The award-winning border agent simulator Papers, Please is coming to iOS, but not without a few changes. According to a tweet from creator Lucas Pope, the nudity in the game had to be removed because Apple deemed it “pornographic content.”
Now, you might be thinking, “Sure, Apple has a blanket ban on pornographic content. What’s the problem?” First off, Papers, Please‘s pixelated, low-res nudity—which is seen when you use a body-scanning X-ray machine on the citizens who wish to enter your country—is hardly pornography, neither titillating nor sensual. Second, Apple is happy to sell you movies on iTunes that have actual naked humans, so it has a double standard for games.
But the biggest issue is that removing Papers, Please‘s nudity defangs the game’s artistic impact. Papers, Please is about the degradation to which those crossing the border into a totalitarian nation are subjected, and the bleakness of working in that situation.
To be fair, the nudity in Papers, Please can be disabled in the original game. But in that case, it’s a choice that can be made by the player. Do you want to let entrants maintain the dignity of keeping their underwear on, or do you want your scanners to expose them fully?
The nudity exists to drive home the point of how dehumanizing and invasive the use of nude body scanners at checkpoints is—whether at the border of the glorious fictional nation of Arstotzka, or in the security line at JFK.
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