Dispatch was one of the more beloved indie games from 2025, selling over 3 million copies to close out the year and getting several nominations from the DICE Awards and The Game Awards. It was even one of Wccftech’s picks for the Best Adventure Games of 2025 and one of our picks for the Best Games of 2025 overall. Everything was coming up roses, and with a Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 port coming in January 2026, it seemed like developer AdHoc Studio was about to add another million copies sold to its tally.
That was until it actually arrived on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, and players discovered that not only the small bits of nudity included in the game, but all of the instances of swearing (of which there are a lot) were censored, with no way to turn the censorship off.
When it was released, and players began to realize that not only was the game censored, but the censorship was permanent, AdHoc Studio’s first statement on the matter said, “Different platforms have different content criteria, and submissions are evaluated individually. 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.“
A day later, Nintendo issued its own statement on the matter, saying, “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.”
Following Nintendo’s comments, AdHoc Studio’s chief operating officer, Nick Herman, issued another statement, this time adding that the studio is “working with Nintendo on a path forward” and that it is “confident we’ll be able to push an update to address at least some of the censored content.”
The statement clears the air that it was AdHoc, not Nintendo, who made the censorship changes to Dispatch to meet Nintendo’s guidelines, and even added that, similarly to players, AdHoc and Herman didn’t think the instances of nudity and swearing in Dispatch would be an issue when games like Cyberpunk 2077 are available on Nintendo Switch 2 without any censorship.
And, perhaps most importantly for AdHoc, Herman also clarified that the studio always had a disclaimer on the Nintendo eShop store page for Dispatch, which stated that the Switch and Switch 2 versions of the game would be different from the versions on other platforms. It just wasn’t where players could more easily spot it, and the studio took full responsibility for that error.
“As Nintendo states, any game that’s going to be on the Nintendo platform needs to ‘meet [Nintendo’s] established content and platform guidelines’,” Herman begins. “This is the key point. Nintendo has content guidelines. Our game didn’t meet those guidelines, so we made changes that would allow us to release on their platform.“
“That’s what happened here. Honestly, we thought this would be obvious since we’re the devs that released the fully uncensored version of the game on other platforms. We initially assumed, like some of you, that because games like Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk are on the platform with similar types of uncensored mature content, Dispatch would be allowed to do the same. During the porting process it became clear that was not the case. So we asked that we include a disclaimer on the store page to inform customers that content would be different than on other platforms. We worked with Nintendo to get storefront language approved.“
“It was our intent to go out of our way to tell people looking to buy the game that the content was censored. Wires got crossed and we put the disclaimer in the field literally titled ‘Disclaimer,’ instead of the ‘About the Game’ section. We didn’t catch this until after the launch when we saw people saying we should have called out the changes on the store page, and we went to go make sure it was there. It technically has been the entire time, just in the absolute worst spot that makes it look like we were trying to hide it.”
“This is 100% our mistake and it was fixed in the Americas’ store pages a few hours after launch to give more visibility. We’ve also added a disclaimer before purchase. As of writing this, other regions have either published this change or are in the process of review.” Herman added he and the studio are “truly sorry” for the situation, and that “people have a right to be pissed. Lots of lessons learned here.”
It’s good that Herman’s statement mostly clears the air on how all of this shook out, with the studio’s biggest mistake clearly being the placement of the eShop disclaimer, which should have been more prominently displayed to begin with. The statement also implies that the studio’s only other discretion is that it’s a small indie team who don’t have the resources of a CD Projekt RED.
Because if you’re wondering why Cyberpunk 2077 is still on Nintendo Switch 2 without the same level of censorship Dispatch has, it’s because CDPR went out of its way to make an entirely separate version of the game to release in regions that would have forced Cyberpunk 2077 to be censored, including regions like Japan.
There’s a Japan-only release of Cyberpunk 2077 that doesn’t include the nudity we see in the base game, and while CDPR can afford to produce and sell a separate version of their game in one specific region, AdHoc doesn’t have those kinds of resources. It can only afford the one version of Dispatch for all regions, meaning that version has to comply with the guidelines of the Nintendo platform, and every region where the game is available.
Hopefully, the studio will find some kind of compromise if it can’t get to a point where it can release an entirely uncensored version of the game. Even then, if you’re choosing between getting Dispatch on Nintendo Switch or any other platform, you’re better off getting it on PC, PS5, or Xbox Series X/S for the full experience.
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