Distanced From Current Events / Video Games

In-Game Changes

• Banjo-Tooie: In the Japanese release, the Severed Head Sports scene in the end is censored so that Grunty's still-alive head is kept in a cloth sack. This is owed to the fact that the game released at a time when the Japanese public was still in shock over the 1997 Kobe child murders, in which one of the victims was beheaded.
• The German release of Command & Conquer: Generals was altered from its original international version largely due to the then-ongoing Iraq War, which was cited as one of the reasons for banning the international release as German authorities feared that children would be able to recreate said conflict in a video game setting. In response to this, EA released a bespoke version of the game called Command & Conquer: Generäle, removing all references to real-world factions and terrorism and replacing the human characters with cyborgs a la Probotector. Needless to say, the alterations were ridiculed by the German gaming community.
• Crush Crush: One of the girls the player can date, Ayano, the protagonist of Yandere Simulator, was removed from the game starting with the December 7, 2023 update, being replaced with an original character named Ayeka as a result of the grooming allegations against Yandere Simulator's developer, YandereDev, becoming public.
• In DanceDanceRevolution X3, one of the Encore Extra Stages was "Tohoku EVOLVED" (now available for standard play), a song made in tribute to the victims of the 2012 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. If you tried to get a AA on your Extra Stage with the Wave modifier turned on, the game prevents you from playing "Tohoku EVOLVED".
• Though Fuga: Melodies of Steel is available to purchase in Russian territories, as mentioned in this article, any plans for a Russian translation was put on hold due to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the economic sanctions resulting from it.
• In Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, during the final stretch of the game, Kairi mentions almost all of the Disney worlds from Kingdom Hearts III (excluding those that were Adapted Out) by name - Toy Box, Arendelle, Monstropolis, and San Fransokyo. The one glaring exception is the Kingdom of Corona, which Kairi only calls "a fairy tale kingdom". Presumably, this is because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, also known as the Coronavirus, which was still ongoing at the time of the game's release, and might have made some people uncomfortable with hearing the word "Corona". The menus and Japanese dub still call the world "Kingdom of Corona".
• Minecraft removed the splash text "Привет Россия!", which is Russian Language for "Hello, Russia!" in the 1.19 snapshot 22w17a, which released on April 27th, 2022. Given the timing of the removal, this was likely due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the splash could've been misinterpreted as supporting Russia.
• MultiVersus: Velma's passive would originally summon a police car once she had collected enough evidence. In the light of increased awareness of police brutality (especially against unarmed African-Americans) in The New '20s, from Version 1.02 onwards she instead summons the Mystery Machine. The fact that people were making Tik-Toks of her capturing Lebron James, thus making light of a controversial action probably helped with that decision.
• In April 2022, Zarya from Overwatch had her "Arctic" and "Siberian Front" skins edited to remove the prominent 'Z' badge featured on her chest. The letter had seen relatively mundane use by the Russian military during the Invasion of Ukraine as an identifying marker for vehicles assigned to certain task forces, before morphing into an officially-sanctioned symbol of Russian nationalism and pro-war support. Though a complete coincidence as these skins had existed in the game since its 2016 launch and the 'Z' was clearly meant to just refer to Zarya's name, the fact that the game's sole Russian character was the one to wear them made the potential symbolism a bit too unfortunately close.
• Transfer Pak support for Perfect Dark was nerfed severely following the Columbine shooting in 1999. The game was originally intended to hook up with the Game Boy Camera to create characters with real-life faces, but Nintendo nixed that, their rare willingness to authorize the release of a violent M-rated video game from a second-party company notwithstanding, because in light of the backlash against violent video games that followed they realized a feature like that in a game that was already violent enough for an M rating as it was would come across as tasteless at best. Strangely, it took years until anyone related to the game's development was willing to just say that was the reason - before then, they claimed "technical limitations".
• Although it was first of a two-part video game, Persona 2: Innocent Sin was not translated into English despite Atlus' interest in localizing the title. Ostensibly, this was due to the game's storyline involving Nazis and the resurrection of Adolf Hitler, as well as fighting the main character's high school principal and a teacher in the game committing suicide in a school's belltower. The aforementioned No Swastikas issue was actually used as cover for a far more serious reason, though; Innocent Sin may have been translated had it not been at the time of the Columbine High School Massacre. It should be noted that the main characters of Innocent Sin are high school students, and one of the game's gimmicks involves equipping them with guns. Even though the Updated Re-release managed to make it stateside, any references to Nazis were removed, and Hitler was disguised with sunglasses and a trench coat, and referred to as "The Fuhrer" (though the censorship occurs in the Japanese release as well due to a rule change at CERO).
• Plants vs. Zombies features a type of zombie that spawns other zombies as backup dancers as it boogies toward your brains. Its original design was based on Michael Jackson's appearance in Michael Jackson's Thriller, but was changed to a stereotypical disco dancer after his death, acting as a Visual Pun on the "disco is dead" slogan. The description of the Dancing Zombie even mentions "any resemblance between Dancing Zombie and persons living or dead is purely coincidental."
• In the original Pokémon Red and Blue, published in 1996, one of the exhibits in the Pewter City museum was the Space Shuttle Columbia. In the international remakes, published in 2004, it was a nameless spacecraft. The Columbia burned up in reentry in 2003. It is notable that the shuttle kept its name in the Japanese version of those remakes.
• The US release of Resident Evil: Gun Survivor had its lightgun support removed entirely due to Columbine.
• In the Australian cricket video game Stick Cricket, When the Stick Batsman missed a bouncer, the ball would smack his head and he would collapse on his stumps and would be out bowled for comedic effect. However in an update, this animation has been altered due to the tragic death of batsman Phillip Hughes as he suffered from a similar fate during a cricket match in the Sydney Cricket Ground, passing away a few days later.
• The original version of Super Mario RPG has a spell that certain enemies can use called Corona (as in, the corona of the Sun or another star). This drew no comment in 1996, but by the 2020s, the term "corona" had became associated more with a certain deadly pandemic in common parlance. The Video Game Remake released in 2023 — after the pandemic had ended, but too soon after for most people to want to be reminded of it — renames the move to Flare.
• Vigilante 8 features a character named Molo who engages in the game's Vehicular Combat in a school bus. He proved popular enough to return for the sequel, Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense. However, the Columbine shooting occurred between the two games and publisher Activision became uneasy about having a school vehicle involved in combat scenes with a lot of gunfire. So, they replaced the school bus with a prison bus and the in-game explanation was that Molo had been arrested but stole the bus taking him to prison.
• The May 9th, 2022 Wordle answer was originally "FETUS," but the New York Times changed it midday to avoid association with a then-recently leaked Supreme Court decision on abortion. The Times sent out a notice that they wanted to keep the game "distinct from the news."
• The Zettai Zetsumei Toshi series (which is basically a Survival Horror series in which the "horror" is a collapsing Japanese city) was effectively dead for 5 years because of the Sendai tsunami and earthquake.

