Serious Sam 4's Steam page became a battleground today thanks to a debate over whether or not a redesign of the harpies should be considered censorship.
Despite nearly 10 years since its last entry, the shoot-em-up series Serious Sam still has a lot of passionate fans. a forum post on the recently revealed Serious Sam 4's Steam page has over 500 comments and counting. The topic? Harpy boobs.
The post, originally titled "Did they seriously censor the Harpy?" (it has since been changed by OP to "Don't Comment. Need lock") presents an in-game cutscene of the Serious Sam 3's bare-breasted harpy enemies alongside an image of Serious Sam 4's redesigned Harpy, now covered in demonic demon flesh and significantly less nipple-y.
OP explains that they were "hyped for this game until I saw this" and opens the floor for the same exhausting "SJWs are ruining our video games" conversation we've seen online countless times.
Yes, apparently the SJWs have come to take their Harpy boobs away from them. Led, of course, by video game enemy-number-one Anita Sarkeesian.
Many take the approach that it's hypocritical to censor nudity while putting extreme violence and gore on display.
Eventually, the thread draw the attention of a well-meaning developer joins the conversation to dump a bucket of ice water on the conversation.
Unfortunately, this comment is taken by many, including OP, as an admission that the redesign is, in fact, censored.
The thread goes on and on like this for 38 pages until the developer comes back to spell it out for everyone. This was an artistic design decision, not censorship.
Those offended by the redesign seem to be conveniently forgetting that the Harpy in Serious Sam 3 is a redesign from Serious Sam HD as well. In previous games, the Scythian Witch Harpy wears a bikini. Their argument seems predicated on the incorrect notion that a nude Harpy is somehow core to the series and that this "censoring" is akin to removing guns from the game.
The original poster has asked that the thread be locked because they (correctly) believe the conversation has become a toxic mess of gamer rage and regurgitated alt-right buzzwords.
Classy. As the Developer, Danny said in his post: Peace and love, boobs or not.