UPDATE JANUARY 30 2026:
Nintendo provided an official statement:
“Nintendo requires all games on its platforms to receive ratings from independent organizations and to meet our established content and platform guidelines. While we inform partners when their titles don’t meet our guidelines, Nintendo does not make changes to partner content. We also do not discuss specific content or the criteria used in making these determinations.”
Original Article:
AdHoc Studio’s critically acclaimed superhero workplace comedy Dispatch arrived on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on January 28 but with a detail that has fans up in arms: Nintendo forced the game to be censored permanently, removing the toggle option that players on PC and PS5 have to disable visual censorship.
The censorship nobody asked for
Dispatch, which sold over 3 million copies in just two months and won the 2025 Steam Award for Outstanding Story-Rich Game, includes scenes with nudity and adult content as part of its mature narrative.
On PC and PlayStation 5, the game offers three censorship options in the settings menu: Music, Visual Censorship, and Profanity Censorship. Players can turn any of these on or off according to their preference.
On Switch and Switch 2, however, the Visual Censorship option disappeared completely from the menu, meaning censorship is permanently activated with no way to change it.
The community discovered this immediately at launch, and the outrage was instant. Even the Digital Deluxe Edition artwork on the eShop was censored, covering up swimsuits that appear unmodified in the Steam and PlayStation stores.
Nintendo imposed the rules
AdHoc Studio confirmed to Eurogamer that they worked with Nintendo to meet the platform’s content criteria. “Different platforms have different content criteria, and submissions are evaluated individually“, the studio explained. “We worked with Nintendo to ensure the content within the title met the criteria to release on their platforms, but the core narrative and gameplay experience remains identical to the original release“.
When fans contacted Nintendo of America customer service, they received corporate responses redirecting responsibility to AdHoc, though multiple sources confirm it was Nintendo who demanded permanent censorship as a condition to approve the game.
The title maintains its Mature rating for “Blood, Crude Humor, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, and Use of Drugs and Alcohol”, but ironically, Switch players can’t see the content that justifies that rating.
The decision has revived debates about Nintendo’s censorship policies, which seemed to have softened during the Switch era.
Many fans speculate about external pressures, from credit card providers to Nintendo of America corporate policies under Doug Bowser’s leadership. What’s especially frustrating is that AdHoc built the filter system thinking about giving players options, and Nintendo simply eliminated them.
The irony is brutal: Dispatch is about reforming villains and giving them second chances, but Nintendo decided Switch players don’t deserve the chance to choose their own experience.
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