'Stellar Blade' Realizes It Was Not Good To Name An In-Game Merchant The 'Hard R Shop,' Patches It Out

The review embargo for the contentious video game Stellar Blade lifted this morning, and sure enough, the first thing the game had to deal with was controversy.

However, this time the controversy was not due to the sexiness of the lead character or the alleged anti-feminist practices of developers Shift Up, but rather a good old-fashioned gamer moment.

As soon as the embargo was lifted, Twitter / X user @manfightdragon pointed out that there is a location in the game where the environment's graffiti and a sign pointing to a location called an "R shop" sure makes it look like the game is telling the player to go into a "HARD R Shop."

For those unaware, the reason this is controversial is because "Hard R" is slang referring to the hateful version of the N-word.

According to reports from IGN and Kotaku, Sony has stated the "HARD R Shop" area was unintentional and has been patched out for those with early access and will be patched in a Day 1 update for everyone else.

Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding Stellar Blade and general ongoing discourse surrounding so-called "wokeness" in gaming led this "Hard R" controversy to cause folks on both sides of the debate to confirm their priors.

On one side, there is a subsection of gamers who believe that patching out the "Hard R" store is exactly the sort of censorship that is ruining games and they have pledged never to install the update that removes the "Hard R" goof.

There is also a group of fans who think the whole thing is funny, clearly unintentional and believe the players decrying the so-called "censorship" of the game are exaggerating their rage for political ends.

Stellar Blade releases to the public on Friday. Hopefully, there isn't another piece of graffiti that accidentally reads, say LMSYCUYCDMT or something.