Defending Lydia Collier v.1.0 delayed - due to the Labour Party in the British Government.
Hello everybody,
Unfortunately, due to recent announcements this week by the Labour Party in Britain, I have to delay the final version of Defending Lydia Collier in order to go back and add censorship to the game, and the next update will now be v.0.22.3, a censorship one.
I don’t want to do this - this does nothing positive for me, it makes the game worse, and it’s a complete and utter waste of fucking time - but the consequences of not doing it could be business-ending.
Defending Lydia Collier is an investigation story with adult content. It has never been an abuse or family-focused game; the player has exactly zero relatives in the game. But players will know Stephanie’s storyline and one scene of Helena’s depict consensual choking between adults which, if they were deemed to be “real” and not the obviously computer-generated, video-game-style images they are, would become illegal.
This is probably only going to take me an extra week or so, but this has to now take complete priority for the rest of this month, and I have to get this done next. I'll re-set a final release date once v.0.22.3 is out, it will be in November, likely the first week, but I'm already crunching for the current date and just won't be able to fit re-rendering a load of old scenes in.
Defending Lydia Collier has about 20,000 renders; I don’t want to be worried about 30 of them getting the game kicked off Steam or me arrested.
For those of you who don’t know, since the left-wing Labour Party came to power, we have become the most censored country in Western Europe, with the most restrictive pornography laws of any Western “Democracy”.
Andy Burnham’s Labour Government has announced this week a date for bringing a second wave of censorship online, and they’ve made it begin on November 6th 2026.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmpqgepejr2ro
These laws were recommended by an unelected anti-pornography activist from the House of Lords - a part of the UK Government nobody is allowed to elect, and equivalent to an old USSR Council - and were then taken forward by the Labour Party.
You may have already felt the effects of the first wave of UK censorship laws, as all of the “age verification” and geo-blocking bullshit you have to do from Facebook to Pornhub to Xbox is their fault.
The Second Wave of Censorship bans several things, but these are the relevant two:
Consensual, non-dangerous choking in pornography.
Adults who are clearly and obviously not related pretending to be related in pornography.
It bans both publication of these materials and possession of them.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2026/20
Again, our games should not be covered by this law. They are not “real” people; they are obviously video game characters - nobody who isn’t brain-dead would think Daz3D renders are “real people” - and none of our characters are portrayed or intended to be under 18.
However, the UK Police use terror tactics to enforce compliance with totally legal online activity if you ever draw the Government’s ire, by stealing your equipment.
The majority of online censorship arrests don’t result in prosecution, but the Police seize your equipment and keep hold of it for long periods of time as an extrajudicial punishment.
If they claim they “suspect the images may be real” or say “we’ll leave it for a Court to decide”, they could potentially kick down the office door and seize all of the equipment whilst they “investigate.”
They will then claim “digital forensics are backed up” and hold onto the devices for a period ranging from 6 months to 3 years, or potentially even longer.
The UK Police have a track record for doing this:
This is a completely unrelated case - it involves him threatening criminal damage - but it shows Police seizing children’s iPads and not returning them for a significant period of time, despite them having no relevance to the actual case. So this is just to show that taking rendering rigs which don’t even have HDDs in them and dumping them in a “to be processed” queue is a real possibility.
They do not offer you any compensation whatsoever, so there’s a very real potential scenario where we have our office equipment stolen and kept from us for years, then they don’t even press charges because the images blatantly aren’t real, and give them back years later - and there is no compensation in the UK for seizures deemed “lawful at the time”.
This is obviously the worst-case scenario; however, last year the Labour Party got involved with censoring another adult game:
This shows it isn’t paranoia to think Labour politicians are sitting flicking through Steam - whilst totally ignoring real-life rape gangs - and it is feasible that they’ll do a similar thing when these new laws come into place.
They will also try and force worldwide censorship by getting Steam etc. to ban these games, so we could see a future ban-wave on Steam as a result of this that I’d rather be ahead of.
I do not want to risk losing my business over a couple of dozen renders that are a very minor part of the game, and “being bankrupt and homeless tomorrow” isn’t something I want looming over my head, even if it is a very slim chance.