Pre-Release Changes

• Weeks before Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back was released in Japan, a murder was committed in Japan in which the murderer left only the head and feet of the victim. Because of this, a death animation that involved Crash being pressed down to merely a head and feet had to be cut from the Japanese release, in fear that the Japanese would find it tasteless due to said real-life murder.
• When Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was first conceived, the plot was going to involve Solid Snake and Liquid Snake fighting in the Middle East, and Liquid revealing that he had actually faked his death in MGS1. This concept was scrapped once the Middle East conflict began in real life. However, they did keep the Middle East idea for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where the first act of the game takes place in a vaguely Middle-Eastern country of some variety.
• The 1988 BBC Micro game Pipeline was originally set on an oil platform, but after the Piper Alpha explosion, the setting was changed to a sulphur mine in outer space.

Game Releasings, Reveals, Announcements, and Related Events

• The 2020 civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police lead to the delaying of several video game-related events:
  • An event showcasing the PlayStation 5 was originally slated for June 4, but wound up getting delayed to June 11 due to the protests. Sony stated that it was not the time for celebration, and that they wanted to "stand back and allow more important voices to be heard".
  • Nintendo, Game Freak, and The Pokémon Company quietly delayed the announcement for the expansions for Pokémon Sword and Shield from its planned June 2 livestream in English-speaking regions for the same reason.
  • The "Night City Wire" presentation for Cyberpunk 2077 was pushed back from June 11 to June 25 by CD Projekt RED in light of the events in Minneapolis.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)'s fourth season was postponed from its original June 2 release date for similar reasons to the PlayStation 5's delay. Additionally, the release of a season of an online military shooter would've been in poor taste, as some protests saw military action being taken to quell them.
• Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp, having already been delayed from a December 2021 release due to development issues, saw itself delayed from an April 2022 release to April 2023 due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February. It doesn't help that part of the first game involves fighting off an invasion from the game's Fantasy Counterpart Culture equivalent of Russia. Oddly enough, this isn't the first time this has happened to the series, as the original version of Advance Wars got its standalone Japanese release outright cancelled due to September 11th over twenty years prior.^note Though it would receive a Japanese release nonetheless via a Compilation Re-release with the second game
• Bonk: Brink of Extinction was going to be the Bonk series' return as a downloadable title for the PS3, 360 and Wii, the plot of which involved Bonk attempting to save the world from an incoming meteor. It ended up cancelled in March of 2011 in part because of the Fukushima disaster.
• The Nintendo Switch version of Death Road to Canada was delayed out of respect for the victims of the terrorist attack in Toronto, Canada on April 23rd, 2018, which was only a few days before the game's scheduled release date.
• Euro Truck Simulator 2:
  • As another Invasion of Ukraine example, the game was building towards the release of the Heart of Russia Expansion Pack when the invasion occurred, expanding the map to Moscow and its surroundings. SCS Software decided to indefinitely postpone the expansion, releasing a "Ukrainian Paint Jobs Pack" with all proceeds going to charity in its place. The pre-existing "Russian Paint Jobs Pack" was kept, but future Steam sales for the game notably denied granting that DLC a discount alongside everything else. Heart of Russia is currently being maintained to ensure compatibility with current versions of the game, but it is unlikely to be released until the war is resolved.
  • The developers have mentioned that the release of a DLC for Turkish trailer manufacturer TIRSAN was postponed due to the February 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake, with them opting to instead wait until 29th October, Turkey's 100th Republic Day.
