Deep Silver Slyly Re-adds Blood and Gore to Censored Dying Light

Censorship is a funny thing. Sometimes, it’s unobtrusive and oftentimes a little welcome, such as the way Manhunt was censored back in the day to cut out some of the more gratuitous deaths. Other times, like the Australian censorship of Left 4 Dead 2 and The Stick of Truth, it’s a little more “in your face”, with obnoxious changes that either change the tone of the game or forces gamers to miss giant swaths of content, respectively. It’s something we Americans often take for granted, since we live in a sort of Golden Age for our civil liberties as a now-recognized art form, but for gamers outside the US of A, it can make or break their gaming experience.

Case in point, Dying Light. Blood and certain wounds are something of a strange taboo in Japanese games, and since Dying Light is no stranger to decapitation, mutilation, and copious amounts of blood. Because of that, in the original release of the game, developer Deep Silver worked around that problem by turning the blood a strange… motor oil green. Here, check it out:



Not exactly indicative to crafting a convincing illusion of the undead end-times, that’s for sure. Japanese gamers were reportedly extremely distracted by the new color and, come on—wouldn’t you? That is some straight-up immersion-breaking stuff right there.

Fortunately, there’s a clever way to get around this particular problem: while Japanese censors are quite strict when it comes to content on the disk, DLC content—or anything distributed digitally—apparently is much easier to sneak into the hands of eager Japanese gamers. Thus, in Dying Light’s latest patch, 1.02, the blood has since magically changed back to red, and decapitation and other such killing methods have since returned. Japanese gamers can enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played: with gratuitous violence abound.

But here’s the real interesting part: if you read through the Japanese patch notes, there’s no mention of this change. It’s as if Deep Silver either wanted to surprise their customers, or wanted to avoid tipping off the censors that they’d be returning all the blood and gore once removed from the game.

A pretty clever way of getting around the issue, I’d say. It’s anyone’s guess if it manages to stay a secret from the authorities, but in the meantime, let’s chalk this up as a victory for Deep Silver and the Japanese gamer! Hooray for gore!