In order to stop that threat altogether, I need to ensure the game is fully compliant by November 6th beyond any possible doubt - not just be reliant on a defence that some sixty-year-old woman who hates porn and spends her weekends as a Magistrate for a power trip overrules by saying “this looks real”.
I can’t do this and work on the final update of the game at the same time. Some of these scenes are years old and I don’t have the OG files, so I need to remake them.
With this threat, I have to make the “v.0.22.3 Labour Government Censorship Update” take precedence; even if I released the censorship update on November 9th, they could still seize all of my equipment whilst they “investigate potential offences from the 6th-9th of November” when it was available.
I’m really sorry about all of this, but if you’re angry or want somebody to hate because of this, please direct it at the people responsible: the UK Labour Government and Gabby Bertin, the unelected autocrat behind it all.
I would seek independent legal advice in the UK for yourself regarding other AVNs you might possess, especially if they use AI images. AI images based on real people are much more realistic than the Daz3D renders I use, and could included in these laws.
Personally, I’m not particularly worried that the content would become illegal on the 6th of November if I left it as it is; however, I am not the UK Government, and to stay on the side of caution you should delete versions of the game prior to v.0.22.3 from November onwards if you’re in the UK.
I am, however, worried about the possibility of an anti-porn activist using a screenshot of a render, somewhere like TikTok, to get an investigation going that would result in me being without my machines for long enough to kill the business before I was cleared.
What I will do is put the old images in a folder with the censorship update, so you can download them and mod your game to remove the censorship until the beginning of November if you’re not from the UK.
Obviously, as possession is as much of an offence as publication, I won’t be retaining any copies of them from the beginning of November, you won’t be able to get them from me, and you shouldn’t keep them beyond November if you’re in the UK.
Fun fact: you can legally marry your first cousin in the UK. A bill to ban it was introduced, and Labour refused to back it. They also happen to be under threat of losing seats in cities with communities who have high rates of cousin marriage. Owning a video of two unrelated adults pretending to be siblings? That’s now a crime. Marrying and inbreeding with your real cousin? Perfectly legal. Funny how quickly so-called “morality” disappears for politicians.
The next update will therefore be the v.0.22.3 Censorship update. It is nothing to be excited about - v.0.22.2 is better - but at the beginning of November it will be the only version available directly.
I’m not one to try and tell others how to vote, but Americans: the US Constitution is the greatest piece of human rights legislation ever created. You are blessed to have it, and you should vehemently oppose anybody who tries to take it from you.
The UK is a great example of how much control a Government can seize from people in a modern “democracy” if you do not have these kinds of safeguards.
Thanks for all the new and continued support. These changes are going to be very minor - this is not and never has been an abuse and incest game - but there’s a handful of scenes I’m going to have to tweak a few renders for.
White Phantom Games
Comments (6)
-> Insert the "Ah shit, here we go again" meme.
Really saddened by this and unfortunately theres no recourse, all the major politcal parties support the OSA or going further with it, we've already petitioned the government and got nowhere too.
Once again, someone has declared themselves a moral authority. It is a disgrace that this is happening in UK, the cradle of modern representative democracy.
Will there be a fan patch to restore this content?
Luckily it is only IRL content that is "illegal" so AVNs should technically be safe but the fact it is illegal in the first place is stupid. I do get though not wanting to risk it since all it takes is someone reporting it and then the police wanting to have a look which who knows how long that will take. I do think though this law will be another one of those ones where it was put in place to look like they're doing something when really theres nothing they can do when its such a saturated type of content in the industry/online, majority of people use a VPN to bypass the bans/blocks/censors anyway, and most websites/hosts are outside the UK and not subject to their laws... unfortunately for yourself, you are, so its a shame that you got to do this but rather played it safe than risk it. Once again, laws made by people who don't understand the system or the content themselves.
"Fun fact: you can legally marry your first cousin in the UK. A bill to ban it was introduced, and Labour refused to back it. They also happen to be under threat of losing seats in cities with communities who have high rates of cousin marriage. Owning a video of two unrelated adults pretending to be siblings? That’s now a crime. Marrying and inbreeding with your real cousin? Perfectly legal. Funny how quickly so-called “morality” disappears for politicians." Jesus Christ. What an embarrassing mess.