If I were the devil, my goal would be to subtly undermine the core of what you're trying to protect and achieve, without making it obvious. The challenge would be to erode the integrity of art and media without triggering backlash, ensuring that it all feels like an inevitable part of the evolution of culture rather than a nefarious plot. But since you asked me how I would work against it (as if I were the devil), I’ll flip the script a bit and look at the reverse—how the forces you’re battling might operate, so you can better recognize the patterns and fight back more effectively.

1. Promote the Illusion of "Progress" and “Sensitivity”
I'd make the changes seem like they’re part of a larger societal movement toward a more “enlightened” or “moral” world.

Subtle infiltration: I’d create an environment where the idea of “sensitivity” or “inclusivity” feels necessary—where it’s made to look like progress, rather than an ideological shift.
Rebranding censorship as protection: Instead of calling it what it is (censorship), I’d package it as “protection”—protecting marginalized voices, protecting future generations, protecting the public from “harmful” ideas. Make the audience think they’re doing the right thing by supporting it.
Guilt-tripping the creators: Use guilt to get creators to self-censor, convincing them that anything less than total compliance with social trends would result in them being labeled as irresponsible or even “harmful.”
2. Manufacture a False Dichotomy: "You’re Either With Us or Against Us"
I’d create a culture of extreme polarization, where anyone who questions the edits or changes would be branded as outdated or dangerous.

Isolation tactics: Anyone who stands against these changes would be subtly painted as “out of touch,” “problematic,” or “ignorant.” It would be important to isolate them in public perception, so they’re made to feel like they’re the minority—“No one agrees with you anymore.”
Dehumanization: To break the resolve of anyone who speaks out, I’d encourage the culture to dehumanize their opposition by labeling them as part of the “enemy” camp. Anyone who stands up for the unaltered form of art could be dismissed as “regressive,” “nostalgic to a fault,” or even “privileged.”
Divide and conquer: I’d make sure to pit people against one another, particularly artists, creators, and fans. I’d create a “purity test” where people had to constantly prove their alignment with the current ideological trend, fracturing communities and creating animosity.
3. Undermine the Concept of Freedom by Overloading the System
I'd drown the system in contradictions and so many new ideologies that it would become difficult to discern what’s real or meaningful anymore.

Too many causes, too little focus: I’d flood the conversation with so many competing ideological stances and causes that it would be hard to maintain a coherent, unified front.
Normalizing contradictions: I’d convince people that everything is fluid—morals, values, ideals—so that nothing is held to a high standard anymore. If everything can be debated endlessly, nothing can ever be considered “sacred” or “untouchable,” allowing more room for subtle shifts to take place.
Paralyze the opposition: This overload would make it increasingly difficult for creators, businesses, or any opposition to stand firm. They wouldn’t know which “correct stance” to take and would risk alienating one group or another by simply making a choice. The uncertainty would cause paralysis.
4. Appeal to the Desire for Easy Solutions
I’d exploit humanity’s desire for shortcuts, making complex issues seem as though they have simple, one-size-fits-all answers.

Simplify the narrative: I’d make people think that the issue of “correctness” is simple: if you just edit or sanitize the content, you’re being a good person. If you oppose the changes, you’re a bad person. No room for nuance—just right and wrong.
Gamify the “right” behavior: Turn the process into a kind of social game, where “correct” actions, such as supporting changes and edits, would earn points in the form of social approval or personal virtue. You’d incentivize compliance by rewarding those who toe the line.
Shaming through social currency: I’d weaponize social media and public platforms to make the idea of questioning censorship or edits seem like an attack on societal values, thus shaming anyone who dares to challenge it.
5. Erasure of the Past, Reinventing the Narrative
I'd erase the past, rewrite history, and reframe older works as something that “didn’t age well.”

Historical revisionism: I’d change the way history is viewed. What was once seen as a cultural milestone or an essential part of history would be framed as “problematic,” allowing me to diminish its cultural value.
Reinvention over preservation: I’d get people to view old works as relics of a time when society “didn’t know better” rather than as important lessons, allowing the erasure of certain themes or characters. “We’ve grown beyond that,” I’d whisper.
Repackaging for the masses: I’d make sure that when I reintroduce old works, they’d be so heavily altered that they barely resembled the original, claiming it’s for the sake of “making it more accessible to modern audiences.

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as for the picture. i'd speak out both sides of my mouth and reduce all the censorship to. ONE POINT. iT WASN'T THE ONLY THING CENSORED.


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people upset. and disabused.

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Bribing for "countering the bad" reviews.

Hiding the negative reviews.

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arguably out of context but there it is.

