European version of Beyond: Two Souls is censored

Sony has confirmed that the European version of Beyond: Two Souls is missing content found in the US release.

The cause is the same as that which led to the censorship of The Last of Us in the region – Sony is fearful of irking sensitive European censors. Specifically, the platform holder wanted to ensure the game would be eligible for a PEGI 16 rating.

There are only two amends between the EU and US versions of the game, amounting to about 5-10 seconds of gameplay that’s not been removed, just edited slightly to be in line with a PEGI 16 rating,” product manager Ross Alexander said on the PlayStation blog.

For Beyond we wanted to make the game available to as many people as possible, hence applying for a PEGI 16 rating. The 5-10 seconds I mention above would have upped our rating to a PEGI 18, so it made perfect sense to make these two VERY minimal changes to get our planned 16 rating.

I can assure you that this does not affect the game’s story at all, and that if you didn’t know these scenes had been amended, you wouldn’t even notice.”

Beyond: Two Souls will be released on PS3 on October 11th.