Sensitivity reading and cultural review are mandatory for narrative content, character design, costume design, lore pages, commentary, cinematics, localization changes, and major content drops.
Reader Pool#
The contracted pool must cover cultural, ethnic, gender, religious, disability, regional, and language identities that appear in launch and live-service content. Reviewers are paid, credited where they choose to be credited, and given enough context to evaluate portrayal, stereotypes, naming, clothing, religious symbols, disability depiction, and regional legal sensitivity.
Per-Fighter Signoff#
Per-fighter cultural review is documented through the production coverage ledger
and the fighter review packet path
V2/balance/fighters/<fighter>/sensitivity-review.md. A fighter cannot pass
content lock without signoff for narrative, character design, costume design,
voice direction, lore page, regional naming, and stage/context references.
The launch roster signoff owner is the narrative lead. Localization owns per-locale review. Legal owns region-specific restricted-symbol and rating-board questions.
Per-Region Review#
Per-region cultural review covers fighters, stages, commentary, cinematics, brand placement, UGC exemplars, and store copy. Regional review is required for NA, EU, JP, KR, LATAM, SEA, India, MENA, Brazil, Quebec, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, China, and GCC launch materials.
Community Advisory Board#
Major content drops require review by the community sensitivity advisory board. The board reviews content summaries before announcement, sees the final candidate build before release, and can require mitigation, delayed launch, or region-specific edits.
Review Record#
Each review record includes the reviewer group, content surface, concerns, decision, required changes, owner, due date, and whether the change needs another pass. Accepted residual risk requires DPO/legal or executive producer signoff when the issue affects safety, identity, or regional publication risk.