*stellation Cr**

You know I've given Hoyolab plenty of flack for this myself. Mostly this was spillover from my anger over a couple of unjustified mutes I suffered around the same time. But that's not an excuse as you guys will see as you read on. I am speaking of course about the seemingly random censorship we've all had to deal with when we talk on here.

The first thing is that we all know mass media has been on Genshin's case ever since it's insane levels of success in the gaming industry. No other game has ever earned as much as Genshin has in as short of a time. And yes we know for sure this is what triggered the negative press. Mass media has been consistently reminding us that "the likely reason" for Genshin's success was because it happened to launch during the rona.

But you know no matter how high your defenses are against yellow journalism that is as blatant as this something will inevitably slip through the cracks. That's what happened to me and the censor filter of Hoyolab. You see we have all complained about how ridiculous it can be right? The title of this topic is literally two of the words that were (are?) censored here. Another would be the Dendro Archon herself Lesser Lord Kus****i.

It seemed like an open and shut case of a company based in a place known (by mass media) to overly censor going overboard with their censoring. Well that's egg on my face because it's not unique to Genshin or to MiHoYo. Like. At all.

The phenomenon even has an official name it's so common! It's called the S****horpe Problem.

And perusing that page will show you all kinds of incredible and sometimes hilarious censors. (though my topic right now might also be triggering some hilarity too)

For instance:

I'd say though while we here on Hoyolab just get the standard asterisks I think we might have had more fun had MiHoYo taken on some of the more creative styles that other companies used. For example:

Why do I say that? Imagine what content creators could do with censorship like that!

Ok but in all seriousness I figured my last two topics were about something that MiHoYo should honestly fix. Bad customer service that leads to people's accounts being banned for over a decade is inexcusable. I mean it's probably no secret at this point that customer service worldwide has been dipping thanks to recent events. But worsening customer service is no excuse for MiHoYo to not improve theirs. Anyway those topics held nothing back so after finding out that I'd been accusing MiHoYo of something it looks like everybody does I wanted to make sure to balance things out. (At the same time just like how failing customer service around the globe is no excuse for continued bad customer service from MiHoYo there should also not be an excuse for unnecessary censorship just because everybody else does it. MiHoYo can still do better and should be holding itself to that high standard.)

Now last part of this. Why did I think only MiHoYo did this? Or rather companies from the same place as MiHoYo? Well that's because mass media reports on it in a very specific way when it comes to those companies and doesn't do it when it comes to everybody else. If you guys look back at that page I linked you to about the S****horpe Problem you might notice something. There are only 4 games listed on that giant list that come from where MiHoYo's from. And one of those is Genshin. (No the other one's aren't Honkai, Star Rail and Zenless.) (No they aren't Tower of Fantasy or Arknights either.) And only on those games (actually not even all 4 of them because I'm going to guess they didn't realize one of them because the game's name is a very Japanese word) does it specify that the place they come from has "heavy censorship laws" and that the company can't afford to "cross" their rulers.

Besides games like White Knight Chronicles also having trouble with the letters c-o-n like our ***stellation or Nintendo preventing people named Violet from playing as themselves in Pokemon or trading their Pinecos you don't get the same kind of reasoning when their censors kick in and impact players. And speaking of that kind of reasoning Nintendo's Miiverse doesn't allow "political discussion" which they will ban for. Actually Youtube recently tried silencing a well known Historytuber for promoting accurate historical facts because Netflix was trying to promote inaccurate ones that fell more in line with youtube's own beliefs.

And btw mass media won't even cover inappropriate censors in games that their own players call them out on.

Also btw Genshin is mentioned on that page and the S****horpe Problem is also mentioned on Genshin's page on that site. But other stuff like the Reveal or Foreshadowing are only listed on the Genshin page. Curious right?

Just wanted to drive home the point about unbalanced media representation.

So going back to what I said about MiHoYo imagine if they did fix stuff like this censor filter problem and made sure it didn't come up again. They could invoke this list and proudly claim that they (despite being from this "horrible" place that overcensors and you "fear the wrath" of those crazy rulers) actually does better than all those other companies who (supposedly) don't have that problem. It's up to MiHoYo now. Do they want easy good publicity and an improving public image or do they want to stay on the downward trend they've been on?