• During the 1.0 version of Final Fantasy XIV, Titan (an earth-based godly being) and Leviathan (water godly being) were going to be released into the game with an update, but when the tsunami-earthquake disaster struck Japan in 2011, Square-Enix withheld the two boss characters since they felt launching characters who can cause earthquakes and tidal waves would be too close to home for its Japanese players. The two characters were eventually patched into the game a few years later.
• Get Even (2017), a game set in the United Kingdom, was originally going to be released on May 26, 2017, but it was pushed back a month following the Manchester Arena bombing.
• The Sega Dreamcast launched with House of the Dead 2, and an official Sega-made light gun controller was set for release along with it. But the Columbine school shootings prevented the official gun from being released, while third-party companies got away with releasing theirs.
• In early September 2020, a livestream was supposed to reveal Black Panther as the next DLC character for Marvel's Avengers. At the last minute, the decision was made to reveal Kate Bishop instead due to the tragic death of Chadwick Boseman just a few days prior. Boseman’s death also resulted in Black Panther’s planned debut in Fortnite (which had previously been foreshadowed by the addition of a giant panther statue to the map) being pushed back to December, with Epic Games instead releasing a special movie-themed Black Widow skin to fill the void in the meantime.
• MotorStorm: Apocalypse (which features racing through an earthquake-ravaged city) was delayed due to the 2011 Japanese earthquake.
• Nintendo Direct:
  • A Nintendo Direct was supposed to come out on September 6th, 2018, but was delayed for a week due to the Hokkaido earthquake, which affected the company's home country.
  • The September 13th, 2022 Direct was livestreamed worldwide... except for in the United Kingdom, due to Queen Elizabeth II having passed away mere days prior. Instead, the Direct was made available on-demand. This later turned out to be due to the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel's final name being revealed as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which would've come off as tasteless during the royal family's period of mourning.
• The official app for Mortal Kombat X ended a rerun of the Kold War tower early during the second day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• Palworld: A variation - just before the game went into early access, the devs posted a statement saying "This isn't a scam. We promise." This would normally come off as Suspiciously Specific Denial, except that a month prior, The Day Before had released as a massive case of Obvious Beta and was pulled from Steam after only five days and its developer ceased operations, leading to accusations of it being a scam.
• A March 2020 Psychic Pokémon event in Pokémon GO, which had previously hyped the introduction of both Gothita and Solosis, suddenly appeared to drop mentions of Solosis in later promotional material for the event, while still hyping up Gothita. Solosis was still obtainable in the event, but the reduced mentions of the Cell Pokémon were likely due to the unfortunate coronavirus connotations. Any material that referenced going outside had to be tweaked (including their Twitter bio), Raid and Safari Zone events were postponed and cancelled, and many game mechanics were altered to make it easier for players to play inside, such as selling boxes of Incense and Poké Balls at dirt-cheap prices. The Abra Community Day event was also postponed for the same reason to April 25, with the event being significantly retooled to make it easier to play from home.
• A Pokémon Presents video for Pokémon Day 2022 that revealed Pokémon Scarlet and Violet only had one tweet from the Japanese language account because the Russian Invasion of Ukraine had only begun less than a half a day before. The Pokémon Company cited that they did not want to promote the presentation out of respect for the ongoing news story but also that they could not outright cancel it because they always make such announcements on Pokémon Day, and because some of the things announced in the video (such as an expansion for Pokémon Legends: Arceus due out that same day) could not be delayed.
• Future information on the Visual Novel Root Double: Before Crime * After Days (about a group of people trapped in a nuclear reactor after it goes through a meltdown) was postponed for nearly five months due to the 2011 Sendai Earthquake in Japan, which led to the partial meltdown of several nuclear reactors.
• On January 6th, 2021, SNK announced that they would be delaying the announcements of The King of Fighters XV and Samurai Shodown's third season pass, which were supposed to happen that day. The announcements were very likely postponed due to an attack on the U.S. Capitol building that occurred that same day.

