How far are we allowed to go in graphic material?

I don’t mean sex or erotic content. What I’m wondering is how dark/gorey can we make a story without having it rejected by C.o.G or the marketplace owner.

If anyone can give a specific answer on how far we can go I’d much appreciate it.

FWIW, Silent Gear was permanently rejected by Amazon App Store for Android.

When asked why, they refused to explain their reasoning.

Really? I wonder why they wouldn’t tell you. It wouldn’t make sense for them to turn away possible profit without saying why.

The reason I asked was because the game I’m helping to work on is one where you play as an assassin and you will kill other npcs throughout the game. (Of course certain routes may contain less death)

My Silent Gear title doesn’t have any sex or erotic content… If there is a hint of it, it’s still much less than say choice of romance. I don’t think that’s the reason why it’s rejected, but that’s really sad to hear for an author… =(

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It is very strange. You didn’t do anything to piss off Amazon did you?

nope, never used them in my life.

Hmm, would you mind sending me a link of the game in a private message?

I can run through and see if there was anything that might’ve triggered the reaction
If I can’t find anything you should try getting in contact with them. It may have been an error on their part.

It was a free game right? If not don’t send me a link.

@Razgriz Wait the second… I just realized, the game is on hosted games list in the choice games website:

Thanks. That really is strange though. Just can’t help but wonder why they would do that. I could understand if there was something just horrifying in it.

I wonder if it could be the name itself. Silent Gear is similar to the Metal Gear series. Perhaps they were trying to avoid a lawsuit? But that’s really just grasping at straws by that point.

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That sounds far fetched lol, there are plenty of games with the word Gear in it. I don’t think they can have copyright over the word “Gear” hah…

Perhaps, still though that sounds like a really big “F you” to Hosted Games and C.o.G even if they would give a definitive reason as to why their product would be rejected. I’m gonna give a dive into the game, so I will return in a bit!

Think I figured out why. You mentioned ISIS in the game and that they were a large power. That could’ve been why they did that.

Mentioning terrorist groups in game could’ve been what made them do it.

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I think you hit the bulls eye there. That’s most likely why. I just used the current real political conflicts as a back story, I learnt my lesson for future titles anyway…

for many choice based games the determination of how graphic something is can be lead by what your basing the game off of. Its much like an esrb rating, Theres one suitable for children with no gore of violence, one for teens were it has mild gore and mild violence. to mature of assassins creed point were they push the boundries between too gory and too much violence. assassins creed would be the best and high on the graphic and gore line as you can go, even in a fantasy based world.

My suggestion woudl be to keep it at Rated T or below and you should be fine with the people accepting your game. Anything above T may get rejected because remember, even little kids play choice based games, so you can’t be too gory or too violent.

EDIT: Mentioning IRL (in Real Life) big companies, government operatives, government or international things (Such as interpol and the like) Also want to be kept on the down low. Mentioning terrorist groups are also a big no-no in games. Hence why people use parodies or their own made up terror groups. its a sensitive subject and sensitive subjects like that should be left alone to avoid complications.

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This actually does help greatly, thanks Brittany. Of course much limitations will go into such games and the likes, and considering family members (with their curiosity) don’t wanna give them something that would make them give us a double take now would we =p

But that does answer the topic question at hand, I’m sure that would go for cog apps as well. Interesting how certain stories could be banned from the app store yet “kids” torture games are rampant…

I’ll take care to look into the details of Rated T, border line of that, and whats below that ratings. Unless you have the info at hand…feel free to post here or message me if you can :slight_smile:

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The ESRB doesn’t rate CoGs, and not all games on this site are for kids (Vendetta, for example, is very close to deserving an adult rating).

CoG have said that they are okay with adult content, thus the problem lies with if you want to be able to sell it through the various stores (Apple in particular are a pain in the rear).

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I have heard that drug use and sexual assault are things that the App Store hates dealing with. Even if it’s a well written game that doesn’t condone these things, steer away from controversial issues or they may have a problem with it.

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Let me put this in a more elaborate term to help clairfy then, forgive me Ramidel, I was not clear enough. What im saying is that they should stick to what the esrb refers to as T, as i have said before, to prevent it from being rejected by places in which they wish to sell the game on if they decide to sell it to multiple companies, even some that you have listed. I am not saying that that is the only way, im just sayign that should be the amount of violence and stuff needed for it to be accepted by other companies…
It was a nicer way of sayign that they need to keep gore and violence to a mild if they wish to sell it through various stores other than CoG. And as Sashira said the esrb rating of T prevents such things those are stuff for rated M games. keeping things to T rating would help take out a lot of issues. Again, the ESRB rating of T is more of a guideline for games if they wish to be sold to neumerous things besides CoG

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