I see people still falling into the trap of "why would anyone find this fun?". Now maybe some of the people saying this are Nintendo soyboys who took Reggie's "if it's not fun, why bother?" quote too literally. But I jest.
I've said in other threads about game difficulty and censorship the same thing: people don't understand that games have moved on. They are no longer just a children's toy and so, like other medium, will try to elicit a wide range of emotions. So no, cutting the face off a woman (it's not a baby or a child for fuck's sake) and wearing it is not meant to be 'fun'. I'm pretty sure everyone would be concerned if someone thought it was. It is
meant to make you feel uncomfortable and dirty when doing it.
It's the fucking point.
It's not like this is some bait-and-switch on the part of the developers either. Many seem to be thinking of the game as "lol it's a walking sim", and that everything is just boring and fine until out of nowhere it springs some dismemberment on you. No - it advertises itself as a dark psychological thriller up front:
It places the reviews describing it as 'horror' front and center:
It's M / 18-rated and clearly places warnings of the content on both Steam and the PS store:
So the game passed all of the rating organization reviews without cuts (which is important, because there are still products banned from sale till this day). It even received cultural monetary support from the EU:
Do you think they would happily offer up money to something like this if it was just interactive gore porn and didn't have artistic value? Will people be writing angry letters now to the EU demanding they pull their support? Are the EU - dare I say it - now
based?
This decision was purely because of Sony wanting to virtue signal, nothing more. The ratings agencies deemed it okay, many players have expressed anger that they now cannot play it as is, and so the whole thing reeks of Sony acting as a moral arbiter. It's unsurprising though, now that the company's balance of power has tipped from glorious Nippon to woke Californians with a clueless English bloke at the helm.
If Sony hadn't done this, it would simply be another case of "if you don't like it, don't play it". It's that simple. Choice would be placed back in the hands of players. It is one game out of literally 10s of thousands released yearly. Which, as an indie game, let's face it: you wouldn't have known about if not for this news.