If you're a fan of horror games, then the Kickstarter-funded Agony will probably be on your radar. It was supposed to arrive on March 30, but developer Madmind Studio had to push back the release date. In a recent update, the company has explained part of the reason behind the delay: censorship.
Agony is described as "a trip into madness in the most terrifying vision of hell in the history of gaming," which means plenty of violence, torture, and sex. But it was all a bit too much for the age-rating companies; the studio had to modify sections of the game to get its M-rating. If Agony's content weren't toned down, it would have been rated AO (Adults Only), meaning no console release---one of the Kickstarter campaign's promises.
"In order to be able to publish the game, we had to make some compromises. Otherwise, we would have had to delete the whole project and never release it," Madmind wrote. "With that in mind, we have spent a lot of time to make sure that censorship will not affect the perception of the game."
As the studio wants Agony to be the same on all platforms, the PC version is being altered, too. But there's some good news for gore-lovers: Madmind will release an optional patch that disables the censorship changes within the game, allowing users to enjoy all its gut-churning visceral details. The company wanted to make it available to Xbox One and PS4 owners as well, but this hasn't been possible from "a technical and legal point of view." As such, backers who bought the console game will get the opportunity to switch to the PC version of Agony in an upcoming Kickstarter update.
Still no word on Agony's new release date. Hopefully, we won't be waiting much longer.