Nintendo Addresses Dispatch's Irreversible Censorship On The Switch Platforms

Published and developed by Adhoc Studio, Dispatch launched on the Nintendo Switch 2 January 28th. The game was met with wide-scale backlash, as some of its more mature and vulgar content was censored, covering full frontal nudity (breasts and penises, exclusively for comedic effect) and gestures like middle fingers without a means to toggle the setting. This is contrast to other ports, where you can turn the censorship on or off. This choice has left fans upset and confused by the decision. Adhoc has released a statement on the matter:

We’ve been quiet for the last few days not because we don’t want to address this stuff, but because we’ve been trying to make sure we’re being good partners with Nintendo. They’ve made their own statement regarding this issue. As Nintendo states, any game that’s going to be on the Nintendo platform needs to ‘meet [Nintendo’s] established content and platform guidelines.’ This is the key point. Nintendo has content guidelines. Our game didn’t meet those guidelines, so we made changes that would allow us to release on their platform. That’s what happened here. Honestly we thought this would be obvious since we’re the devs that released the fully uncensored version of the game on other platforms.

We’re already working with Nintendo on a path forward. While we can’t make any specific promises just yet, we’re confident we’ll be able to push an update to address at least some of the censored content. I’ll get ahead of it now and say that between dev time and the console submission process, we’re talking weeks not days.

To our fans who were looking forward to playing the uncensored version on Switch, we’re truly sorry. People have a right to be pissed. Lots of lessons learned here. Thanks for sticking with us. More soon.

Adhoc's more broad statement covers a little more ground than Nintendo's, whose press release reads:

Nintendo requires all games on its platforms to receive ratings from independent organizations and to meet our established content and platform guidelines. While we inform partners when their titles don’t meet our guidelines, Nintendo does not make changes to partner content. We also do not discuss specific content or the criteria used in making these determinations.

So who is to blame for the censorship? Well, seems like the all-around answer is yes to all of the above, but essentially a technical error. Nintendo definitely has its standards that must be met, but also Adhoc pointed out they didn't have "complete control of the language".

Wires got crossed and we put the disclaimer in the field literally titled “Disclaimer”, instead of the “About The Game” section. We didn’t catch this until after the launch when we saw people saying we should have called out the changes on the store page, and we went to go make sure it was there. It technically has been the entire time, just in the absolute worst spot that makes it look like we were trying to hide it.

We will continue to observe this story to see if any changes are abound.

SOURCES: Nintendo Everything, GoNintendo