The article even mentions Star Wars and George Lucas, something that happened 20 years ago, yet pretends this is the start of a dangerous trend. Cause it's TV (or streaming) instead of a movie / home video release I guess?
I'd also point at this big old list of media effected by 9/11[1] - I think the most notable one at the time was 2002 Spiderman which released a trailer containing the two towers initially that was then edited (along with the movie) to remove that landmark.
It felt right at the time to many people. The two towers trailer scene was specific to the trailer according to them at the time, so not having that scene was apparently already the plan. The way the film was, I certainly never felt the lack of the towers but would have been pulled out by their presence.
Spiderman was edited before its release, in April 2002, after the 9/11 attacks.
I’m guessing this along with the other changes to the film post 9/11 but pre release were the creators wishes and reflections after the attack. You have to remember it was less than a ~6 months after the attacks. This wasn’t history. This was the here and now and it was a massive trauma on a lot of people at the time.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. If a movie is released today, it obviously wouldn't have the towers. And a movie released in the past right after 9/11 would edit them out because it was still fresh in people's minds and most people agree that it was the right decision.
Are you saying that the movies/trailers/TV shows should be retroactively edited to re-include the towers? Isn't retroactive editing a bad thing that we want to avoid. That's what this entire post thread is about.
For a movie coming out in 2002 and set in "the present day", I would think keeping the towers would be distracting and introduce an "alternate timeline" problem that further distracts.
OTOH if you don't, then you have something like the 2002 Muppet Christmas Special where they put Kermit in an "It's a Wonderful Life" scenario. We see how the world would be different if he had never been born. There's a scene set in New York where a random shot shows the WTC in the background, insinuating that Kermit was somehow responsible for 9/11.
Obviously that was never the intention of the producers but it ends up being a huge distraction from the rest of the story of the special.
4chan's /tv/ will produce a list of 100+ examples of censorship by the streaming platforms if you go make a thread about it.
To be honest, I just personally don't care because I didn't trust the streaming platform that made 'Cuties' and '13 Reasons Why' with moral matters to begin with.
With purely hosted media there is no way for purist fans to ever have the "original" or whatever version of it, unlike the people who were swapping around laserdisc and 35mm versions of the unspoilt cuts of Star Wars, etc.
In this specific case you could buy Stranger Things Season 2 on Blu-ray which would have the original version on it. But that is probably getting to be a rare case, especially since you can't buy Season 3.
That's not something that can be relied upon. I've seen numerous torrents die from all seeders dropping off, to attackers poisoning metadata thus making it impossible for any new downloaders.
Torrents as a whole may seem like the cockroach that never dies, but individual torrents die all the time.
Whether the old HN claim that “storage is cheap” is true or not, preemptively downloading everything you might be interested in (or all new releases) is one solution to this problem.
Which is what the data-hoarding crowd has been doing for a while. Storage is relatively cheap, you can get extraordinarily large amounts of it for a few thousand USD if you aren't super concerned about five-9s uptime and Google still lets small team-sized business customers store petabytes for basically zero additional cost if you're OK with near-line retrieval times.
There is. A web rip version of a given piece of media dating to sometime right after the premiere is as close as you can get to a “canonical” version without obtaining the master files. This is for pure-digital content, but things often get released on BR so that’s even higher quality source.
I think the medium is the main difference. An old movie you have on tape or whatever physical media and would need to go buy an additional copy of a new version of it. Whereas something primarily on streaming can change on you without notice and you cannot go back and watch the original.
Plus in the case of Lucas it was in a new "Special Edition" which contained other edits too. It was never passed off as the original version, and part of the selling point was the edits. Rather than an update in place without any notice.
> Plus in the case of Lucas it was in a new "Special Edition" which contained other edits too.
Is that true? If so, it didn't last for long. There's no way to legally watch the original Star Wars now, unless you can find a physical VHS or Laserdisc.
That's how I remember it being at least but that was in 1997. They had a whole new theatrical releases for them and all that. They even sold a DVD set with the original theatrical versions as bonus material [1]. But they have lost the "Special Edition" moniker at some point. And the edited versions are the only thing available for streaming.
