Some companies like MangaGamer have gotten pretty decent at decensoring games. Granted sometimes they sort of fuck up (e.g. in Evenicle there are a couple of scenes where the male protagonist's penis contorts in very weird ways, probably because the original art was only intended with the censored version in mind), but for the most part they do quite well. In their case it appears to be quite legit, i.e. they actually buy the Western distribution rights of Japanese games, and there doesn't seem to be any legal issue with them. Is it really still that big of a deal?
" decensoring is a common practice while bringing over the material on the western side "
should clear up any issue with decensoring practices when localizing games, but ONLY if the license to do so is legally attained.
And MangaGamer does have licenses for the games it localizes (although i believe there was some old controversy about them).
So yeah, like you said "
they actually buy the Western distribution rights of Japanese games, and there doesn't seem to be any legal issue with them." so it's completely fine on that end, as long as the original produces agree to the terms of it in the paperwork.
<Although i doubt that publishing companies really care about the specific parts of the agreement that involve overseas censorship laws, as they are particularly only interested in the general reception, scarily so if it's a really foreign nation. Only they as sometimes skittish about come text or story changes, that are sometimes made to better reflect the atmosphere of the localization touches. ..quite similar to the controversial topic of anime fansubs vs official subs, although in this case, the opposite side is usually favoured by the hardcore fans>
What i specifically meant in my reply, was the common practice to keep the original work untouched as far as possible, while only changing the necessary parts, to avoid being sued by the parent company ESPECIALLY if there was no legal license attained, and the translation was dropped online for free.
As it generally is done, since primary localization companies, like spike and mangagamer, are still expanding and haven't really been able to (or likely would anytime soon) match up to the heavy flood of visual novel productions, that are periodically being requested for localization.
Hence, people need to sate their appetite with the pirated copies, or if extremely dexterous, has enough knowledge of the original language to decently enough purchase and play... depending if the tax from the import laws don't kill them first [It might not be as big a deal in high GDA countries, but developing nations, even if just a few thousand kilometers away, like here, had it rough, i tell ya]
You might have seen recently even. Some VN companies had started to crack down harshly on the pirated copies distributers online, and the stigma only keeps extended across the industry... although the pandemic brought that to a screeching halt all of a sudden, and now they are much level headed, surprisingly.
So yeah, mosiacs are generally retained, unless if a well to do (enough) localization company with minimum shady resources and past actions take up on the project of porting a VN overseas.
That's all.. and sorry for the big textwall. Peace! Nin Nin Nin!!
P.S. oh yeah, i forgot! Decensoring is quite hard if the original artist's perspective of the image is not relatable. Might take quite a few takes, and sometimes messy even. Not always does the text convey how the *ahem* tidbits are supposed to look in the particular shot, so a lot of generalizations and context of te scene needs to be taken into thought.
Pfft, what am i even saying! It isn't THAT hard, as long as you can visualize the scene. But... heck if you can visualize erotic pictures near daily (or normally, fortnightly) without pause, as a part of a job. Anything you do as a job, gets tedious to pull off after some time. Maybe they just got tired of redraws.
Call me homo-like, but if someone neatly and efficiently redraws a dick over the mosaic version, it gets me quite interested in it. I'm sick of the general white tube that is used pretty much everywhere, even if it actually looks better in animated bits, but not still images.