Top Stellar Blade controversies to date

Eve’s outfits censored

Although Stellar Blade’s oversexualized protagonist Eve has stirred controversy, some have also lauded South Korean studio Shift Up for being provocative with their latest game. So maybe this is why some were upset by the fact that a few of Eve’s outfits were less revealing than in the pre-patch version of the game as seen in the X post below (via Forbes). Admittedly the outfits contained in the disc (before applying the game’s day one patch) show more skin and are more provocative than the final product, but the difference is not huge. Meanwhile, the game’s gore wasn’t censored at all, as was mentioned in the previous point.

Also, Shift Up game director Hyung-Tae Kim issued an apology of sorts. “Understandably, we also recognize this issue. However, the final costume that we wanted to show you is indeed the costume in version 1.0.0.2. I want to clarify that is our final product. However, I know this answer is not enough to convince our users”, said the man. However, this was not enough to please some irate gamers who saw this as censorship, who have gone as far as creating a petition on change.org over the matter.

What people don’t understand is that it’s not about the suits themselves, it’s about the censorship.

Stellar Blade was supposed to make a point, and it has failed miserably at it. pic.twitter.com/Boob7XRXTJ

— El Hamsterrifico (@Hamsterpilled_) April 26, 2024

Racism in the game

Nobody would have thought that Stellar Blade could be controversial by accident, but this was due to a graffiti which appears at random spots in the game’s city of Xion (as seen in the IGN picture above). You see, the “Hard” graffiti seen in the image above was too close to comfort to the “R shop” sign, and this could be read as “Hard R”, a well-known racist slur. In Stellar Blade, R shops are found at various points in the game, letting players purchase upgrades amongst other things. Meanwhile the “R” stands for Roxanne, one of the game’s characters.

However, and even if likely nobody was offended by this, Sony was so embarrassed by the accidental slur seen above that it had to issue a formal apology, saying that “Shift Up had no intention of creating offensive artwork and will be replacing the graffiti for the Day 1 patch”. They also called this an “unintentional objectionable phrase”. So it seems this is a case of too much ado about nothing, then.