Personally I don't mind this change just fixing a plot hole by changing a word. And yes you can buy Season 1 and 2 but what if they did it in Season 3 which you can't buy? It just so happens in this case that they did it to a season which you can buy but being able to buy seasons on physical media is becoming rare these days.
Exactly my thoughts as well. It's different with streaming than with something on a physical medium. With DRMed content it's a little different, because nobody can ever go back and see it (unless the rights-owners save the original allow them to do so, which seems unlikely if the thing is controversial enough to warrant an investigation in the first place).
They didn't stop editing Star Wars 20 years ago, unfortunately. See Disney+ editing the scene between Greedo and Han Solo to make Greedo say "Maclunkey[0]" before shooting him.
And yes Greedo still shoots first because we live in the worst timeline.
More, the author saw mention of it pop up on thier Twitter feed, so wrote an article to cash in on the current "controversy" with no actual research beyond Twitter.
Even on TV, HBO retroactively edited out George Bush's head from the spikes Joffrey makes Sansa look at in season one of Game of Thrones, all the way back in 2011. George Martin just joked about it in his interview on the upcoming House of the Dragon.
Retconning content on streaming services was something I was once concerned about, but eventually told myself wasn't a realistic worry. If anything it was on my mind because when it happened before (Star Wars, as someone else mentioned) I found the retconned/altered versions to just be....in my own opinion, a lesser version than what came before it.
This, combined with music streaming services suddenly 'disappearing' albums (usually for licensing reasons) is what's nudging me back towards just buying and ripping physical media again (or....yeah..pirating).
I find it ironic that the article itself was edited after the initial posting, per the disclaimer at the bottom. If Netflix added such a disclaimer in the credits of the episode, would that make it more acceptable to the author?
I can't speak to the author's views, but it would to me. There's something very disconcerting about the ability of digital media to be "memory holed", and the Streisand effect is no longer a sure thing, in the age of big tech censorship infrastructure built by popular (media) demand.
At least with TV shows this isn't a problem. Everything is dumped on day 0 so the original releases are preserved. It wouldn't surprise me if there are hundreds of thousands of copies of the original releases floating out there due to torrents.
It was actually a much bigger issue in the past. You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips. To me, that's a a bigger "memory hole", happening way before big tech.
> You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips.
There is the "Silver screen edition" of Star Wars (first of the first, even before it got the "Episode IV"), but it only happened due to enormous efforts of fans who got an original print that should have been destroyed, digitized it with a homebrew machine, and painstakingly restored it frame by frame. That's a really fascinating story.
Journalists have been doing this the last few years without using a disclaimer. Personally, I think it's completely different as film and music is art. If this was done with music it would be especially damaging. Imagine your favourite songs being remastered and arranged for the worst. Artists could rework unsuccessful albums, which is weird.
It’s all just Mandela effect and fans needing reasons to be mad.
There’s a notable “off-season” effect in TV subreddits. When there’s no new content but people still want to chit-chat, crazy theories and over-analysis start to get popular.
Its weird to have an article about the dangers of editing that doesn't clearly identify what the dangerous edit was. Seems like the hand wringing was about a scene the article-author incorrectly said was edited, so the article updated, but now the article is an empty shell of criticism without substance.
Could that same criticism not also be applied to this very news article that was retroactively edited or 'George Lucased' as the writer refers to it as.
> Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a season one episode of Stranger Things had been edited retroactively to remove a shot of Jonathan photographing Nancy while she was changing.
From the article, here's the edit: It's a simple mistake of an expansive series costing $30 million an episode, really: the creative team set an episode of Stranger Things 4 on March 22, forgetting that it had been established as Will Byers' (Noah Schnapp) birthday in the earlier season.
So can someone explain to me why this is a plot hole? If the episode took place on March 22nd, Will Byers' birthday, we would expect... a birthday party?
It is odd that the whole dialog among very close teenage friends doesn't mention that it is the character's birthday at all. It is kind of clear in the episode that the writers just didn't realize it.
