Dear PlayStation and Sony executives/representatives,

Back on September 16, 1994, the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) was formed. The main reason it came to be was in response to American congress screaming about the gore and blood in the console release of Mortal Kombat, along with the video violence against females found in the game Night Trap for the Sega CD. They claimed that, since games are for kids, these games would "corrupt the youth". Years later some of your most successful games are some of the goriest out there (I.E. Last of Us and God of War). So it's safe to say in that sense you seem willing to allow and even help create games that take the players seriously and treat them like adults who can decide what isn't or is too much for them. In the other sense, such as sexual content and treatment of women, you seem to have regressed to those dark ages of values. Even before these new poorly designed policies, you seemed completely uninterested in advertising exclusive Japanese games if E3 the past 4 years is anything to go by. Exclusive games like Gravity Rush 2, Persona 5, and Yakuza 0 got nothing more than a couple shots in the ending montage. Meanwhile games you bought timed exclusives for like the newest Call of Duty at the time, you gave almost 10 minutes or more of stage time to. A game that needed the advertising far less. Sony, you funded and developed Gravity Rush 2, and there was never a single bit of stage time dedicated to it.

My point is, even prior to these new rules, you have shown time and time again recently you are seemingly ashamed of your Japanese heritage and their games. You gave push for Kingdom Hearts 3, Resident Evil 2, and Death Stranding at E3 2018, but those are games with an undeniably huge western appeal. To me this has come to to it's peak with these new regulations. The whole purpose of the ESRB was so game developers could feel secure publishing on a console as long as their (ideally) unbiased rating is allowed to be sold on said platform. None of the games censored were rated AO (the only banned rating on your platform), and a lot of them are significantly more tame than the sexual content in western realistic looking games like Assassin's Creed, LAST OF US (There's an entire section where Ellie must run from someone try to rape and also eat her at the age of like 13 or so), etc. However seeing a girl's underwear or navel in an anime artstyle? Cant let the kids witness that! Despite the fact they're all rated M! Meaning it's not targeted towards kids! The fact the developers of Omega Labyrinth Z were approved by the ESRB AND YOU, but they were forced to cancel their release last second cause you changed your mind because of your new rushed and loosely defined (Your words. You admitted you rushed this in response to metoo) policies. The fact you see treating any developer like that is disgraceful and you should be sued for the money you lost them over that.

It simply shouldn't be your place to decide what is and isn't acceptable for me. That's how it was before the ESRB and it was terrible. Even with it we still have localization censorship which is frustrating enough, but at least the uncensored version was able to exist in some capacity before. With these new policies, a game only releasing on your platform could never have their original version come to light. I wouldn't care if the people deciding this completely agreed with me either, because it shouldn't be their place to make that decision regardless. This power should not be in the hands of random people you rushed together last second, if anyone. Especially since the people making these decisions clearly have a bias towards anything that "looks Japanese/Anime" I guess. The fact that something like Mortal Kombat's fatalities is fine but in the second breath you're crying that you're just "thinking of the children" is nonsense. MeToo was spawned due to sexual harassment in the workplace. Why would your brand have ANYTHING to do with that suddenly because of these "Anime games"? Both of your reasons for these policies are so ludicrous and illogical, I have to ask- What are you thinking?!

I've been a fan of PlayStation ever since the PS2. The PS2 is my favorite game system of all time. The reason for that is because it had huge and diverse library of high quality (and low quality) games. Especially the Japanese games. You seem to be ashamed of that now a days. That's disappointing to me because you've basically told me you're ashamed of customers like me. I don't wanna take my business elsewhere, but your policies on this and stuff like cross play- It says to me that you don't want me or many others as a customer anymore.