But wasn't Submissive Sabia or at least a path where Sabia did get manhandled a lot one of the original main intentions for the game? The game's original starting rape scene was designed around that and the Dominant Sabia stuff only started getting more focused after they had decided it to be the route they wanted to go, and that's when they went back and reworked the intro scene.
I think the starting rape scene (which was never mandatory, it could be avoided by successfully stalling, Sabia would be stripped but saved before the orcs raped her) was more about her losing everything and having to
carefully claw her way back to the top, since even a single mistake could have dire (and lewd) consequences now.
Even since the game's first update there was nothing that made it seem the game was going to be about Sabia actually being a submissive orc slave, seeing how messing up too badly always lead to a gameover, at most it was going to be about her learning to play the part so she could manipulate the orcs and maybe also learning to enjoy being handled roughly during sex, but only really as a sexual preference kind of thing. Sabia was always way too ambitious as a character to think she would settle for anything less than being the leader and having a lot of power.
The people that still expected this to be a corruption game after playing it clearly came from Noxian Nights with a lot of unbased assumptions, and should have taken a hint when the game wasn't called "Noxian Nights 2: Orc-dick boogaloo".
Kind of. It did happen around the biggest Patreon buttclenching session of the century, at least so far.
I personally think it was less to avoid censorship, and more to make the first impression a lot tamer for someone checking out the game for it's content, so they don't feel the need to dig too far. There's clearly stuff in the game that's against Patreon rules, but if it's in the first 5 minutes it's a lot easier to judge it's scenes, which have "forsaken the love of god" as it's sole purpose. Less about avoiding and more about not insulting Patreon staff's intelligence by having some tact. (I do believe Patreon has some staff, who aren't such self-righteous social justice warriors that let games like this slide until it's not shamelessly blatant about its banned content. Patreon needs to keep up the facade of following the rules.)
If you are looking for the official statement. Nomo and Sierra explained it more along the line that you couldn't take a Dominant Sabia seriously after she got raped in the first scene. (Sure I guess that's kind of true, but most people were here after Noxian Nights, and couldn't care less about the consistency of the character. So it's kind of a weak reasoning at that point, which makes the Patreon stuck-up-ness a lot more of a plausible cause.)
From what I remember, their official reason was less about not being able to take a Dominant Sabia seriously, but more about it not making much sense for her to be as unfazed as she was about being brutally raped, she was immediatelly recovered and trying to play tough over Neve when she wakes up. It could have been fine if being raped was something Sabia had mentally prepared herself for over her life, but the rest of her characterization put her as being very uppity and sexually inexperienced, so it felt a bit contradictory. Even Noxian Nights had the perv guy that rescues the MC start slow.
Of course the
real reason they re-did the intro was the patreon cops cracking down, but I kind of agree with the reasoning they gave, the way they reworked it was poorly done though, they removed any consequences for misplaying the intro. I think ideally they should have gone with something like, if Sabia successfuly stalls, she keeps her clothes on and Lutvrog arrives before the rogue orcs lay a hand on her, if she fucks up stalling them, then she gets surrounded and stripped, and just when they are about to start raping her Lutvrog arrives. Would have kept real stakes without going overboard.
