Story Highlights
  • PlayStation has started rolling out refunds for Stellar Blade’s false advertising claims. 
  • The game was altered during the day one patch, adding censorship despite the earlier claims.
  • This is a strange move, considering PlayStation’s typical refund policy.

Shift Up’s first-ever console game is off to a huge start. The title has been critically acclaimed, with an 83 opening score on Metacritic. However, since its first update dropped, Stellar Blade has been under fire for false advertising.

Why it matters? Stellar Blade’s first patch added censorship to make certain outfits less exaggerated. It also toned down the gore, leading to a petition from fans to undo the changes.

Stellar Blade
Eve’s outfits have been censored after the first update

As per Reddit, PlayStation has started refunding Stellar Blade after the false advertising claims. You can report the game for false advertising, and PlayStation will refund the amount to the original source or your PSN wallet.

This is interesting since PlayStation is typically quite reluctant to offer refunds. Unlike Valve, it does not refund purchases for most games, though this can change for releases that are downright bad or broken.

Anyhow, the Reddit post has been met with many who claim to be interested in refunding the game. While the changes made to Stellar Blade are very minor, players are upset about Shift Up’s failure to be transparent about them before launch.

Stellar Blade
Stellar Blade has received serious praise for its sparkly combat and being ultra-polished

For a game explicitly rated for a mature audience, these changes are certainly a bit jarring. All the people who pre-ordered or purchased the title knew what they were signing up for, so censorship wasn’t necessary. 

While many were speculating this was PlayStation’s fault, Shift Up developers themselves revealed that the patched version shows these costumes as intended.

Still, there is a workaround if you want to play the game without these changes. This requires a physical copy and playing the vanilla version of Stellar Blade.

Previous PlayStation games have had mature scenes, but they were never censored. Stellar Blade’s censorship is also odd since most of the game stands out much more, making the decision to target certain costumes a bit surprising.

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Abdullah Waseem
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