Censorship is always a touchy topic, no matter what realm it exists in, and in video games, it more often than not has to do with narrative content or even visual content. Games coming out of China, however, despite their popularity in the West, are still somewhat beholden to what the government might want in terms of the outlook. The latest to be affected is Hotta Studio‘s Tower of Fantasy, a gacha title.
Once positioned as a direct competitor to the more popular Genshin Impact, the game now has to contend with another obstacle standing in its way, and that is censorship. The main target of ire for the powers to be are the highly revealing clothes worn by many of the game’s female characters.
This was officially confirmed by Tower of Fantasy itself. Through the China social media account, the studio announced that many character costume designs will be altered in an update set for release on March 6. As expected, this update will make many previously revealing and provocative outfits more covered and conservative.
These costume changes will also extend to one of the game’s signature features, Nola Dorm, which brings players into a more relaxed setting in a dormitory and spend time with the characters.
As an apology, Tower of Fantasy will be providing various digital items, including avatars and additional free costumes that players can choose from. However, these free costumes will also be taken from the updated, censored versions. For now, these censorship measures and changes are only happening on the China server, and there has been no confirmation regarding whether similar adjustments will be made to the global version.
Hotta Studio’s sudden execution of these changes has naturally sparked strong speculation that they have received orders beyond their control, and that is a theory they most certainly can’t refute or acknowledge in any way or form.