"Censoring video games is always wrong! It's strange that this is such a controversial statement nowadays, but it's come to a point in time where many people defend censorship vehemently. Now, if you haven't heard, the most recent victim of video game censorship is a game called Skullgirls. And honestly, considering the trend of censoring anything that is in any way offensive is so widespread, I'm actually kind of surprised it took the pro-censorship crowd this long to throw a fit over this game.
Now, I don't have hundreds of hours of this game, but I did play it back in the day and really enjoyed it. It's a cute little fighting game with phenomenal art, riveting characters, and complex gameplay. Well, just a couple of weeks ago, a patch dropped for this game that censored large parts of the game and straight up removed other parts of it. Bear in mind, this game has been out for 10 years. I thought that surely nobody would defend censoring a 10-year-old game, but to my surprise, there are many who did just that.

As I searched the internet, I feel that not only were many people defending censorship, but they were unfairly characterizing anyone who criticized the censorship of a 10-year-old game. As I thought more about it as the days went by, it bothered me more and more until the point where I felt compelled to make this video.

Now, when people censor video games, it's almost always under the guise of removing what they feel is dangerous information. In the case of Skullgirls, two of the biggest aspects that were censored were allusions to real-world hate groups and racial sensitivity.

The way the first change was actually implemented was by removing the red armband from the Black Egrets, the group of soldiers who serve under one of the main characters named Parasol. This red armband was seen as too close to Nazi armbands. Though the second change was implemented, they removed one of the more graphic scenes of the character Big Band being beaten and left for dead by his fellow cops. Since Big Band is African-American, this was seen as too close to real-world instances of racial violence.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions of the pro-censorship crowd. They believe that not talking about or not depicting real-world issues is a noble idea. However, this accomplishes the complete opposite of what they think it does. Censoring these issues brings less awareness to these topics instead of more.

In the case of the Black Egrets, they were censored because they were supposedly the good guys, and having them identify with the imagery was seen as promoting that view. The Black Egrets, though, are the military of a totalitarian dictatorship. The inclusion of the red armbands was a way of warning the player against trusting totalitarian governments. It was a way of showing that even the so-called good guys could turn into something evil if the situation is right. The Canopy Kingdom, which the Black Egrets served under, also has a very dark past. This includes the rule of King Renoir, who restricted political freedoms and enforced authority with jackbooted officers. The red armbands served as a reminder that even the so-called good guys can have committed atrocities in the past and made the Black Egrets more complex and their backstory into more of a moral gray area.

In the case of Big Band, by removing his art in the story mode, it trivializes the police brutality that happened instead of highlighting it. When players are exposed to the full brutality of a scene, it makes a bigger impact on them. These changes have only served to downplay the issues that should be talked about instead of highlighting them. Not portraying real-world issues is not a noble pursuit; it's a foolish one.

Since the pro-censorship crowd seems to think that even depicting these issues in fiction is dangerous, it's not a stretch to infer that they think fiction inspires real-world events. In these cases, it seems that they think that by identifying the Black Egrets with the Nazis or showing police brutality inflicted on Big Band, they're inspiring real-world racism. This is a completely preposterous notion that fiction, especially video games, inspires any meaningful amount of real-world action. It's reminiscent of the constant scares of video games causing violence. Whenever violent video games come out, this exact same rhetoric is thrown around.

A perfect example is the video game Hatred, an extremely violent video game and basically a mass shooting simulator. Many critics at the time said it was going to inspire real-life mass shootings. The game was removed from Steam for a small period of time but was later brought back with a personal apology from Gabe Newell. Only eight years ago, such censorship was abhorred enough to force an apology from one of the biggest names in gaming. But now, it's celebrated. Unsurprisingly, a mass shooting inspired by Hatred never actually took place. It's hard to believe that video games have inspired real-life violence in any meaningful way.

One of the most recent studies on if there is a link between violent video games and violent behavior was done in 2020 by Royal Society Open Science, which concluded: "current research is unable to support the hypothesis that violent video games have a meaningful long-term predictive impact on youth aggression." Therefore, why do people believe that video games have a meaningful long-term predictive impact on beliefs such as racism? It seems hard to believe that including the red armbands of the Egrets or the depiction of Big Band's betrayal would have inspired any real-life racism or police brutality.

Furthermore, this extends to one of the other biggest points of contention of the recent Skullgirls censorship, and that would be the removal of sexual themes, specifically of the character Fillia. Now, Fillia,in the canon, is 16 years old.

Some changes were made to remove what was believed to be sexualized content towards this character. Based on the previous points, it's hard to believe Fillia will inspire any meaningful amount of real-world sexualization of 16-year-olds either. It's understandable that people are concerned about children; obviously, real-life children should be protected. But a fictional character like Philea, while her depiction can be off-putting to some at times, generally seems harmless in the grand scope of things. Her depiction is really no worse than girls in current anime, such as Nagatoro.