Retitlings

• The European versions of Bomberman were renamed and reworked as Eric and the Floaters and Dyna Blaster, as at the time of its release, The Troubles were in full swing, and IRA terrorists were all over the news for carrying out bombing attacks which claimed a number of civilians. The UK was still reeling from the IRA's wrath during those days, and a video game about planting bombs would certainly be seen as insensitive regardless of context.
• Rainbow Six Extraction was previously known as Rainbow Six Quarantine, but most likely received a name change in order to avoid any possible links to the Coronavirus Pandemic that was occurring at the time of the game's development, which resulted in real life quarantines.
• The NES version of Super Contra was retitled Super C in North America to avoid connotations with the Iran-Contra scandal that was going on at the time. The Game Boy game was treated similarly, being called Contra in Japan but Operation C in North America.

In-Universe

• In-universe example from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The present ruler of Solitude cancels the annual festival where a hated tyrant is burned in effigy. Her husband, the High King was just murdered, so a festival celebrating the death of a king, even a tyrant, is probably less than appropriate. Interestingly, the modified version of the effigy burning (which is part of the Bard's College entry quest) can be seen as supporting the old High King, by painting the hated tyrant as a false king who came to power by force and treachery, just as Ulfric Stormcloak (the murderer of the previous High King) plans to become.

---