unlocked with a mod called ‘Hot Coffee’.
”To avoid a “Hot Coffee” type situation, the 20-second-or-so gameplay/cutscene is removed completely from the disc and replaced with the screen you see at the link (times 6 more 20-second scenes),” he said.
Ubisoft twice attempted to get the uncensored version in Australia. ”We tried twice, got “Refused Classification”, which means we couldn’t sell in AU,” and reaffirms the EU console releases were censored purely as ”a marketing decision.”
Fortunately the PC version is free of censorship, except for in Australia and Germany.
What content is specifically censored?
-A mini-game in which the doctor is performing an abortion on the player.
-A mini-game in which the player is performing an abortion on the character Randy.
-Five anal probing scenes involving someone actively being probed. The scenes play out as normal before and after the active probing sequences.
South Park: The Stick of Truth releases on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 March 4th in the US, 7th in EU.
