Croteam Confirms Censorship of Harpy Enemy Design in Serious Sam 4

Spencer Baculi |

May 22, 2020

Fans of the M-rated Serious Sam series have discovered that the Scythian Witch-Harpy enemy has had her design censored by developer Croteam in the series’ latest entry.

The Scythian Witch-Harpy, a class of enemy first introduced in the first Serious Sam title, is modeled after the woman-bird hybrids of Greek and Roman mythology.

In keeping with their namesake, the Scythian-Witch Harpies have regularly appeared as a monstrous hybrid of a human woman and a demonic bird.

In Serious Sam 3, the Harpies undergo an overhaul in design, being given a more demonic look complete with naturally protruding horns, a segmented jaw line and an entirely nude physique (save a small, skintight covering over the pubic area):

On May 20^th, a thread was started on the official Steam forum for Serious Sam 4 asking “Did they censor the Harpy?!” and presented two videos for comparison in support of their findings. The first, a compilation of cinematic cut scenes from Serious Sam 3, featured a spotlight appearance of the Harpy’s design during the introduction to the level Under the Iron Cloud:

https://youtu.be/nfnQUu-sI4g?t=166

The second video highlights every enemy that will make an appearance in Serious Sam 4. This includes a Harpy, whose new design sees the creature’s entire torso covered in demonic feathers save for a partially exposed heart and stomach:

The thread soon devolved into a debate amongst players about whether the Harpy was truly censored or only censored in promotional material, with recent demos and trailers being produced for comparison.

However, the thread was soon joined by Croteams Marketing and Communications Manager Daniel Lucic, who dismissed player concerns and confirmed that the design had been censored, noting that while he “didn’t really go through the entire thread,” there were “better places to look at gazoongas than a video game” as “here we just shoot stuff.”

“Didn’t really go through the entire thread, sorry. But there are way better places to look at gazoongas than a video game. 🙂

Here we just shoot stuff.”

You can see a screenshot below: