Stellar Blade

About

Stellar Blade is an action-adventure third-person video game for the PlayStation 5 set in a future where Earth is defeated by an invading alien race. Players control Eve, who travels from the Colony to fight against the alien and make contact with humans left on Earth in a mission to save the planet. In 2023, an unnamed employee accused Shift Up of bias, claiming to have been fired from a contractual position for holding feminist opinions. The game gathered renewed attention in early 2024 with many players vowing to buy the game for its supposed fanservice elements, the conventionally attractive protagonist and due to the accusations of the studio being anti-feminist.

Background

Stellar Blade was initially announced by Korean studio Shift Up under the name Project Eve, with a teaser trailer first dropping in April 2019 (seen below, left),^[1] and a trailer^[2] under its present name releasing on September 9th, 2021, gathering nearly 2 million views in two years (seen below, right).

On January 31st, 2024, the gameplay trailer for Stellar Blade was released on PlayStation's official YouTube^[3] page. The post gathered over 400,000 views in a day (seen below).

Developments

Shift Up Fires "Feminist Employees" Allegations

Sometime in 2023, X / Twitter user @Gaming_Rukiana accused Shift Up of discrimination, claiming that she and another contractual employee were fired for holding feminist views. While the account has since been deleted, screenshots of the post can still be found (seen below, left).

On February 1st, 2024, X^[7] user @YellowFlashGuy joked about the event "uniting" the internet, gathering over 2,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Unrealistic Body Model Accusations

On December 31st, 2023, Shift Up's official X^[4] account posted a clip showing how they modeled the protagonist in Stellar Blade after Korean model Shin Jae-eun (seen below).

🟡Wanna know a fun fact before jumping into #NewYear2024 ?? 🧐

In #StellarBlade, our protagonist Eve body figure was actually based on a 3D scan of the Korean model Shin Jae-eun! 🤯🌟@StellarBlade currently has a release window scheduled for 2024, follow us to stay… pic.twitter.com/TsdkCFBviM

— Stellar Blade/ #NIKKE /Destiny Child/ 🙏 + 🎲 = 🍑 (@ShiftUpWorld) December 31, 2023

Many took the post to be a response to accusations of unrealistic body proportions from gaming journalists. For example, on December 31st, X^[6] user @Mangalawyer quoted a September 11th, 2021, clip from Digital Foundry,^[5] calling it "one of the gayest videos I've ever seen from journos complaining about Stellar Blade (Project Eve) by Eurogamer" (seen below).

Before ending this year and hope you have a great start in 2024: Let's recap one of the gayest videos I've ever seen from journos complaining about Stellar Blade (Project Eve) by Eurogamer. pic.twitter.com/kCCvInMF1p

— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) December 31, 2023

Fanservice Discussions

Various internet users noted a perceived "fanservice" element to the new Stellar Blade gameplay trailer in early 2024, which sparked discourse online. X^[8] user @LookAtMyMeat1 posted a screenshot of Eve's skirt flipping up to reveal her underwear on February 1st, 2024, saying, "Stellar Blade devs remember how to sell games to the average gamer." The post gathered over 10,000 likes in a day (seen below, left).

On February 1st, iFunny^[9] user Nahobino posted about the characters in the game being pretty, gathering over 13,000 smiles in a day (seen below, right).

'Hard R' Shop

On April 24th, 2024, Twitter user @manfightsdragon pointed out that in his early-access copy of the game, an area had a mix of graffiti and signage that made it look like the game was directing players towards a "Hard R" shop.

The graffiti was patched out, and Sony said the message was unintentional, leading to discourse on whether Sony was "censoring" the game

Censorship Backlash / #FreeStellar Blade

In late April 2024, fans of Stellar Blade issued vocal criticism against the game's developers Shift Up for supposedly walking back on their promise to release an "uncensored" version of the game. According to several fans, patch updates to the game had, among other changes, edited Eve's costumes to make her more modest and covered up.

X^[10] user @Grummz was a prominent voice in the "#FreeStellarBlade" movement, starting an online petition to reverse the costume patch added by Shift Up. @Grummz made a post launching the #FreeStellarBlade campaign on April 26th, 2024, urging players to cancel their PlayStation subscriptions in protest of Eve's costumes being censored (seen below, left).

On April 27th, @Grummz^[11] posted a photo showing the costumes that were censored on April 26th, gathering over 3,000 likes in two days (seen below, right).

The #FreeStellarBlade movement also gathered critics, as seen in an April 26th post by X user @SimplyShae13^[12] that gathered over 3,000 likes in three days (seen below).

On April 28th, 2024, X^[13] user @airbagged quoted a video of various #FreeStellarBlade supporters congregating online, writing, "I'm losing my mind that mega64 mocked this EXACT same shit 8 years ago with 100% accuracy," gathering over 14,000 likes in a day (seen below).

i'm losing my mind that mega64 mocked this EXACT same shit 8 years ago with 100% accuracy https://t.co/akVjrtRQuu pic.twitter.com/7psSX7YQVB

— kate bush's husband (@airbagged) April 29, 2024

Search Interest

External References