There's a patch that makes Blade & Soul characters naked, and it's pretty creepy

Blade & Soul has taken East Asia by storm, with the game having just launched a new expansion in Korea and its open beta going swimmingly in China. And while you wouldn’t think there’d be need for a nudie patch given how skimpy some of the game’s in-game outfits are, some enterprising modders in China have created one anyway.

Amazingly, the Chinese patch has actually been around since before the game entered open beta in China, and it’s being updated with surprising consistency. Most recently, the patch was updated just last week in response to an official game patch to make it fully compatible with the latest version of the Chinese game.

We’re not going to post pictures or video footage from the patch here because we know some of you are at work or just may not want to see it, but if you’ve seen Blade & Soul‘s female characters, you probably can imagine the general idea. As far as I can tell, the patch only works on the game’s female characters, so if you’re looking to see some hot naked guys, you’re out of luck.

From what I’ve seen of it, though, I think the patch is more creepy than it is sexy. Here’s why: it comes with nude models for a lot of the game’s characters, including the very young (or at least young-looking) ones. I know they’re completely fictional, digital characters, but this still feels a bit like child porn to me, and it’s about as far from sexy as you can get. (As a side note, even the adult models look strange; without clothing to distract the eye it becomes very obvious that most of them have absurdly — inhumanly — long legs, and that their bodies are strangely shiny, as if they were all made of polished plastic).

To be very clear, this patch doesn’t come from NCSoft. But it is a little disappointing how popular things like this are in the gaming community (this patch is huge on Chinese Blade & Soul gaming forums). I have no problem with pornography, or even pornography in games, but the depiction of young (or young-looking) characters as sex objects is another story entirely.

I’m not sure how old this character is in the game, but she looks about six. Do we really need to see her naked?

My colleague Iain recently made a similar point about a Japanese game, and he has been inundated with comments about how these portrayals are “just part of the culture”. But let’s be clear: this is not purely a cultural issue. There are biological, scientific reasons why most societies only permit sex between consenting adults and turning sexualizing children is a huge taboo. Chief among them: childrens’ brains are not fully developed, and they don’t have proper impulse control.

This isn’t me trying to impose Western “politically correct” culture on anyone, it’s just a scientific fact.

And given that fact, I think most people would agree it’s a creepy to portray children as sex objects, even if they’re only virtual children. I’m not a fan of censorship, but I think there are good reasons not to include sexualized images of children in games. A number of studies have suggested there is a connection — though there’s no smoking gun — between viewing pornographic images of children and actual sexual abuse of children. And while the girls depicted in this mod aren’t real children, that correlation still seems concerning. At the very least, it’s something that should be seriously considered before creating a mod like this.

So I have to wonder: did the little girl models need to be included in this patch? The modders don’t seem to have made any of the men nude, after all, and there are plenty of very-adult-looking sexy female characters in the game. The inclusion of nudity for the game’s childlike characters is an odd and creepy decision, and while I’m not suggesting anyone should be thrown in jail over it, I do think it’s something the modders ought to seriously rethink.

If you want to add a little semi-ridiculous sex appeal to a game for adults to enjoy, I’m all for that. But bringing children into the mix is very problematic.