The censorship around Fillia is also the most perplexing part of this whole debacle. Although some scenes were altered, like the scene from our story mode that shows her underwear, other scenes in this game still show her underwear largely unaltered. So it's very strange that people are defending the censorship because if the people who are defending it believe that the way Philea has been portrayed is wrong, don't they think this hasn't gone nearly far enough?

If the pro-censorship crowd had it their way, they would likely remove Fillia completely. And show you the demographic that is upset about the censorship. The censorship has largely been categorized as removing sexualization of minors. That's not true at all either. Much of the artwork that was censored was of characters who are 18 plus, like Cerebella in this scene or the way they adjusted a scene of Double Violet.

One of the biggest ways that this game has set itself apart from others has always been its character designs and its use of sexual themes. Now, whether or not you think this is a good way to market a game, it's very disingenuous that people are downplaying the censorship. This is one of the main ways that this game was marketed, and it was definitely one of the multitude of reasons that people became interested in this game in the first place. So, of course, people are upset about the removal of sexual themes.

It's also very dubious that the censorship will, in any meaningful way, stop the sexualization of any of these characters. It's one of the biggest problems with censorship, and that it almost always misses the point of what it's actually trying to accomplish. The censorship of any of these characters will never, in any meaningful way, reduce their sexualization. They've been characters on the internet for 10 years. All the art that was censored will remain on the internet. The censorship to the Black Egrets does not change the fact that the rest of their uniform or their weapons are both inspired by Nazi Germany. The censorship to Big Band does not change the fact that an African-American police officer was assaulted by white police officers.

The censoring of Hatred did not prevent it from being purchased on alternative markets. The digital age is here, and those censors will continue to try to stifle information. There's very little that can actually be done to prevent the dissemination of information online. A mod that removes all the censorship to Skullgirls is already out. Although there are benefits to the digital age, such as the dissemination of information, there are also massive drawbacks as well. The biggest is a concerning trend of digital products consumers own never actually belonging to them.

The Skullgirls team has taken a digital product that many people purchased and altered it in very significant ways. They've cut out entire pages from the art book, removed and re-announced voice lines, and drawn over concept art to make it less offensive. The current Skullgirls team, while many of them have ties to the very beginning of the game, is not the same team it was at the beginning. They're missing some of the most important contributors to the Skullgirls brand. They're also literally a completely different company than the original Lab Zero, who is now censoring Lab Zero's products.

The digital age just made the censorship okay in some people's eyes, but imagine if these were physical products. Imagine if you bought a physical art book that you really loved. Ten years later, when the company you bought that art book from is overtaken by another company, that new company comes into your house and demands that you give them the pages of the art book that they deemed offensive.

Now, even if you had no problem with it, although many popular gaming websites try to unfairly characterize everyone who's raised their voice about this censorship as nazi pedophiles, this is truly what the backlash against Skullgirls has been about. It's about censorship and the nature of owning digital art. If consumers allow such censorship without raising any concern about it, that's a very dangerous precedent. At any time, a developer can drop a digital patch removing swaths of content that consumers enjoyed under the guise of reflecting on past decisions.

Although the changes with Skullgirls might not seem like a big issue to some, if these kinds of actions are allowed, another time will come where a developer censors something that the so-called pro-censorship crowd loved, that they were attached to, and then they will have zero recourse to get that content back because they're the very ones who cheered that censorship on from the start.

-Lukcystrike

as for CORE VALUES.



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I'll admit the team didn't deserve the hate. NO one deserves harassment. But i don't like getting death threats.

I don't like being accused of being a nazi or whatever... by people who then bombard me with their p*rn with out my consent.

THAT'S THE TOXIC AUDIENCE YOU ALL WANT?



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Filia is still... you know. The lingering evidence is still there and the censorship is a police brutality. And other your voice, do nothing to help anyone in progress. Certainly not POC Individuals or Jewish individuals.

There's a lot of anti-Semitism coming from the left and those colleges and the peoples that were Instituting and sanitizing books just like the religious right was.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Now a moderator was then accused of doing bad things even though he did not.

That's the new toxic fan base that they want. They want to appeal to a very small group and alienate, so many other core fans.

I talked with atrox And they were worried that changing it back would be capitulating to a mob or bullying.

That it will be sending a bad message to game developers everywhere. But that doesn't stop the bullying from happening. And the bullying happened because the game was uncensored. That happened way before.

Very perfunicist thingsVery perfunicist, things.No one seems to care about the precedent that the censorship sets. That is normalizes Very pernicious things.
Even talking about censorship and threads where they talk about censorship fractured a healthy community... Gets you shut out.

In fact, people We're calling other people non human. And the people in favor of the changes were the ones, the least empathetic and The most abusive.