Risen 2 - Too Much Blood On the Cover

Huh, Kotaku reports the ESRB asked Deep Silver to tone down the blood on the Risen 2 box cover:

The upcoming Risen 2: Dark Waters has been asked by the ESRB to change its front cover, because there was simply too much of the ol’ claret splashed across the box art.
The body places limits on the amount of violence that can be shown on marketing materials, and as a result the marketing team has had to swap out the blood with some bluey greeny…stuff.

More information.

Wat? That red background looks like fire engine red spraypaint, not blood.

I think they look at what is implied as well. Not unusual in game when you kill something that the body turns into a stack of bones with blood around it. they probably saw it as the same thing.

Alrik complained about it.

Really?

Alrik was the one who complained to the ESRB?

Looking at them side by side, this seems like a very strange ruling.

That aquamarine color certainly doesn't match the rest of the color palette in the key art.

main stream gaming is a joke.

Thank god they are here to protect my kids. Video games are the devil.

It's a good thing the ESRB does the important work it does.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
That aquamarine color certainly doesn't match the rest of the color palette in the key art.

Yeah, it looks like they colormatched it to the the PB logo instead of the actual art. Looks terrible.

Huh? On an M rated game?

Ridiculous.

It still looks ugly and unsinpired. Looks like a 12 year old designed it.

By the way, most people I know will be getting a digital copies. Since it's a Steamworks title you can buy it on Amazon and just activate on Steam, so I wonder how many people will actually see the cover.

Much ado about nothing. In removing it and in the responses.

Huh ? We usually see that kinds of stuff only here in Germany for American games ???
Now it is vice versa ???

Originally Posted by JDR13
Alrik complained about it.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
Alrik was the one who complained to the ESRB?

Ha ! I've read that !

No, this cover looks pretty "standard" to me … In my opinion, this spray of red colour even doesn't look like blood at all …

To me, there is no indication at all that this was meant to be blood. In this way, how it is presented there, it looks rather like some generic red colour of warning to me …

Its the Dead Island debacle all over again all because of the red and skeleton bones. Sometimes I think the ESRB has there priorities wrong.

I didn't notice that there was something with Dead Island at all, since this game (setting/genre) isn't on my list of preferred games.

That does not look like blood to me. Anyway, that replacing red with blue is no big deal. It even fits with PB logo.

I'm surprised though that they didn't want to replace the colour of the tree and title in this one.

The original box art was this-



It was censored to this by the ERSB.



Reason for censoring-"The video game industry has set guidelines about the types of content that are appropriate in advertising and marketing materials, which includes game box art. According to those guidelines the depiction in the logo was not compliant. We never censor or dictate in any way what type of content can be included within a game. However, a game's marketing materials are seen by an audience that is much broader than that which actually purchases the game itself, so we enforce industry-adopted guidelines as to what is suitable for inclusion in these materials."

Originally Posted by bloodlover
That does not look like blood to me. Anyway, that replacing red with blue is no big deal. It even fits with PB logo.

The PB logo isnt a part of the artwork, the blue isnt even in the same key, like CountChocula already stated. Even a person who knows nothing about art should see it looks completely off i think. They should have went with a different cover altogether instead..