Basically the whole episode revolves around one character's emotional difficulties and Will feeling a bit ignored by their mutual friend who is in town, all while Will's mother has suddenly left town the night before after giving a hasty, extremely vague and obviously fake excuse to her sons & other characters – read through the lens of "it's supposed to be Will's birthday" it makes all his close friends and his mother seem insanely cruel to be completely ignoring his birthday when in fact that wasn't what the writers were going for, they just didn't realize the visual date matched a line of dialog from a prior season.
But it's kind of awesome that they were trying to show how Will was feeling ignored, and the writers actually forgot that it was his birthday. It's delightfully meta.
From the creators: "We have George Lucas’d things also that people don’t know about"
It's baffling that they are apparently aware of how much fans hate these kinds of changes and went ahead with it anyway.
EDIT: People are replying with valid points about not all changes being bad. I guess this was a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that they invoked one of the worst examples of retroactive changes as a reference.
With Blade Runner they've also been good about keeping all versions available. Unlike Star Wars where you'll probably just have to cringe your way through that Jabbas palace song.
Music replacements is quite common for licensing purposes, and the fact people think it is shady is what's weird. The shady part is the damn music licensing process.
Having licensing arrangements which fail to anticipate all future potential media and distribution mechanisms for all time until the heat death of the universe (or which, even if they do anticipate some of it, don't want to pay for all future potential media and distribution mechanisms until the heat death of the universe for something that may not have any resale value in a handful of years even on current media) are the cause of this.
That kind of stuff really doesn't bother me. I rarely pay attention to anything like that anyways. Also, it is not uncommon, at least for theatrically released features, to have differences between territories not dissimilar to that kind of background object replaced/modified. Small details like that which have no bearing on the plot or affect the viewers take of the content will be changed. These edits help the producers track down which area a leak occurred.
There have always been numerous “editions” in popular titles; theatrical, XYZ screen size, TV rebroadcasts, director’s cut, remastered, XYZ country, XYZ language, etc.
calls it a "dangerous trend" - proceeds to provide the most mundane example imaginable, changing the date of an event to not be on a character's birthday
Just a complete nothing of an article. The follow-up claim is that it might sneakily start to happen in less popular series, such that nobody might even notice there had been changes. Oh, the humanity! Nobody might notice the tweaks, that sounds dangerous.
> calls it a "dangerous trend" - proceeds to provide the most mundane example imaginable, changing the date of an event to not be on a character's birthday
That's the post edit version. There was a different supposed edit (listed in the correction at the bottom) that was supposedly motivated by changing political mores in the original version, except that edit didn't actually happen.
The hyperventilation would be extremely silly even if the original version of the article was accurate I it's description of what edits had occurred, but it is even more ludicrous given the actual facts.
Is there anything more ironic than the fact that this article was corrected?
> Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a season one episode of Stranger Things had been edited retroactively to remove a shot of Jonathan photographing Nancy while she was changing.
I don't see a problem with changing a story to fit the current political climate better, assuming that the original version has been archived by someone somewhere.
This merely seems to create new opportunities for doctoral theses in Film Studies.
> I don't see a problem with changing a story to fit the current political climate better
That's what sequels/remakes are for. Ninja edits of the originals are disgusting, especially in streaming services, when you can't expect people to have the content archived.
> Viewers who still have physical copies of Stranger Things season one noticed something odd having gone back for a rewatch on Netflix: a scene wherein one-time weirdo Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) takes spying, lewd snaps of now-lover Nancy (Natalia Dyer) from a bush has been erased on the platform. And it's not the first time the Duffers have gone back to the cutting room after the fact.
> There's a difference between correcting factual errors (or typos) and changing the story to better fit current political climate.
It's a good thing that in this case the factual error was the assertion of "changing the story to better fit current political climate."
Without that fake bombshell (that they could have validated for $XX dollars by just buying the DVD) what is the difference between an article correction and a minor plot continuity correction?
> There's a difference between correcting factual errors (or typos) and changing the story to better fit current political climate.
Well, no, there isn't. What's important depends on what you're trying to learn. If what you're interested in is where the incorrect claim came from, then silently editing the GQ article would be exactly the same kind of revisionism as silently changing an episode of Stranger Things.
