PUBG removes visible genitalia, sets off silliest backlash of the year

Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds’ test server recently began showing the outline of labia on the underwear of female characters, and like every other change to the game, people had thoughts about it. It didn’t take long for the creator of the game to weigh in on the discussion, and it was his decision that led to more of a controversy and harsher arguments than the existence of the labia in the first place.

“After looking into this, it appears it came as part of the character model we received from an outsourcer when we first started the project,” Brendan “Playerunknown” Greene stated about the visible labia via Twitter. “The file itself has not been changed in two years. It will be updated shortly with changes! Sorry for any offense caused!”

It’s unclear why this detail on a legacy character model is just now showing up, but the addition of such well-defined genitalia on one set of character models, but not the other, was certainly strange.

The developer had to decide whether to keep things the way they were on the test server, remove the change or add the outlines of penises and testicles to the game to keep things “fair.” Reverting to how PUBG’s female character models have looked historically was the simplest, and most logical, choice.

Which is why it’s so silly that players on social media became upset that the developer listened to women who play the game, or just players who don’t particularly think visible labia is a necessary part of the PUBG experience.

This post from Resetera, presented without any edits, is indicative of the debate. This is someone who doesn’t play the game, doesn’t care about the issue and yet also wants bulges added so that the “sexy aspects” don’t have to be shunned.

Sure I'll join everyone else for a collective "Why?"

But it's also worth noting that the very same tweeter said it looks fine at normal viewing distance. Requires zooming to really check it out apparently?

Give the men a bulge to compensate! It's a mature game so I don't see why sexy aspects should be outright shunned? Let adults have their fun, you don't HAVE to look at the things. You don't normally stare at crotches in real life right?

(I don't play PUBG for the record though, but I would try it out if my Laptop could handle it!)

Here’s another post from reddit, claiming that vocal “mobs” somehow led to the character model being reverted to its original state:

From what I know is that those sort of mobs are so vocal, you sometimes just give in. For me and probably the majority it's just like "that's stupid that they give in, but I don't want to spend the energy to fight it", but those crybabies who made the initial fuss have nothing better to do than that.

More ... aggressive posts about the decision can be found on Twitter.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a coherent argument about why these players need to see labia in a game that didn’t have it a few days ago. But the developer reverting back a visible, unpopular change to the character model isn’t a case of outrage run amuck. Showing labia on characters is unlikely part of PUBG’s core vision, so it’s not as if Greene is being bullied into changing something that’s going to affect how anyone interacts with the world, either.

It doesn’t sound like the decision to remove the genital outline was particularly difficult. Even the negative reaction to the visible labia had the tone of an extended rolling of the eyes; it barely extended into anger.

We’ve officially reached the point where certain corners of the internet are searching for what they perceive to be outrage, so that they can become outraged in return, and argue that they are somehow protecting the will of the developer. In this case, the developer who was happy to remove something that proved to be a distraction.

Players found a detail in the game; the community discussed it; the developer looked at the situation and decided to remove that detail to solve the issue in the simplest way possible ... and that’s the end of the story. Really, it is. The rest of the argument is just gaming’s ugly side continuing to be ugly.

PUBG is in early access; adding and removing different parts of the game depending on player feedback is part of that process. This isn’t outrage culture, at least not from the people criticizing the decision to show well-defined genitalia in certain character models.

The system is working as intended.