About the EOCS
Just a quick post about the EOCS since there might be some confusion about what they’re about.
The EOCS is a self-regulated body with most of the directors being the head guys from major eroge companies like Alicesoft and Nexton. And the aims of the regulations imposed by the EOCS are to avoid any sort of government intervention or police intervention
The reason why eroge companies want to have their games approved by the EOCS is for their own protection. Basically, if any of their games become a problem in society and there is police intervention or legal action involved, their responsibility can be shifted to the EOCS because they can say that their game has passed the checks by the EOCS.
This also applies for shops that sell games that have the EOCS mark on it. As they would not be responsible for anything they sell as it has been approved by the EOCS.
Distributors will not accept games that have not been reviewed by either the EOCS or the CSA, and the EOCS is also named as the designated review committee for PC games in 21 prefectures in Japan, so it is technically impossible to release any adult games without going through one of these organizations. That is the same for professional games released through DLsite too.
There were comments mentioning how the EOCS banned lolita and that didn’t work. The EOCS didn’t explicitly ban loli content, what basically happened was that in 2001 they banned the use of schoolbags and kindergarten clothes for use in a sexual context.
In 2005, they added the regulation that a character’s height cannot be shorter than 5 heads when featured on a game’s package, poster, flyer, and homepage. And when featured within the game, characters that are infants or look completely like infants are not allowed. Also when in-game, if a character is compared to the height of another character and it is very obvious that one is an adult and one is a very young child, the developers might be asked to fix it.
Also for in-game, a plethora of terms that might refer to a character’s age or suggest that a character is under 18 are NG words.
It is possible that the “ban on rape games” might be something along these lines, we will have to see when more details of the new regulations are released.
And lastly there is the Contents Soft Association (CSA) which is the less popular other self-regulating body that also rates eroge and they’re sanctioned by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Companies can choose to be members of either the EOCS or CSA and have their games rated by the respective organizations.
It is said that while they are more lenient in some areas as compared to the EOCS, they are also stricter in other areas, so they haven’t been too different from the EOCS. Though it’s true that they don’t have any explicit restrictions on loli content that EOCS enforces as mentioned above.
Currently the CSA has not announced anything about the current situation, but I would be amazed if they don’t restrict rape games too, with the direction that everything is going right now.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:28 pm
How disappointing that they seem to fold to international pressure. The loli work arounds are livable, but rape work arounds seem tougher… I, for one, will be heartbroken without my rape suicide depression endings.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Doesn’t the CSA also regulate AVs?
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
“but I would be amazed if they don’t restrict rape games too, with the direction that everything is going right now.”
NUTS!
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
is there be ever a possibility for us to see the member companies of such regulatory boards hmm so the head honchos are alicesoft and nexton…. well its fine by me but with all these company list its hard to locate them though
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Guys. It’s just one specific (rather disgusting I might add) fetish that’s being censored/banned.
They can’t actually ban porn. People would riot.
Stop worrying so much.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
One fetish banned is one two much. It doesn’t matter if it’s disgusting. And me, being a girl myself, don’t think it’s that disgusting at all. I like me some rape fantasy from time to time. Mind you, I would NOT want to get raped in real life, but that’s what fantasy is for.
You let them ban one thing and they’ll ban another. In the end, all porn is banned and people will not have rioted because nobody noticed until it was way too late. We need to stop this development now or we won’t be able to stop it at all.
Now if just I could think of something I could actually do to help stopping it ;_;
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Thanks for the recap and info, makes things so much clearer now.
June 2nd, 2009 at 8:01 pm
No, they can’t ban porn outright.
It’s like banning alcohol. We have history to tell us how well that worked.
Also, good luck saying “we want rape games back on the market” and being taken seriously.
Rape isn’t just a fetish. It’s also a ‘crime’, and harmful to other people.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
>>Kaisos
Just how is 90% of what you do in the average GTA game not a crime, and/or not harmful to other people?
Not trying to bash GTA, but that’s a close comparison. Sex is OK, violent crime is OK, but put the two together and somehow it’s beyond the pale? The logic seems a little off.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I know, but this is how people think.
It doesn’t have to make sense, but it’s the way things are. Sex crimes are treated on another level entirely from normal crimes.
Also GTA is stupid. Just thought I’d say that.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
It’s not really the banning or such that bothers me.
It’s that some organization has meddled in the affairs of a foreign culture that they aren’t part of or were even aware of before and has imposed their own values upon it.
October 8th, 2009 at 3:45 am
thank you