But of course, that's not the difference here. GQ made their correction correctly: with a notice attached to the new content describing what the old content said and what changes were made. That is very different from silently editing history; that is why GQ's correction is much less problematic than the hypothetical editing of Stranger Things. (It would be better to present the old content itself, rather than a description of it, but the notice is still hugely less problematic than a silent retroactive change.)
"In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder."
Just wait until they use deep-network actor-replacement to retroactively recast 'Frank Underwood' in 'House of Cards' to someone less-offensive than Kevin Spacey.
Probably not very familiar to the HN crowd, but in the past, Rooster Teeth has also retroactively edited episodes of the CGI show RWBY.
So far, I only recall them doing this to fix animation and editing errors, but it has made viewers on Reddit get a bit Mandela Effect-y (when they thought they saw an animation error which was no longer visible in the updated version on the streaming platform).
JRR Tolkien modified "The Hobbit" to better accord with what he had developed about Gollum and the One Ring for the upcoming "Lord of the Rings". He even retconned the modification, making the original version (published in 1937) the one that Bilbo told people. This is not a new thing.
> In the original 1937 edition of "The Hobbit" Gollum was genuinely willing to bet his ring on the riddle game, the deal being that Bilbo would receive a "present" if he won. Gollum in fact was dismayed when he couldn't keep his promise because the ring was missing. He showed Bilbo the way out as an alternative, and they parted courteously.
> As the writing of LotR progressed the nature of the Ring changed. No longer a "convenient magical device", it had become an irresistable power object, and Gollum's behavior now seemed inexplicable, indeed, impossible. In the rough drafts of the "Shadow of the Past" chapter Gandalf was made to perform much squirming in an attempt to make it appear credible, not wholly successfully.
> Tolkien resolved the difficulty by re-writing the chapter into its present form, in which Gollum had no intention whatsoever of giving up the Ring but rather would show Bilbo the way out if he lost. Also, Gollum was made far more wretched, as befitted one enslaved and tormented by the Ruling Ring. At the same time, however, Bilbo's claim to the Ring was seriously undercut.
In the original version of The Hobbit, the ring is just a magic ring and Gollum willingly bets the ring on the riddle game. When Gollum can't find the ring, he instead offers to lead Bilbo out of the cave.
In later versions, the bet was if Gollum wins he eats Bilbo, if Bilbo wins Gollum shows him the way out.
It is then presented that Bilbo told everyone the first story although the second was the truth. Which is why the first version appears in The Hobbit as the conceit is that it is an account written by Bilbo or at least sourced from his writings.
Modifications to new editions aren't a new thing. What's new is the way that concept interacts with DRM-protected streamable content.
If the Forces of Order got their way and copyright was fully enforced, changes to a show released by streaming only would be a lot more permanent and in a way "more retroactive" than they are today. Maybe that's just a minor example of the much more general problem of archival presented by DRM, but maybe it's a little more sinister because there isn't any outward indication of the thing being a "new edition" like there is with a book (publishing info page) or a software release (version number). So a historian/archivist would need to go around perceptual-hashing the whole content to determine that there were actually two or more versions of that one episode of that one show.
Probably the most famous example of change for copyright is Tour Of Duty, which lost almost all its music in syndication, most notable the theme song Paint It, Black by The Rolling Stones.
Indeed. Super Natural Season 1 has entirely different music on Netflix than it does on DVD due to licensing not covering a streaming clause (there were no streaming services in 2005 when the deal was done and nobody had even thought about such a thing). Season 1 has a kickass classic rock soundtrack on DVD, and with that show the music isn't just luster on top. It's actually an important part of the show/characters.
Does it though? What, exactly, is _dangerous_ about it?
Seems like its just something new, no need make such a fuss. Does every headline really need to be so apocalyptic.
Like old Marcus said:
Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.
It's not like Stranger Things is a courtroom record or SEC filing. Who cares if they want to retcon a made-up story? I think in the digital age, it should be trivial to keep records of what's changed and let people access the no-longer-canon versions if they are hardcore fans, but let the 99% of casuals just see what you want them to see. Honestly, it could make for some really interesting non-linear storytelling.
