@ryo
>I was actually considering, in order to release Japanese-style gaymes in western countries, lots of censorshit has to be done because you could easily trigger lots of people over there.

People have theorized that as being the reason why Nintendo of America still refuses to localize Mother 3 while turning a blind eye to the fan translation. NoA knows they would have to censor some stuff in order to have a child-friendly rating, but they know that even the slightest censor would change Itoi's original vision (there are drag queen-like characters that play an important part of the game's story). The fan-translation tries to keep close to the original script as possible and they don't have to worry about the ESRB. Nintendo doesn't seem to care about it because it means that they won't have to localize it themselves.

>Back then you would censor blood in Japan, cum in America, and gambling in Europe

I never heard about gambling in Europe. Blood used to be a problem here in America too, but that was mostly Nintendo of America. Nintendo was notorious for censoring blood (usually would be replaced with sweat), religious symbols, nudity, alcohol, etc.

I think Pokemon removed some gambling minigames but I don't play Pokemon so I can't confirm this. Gambling isn't much of a problem because a lot of people do play poker, blackjack, etc without gambling and even do it with their kids. I think the justification is that these games can teach math skills, and it's not like kids can just barge in a casino.

The alcohol is pretty obvious because it would be either replaced by soda, juice, or if they make it clear that it's for adults only, coffee. I think Harvest Moon for the SNES replaced alcohol with juice. One character is supposed to be an alcoholic and is neglecting their family, but in the US release, she was a "juice-o-holic" and neglects their family to drink juice at the bar.

>Now with everything being region free, the massive downside is that now everything has to be censored for all regions.

Right now, here in the US, you don't have to worry about that. You only need to worry about corporate censorship like PayPal cutting-off your revenue or Steam taking your game down. The only game that I know of that was ever banned here was The Guy Game. It was a trivia game featuring live-action girls that would show their breasts if you answer a question correctly. It was banned after it was revealed that a girl was underaged (she lied about her aged when she auditioned).

Nintendo, ironically seems to be the least censorious company now. I would avoid publishing on Sony's platforms. I don't know about Microsoft, though.

As for PC, Steam pretty much allows anything as long as it's legal. Itch.io is pretty woke, so be careful about that. Epic Games Store is owned by the Chinese Tencent, so I wouldn't trust them. I don't know about GOG's content policy, but I've heard that it's really hard to get your game on there. And of course, self-hosting is always an option, but you reduce your reach if you don't also have your game on major distribution services.

The only countries you have to worry about are Australia, some European countries like Germany, and maybe Canada. Australia, New Zealand , and Germany are notorious for banning violent video games, but it's mostly those that allow killing civilians.