156 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 224 ms ] thread1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected...
History happened. No need to create a past and future-projected vacuum as a consequence of past events.
I’m guessing this along with the other changes to the film post 9/11 but pre release were the creators wishes and reflections after the attack. You have to remember it was less than a ~6 months after the attacks. This wasn’t history. This was the here and now and it was a massive trauma on a lot of people at the time.
There are other, older movies with the towers in them, and yes, seeing them certainly stirs up emotions unexpected by the directors at the time.
But the World Trade Center existed as a structure. And something terrible happened to it.
Avoiding it now, even by omission, feels like avoiding an important part of history.
Are you saying that the movies/trailers/TV shows should be retroactively edited to re-include the towers? Isn't retroactive editing a bad thing that we want to avoid. That's what this entire post thread is about.
I didn't get that from their post at all. In fact I think you are in agreement.
If your movie is set before 9/11 it should include the towers.
If your movie was released before 9/11, it shouldn't be edited to remove the towers.
Obviously that was never the intention of the producers but it ends up being a huge distraction from the rest of the story of the special.
To be honest, I just personally don't care because I didn't trust the streaming platform that made 'Cuties' and '13 Reasons Why' with moral matters to begin with.
Torrents as a whole may seem like the cockroach that never dies, but individual torrents die all the time.
https://www.xxlmag.com/kanye-west-the-life-of-pablo-changes/
Plus in the case of Lucas it was in a new "Special Edition" which contained other edits too. It was never passed off as the original version, and part of the selling point was the edits. Rather than an update in place without any notice.
Is that true? If so, it didn't last for long. There's no way to legally watch the original Star Wars now, unless you can find a physical VHS or Laserdisc.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20060517020346/http://www.starwa...
That can easily be changed if the DVDs are manufactured on demand. It would just mean changing the source files.
And yes Greedo still shoots first because we live in the worst timeline.
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/04/07/us/b...
Is there a better option?
This, combined with music streaming services suddenly 'disappearing' albums (usually for licensing reasons) is what's nudging me back towards just buying and ripping physical media again (or....yeah..pirating).
It was actually a much bigger issue in the past. You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips. To me, that's a a bigger "memory hole", happening way before big tech.
There is the "Silver screen edition" of Star Wars (first of the first, even before it got the "Episode IV"), but it only happened due to enormous efforts of fans who got an original print that should have been destroyed, digitized it with a homebrew machine, and painstakingly restored it frame by frame. That's a really fascinating story.
The original article called the alleged removal of that scene, "wimpish laziness."
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220727142524/https://www.gq-ma...
ADDED: They did apparently retro-edit around a plot hole but not what people were getting upset about.
[1] https://twitter.com/strangerwriters/status/15519011967005900...
There’s a notable “off-season” effect in TV subreddits. When there’s no new content but people still want to chit-chat, crazy theories and over-analysis start to get popular.
> Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a season one episode of Stranger Things had been edited retroactively to remove a shot of Jonathan photographing Nancy while she was changing.
So can someone explain to me why this is a plot hole? If the episode took place on March 22nd, Will Byers' birthday, we would expect... a birthday party?
It's baffling that they are apparently aware of how much fans hate these kinds of changes and went ahead with it anyway.
EDIT: People are replying with valid points about not all changes being bad. I guess this was a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that they invoked one of the worst examples of retroactive changes as a reference.
I'd say a little more nuance is needed than automatically dismissing any change as bad.
No thanks.
Having different editions is fine if it is transparent, and moreso if prior versions are available.
Just a complete nothing of an article. The follow-up claim is that it might sneakily start to happen in less popular series, such that nobody might even notice there had been changes. Oh, the humanity! Nobody might notice the tweaks, that sounds dangerous.
That's the post edit version. There was a different supposed edit (listed in the correction at the bottom) that was supposedly motivated by changing political mores in the original version, except that edit didn't actually happen.
The hyperventilation would be extremely silly even if the original version of the article was accurate I it's description of what edits had occurred, but it is even more ludicrous given the actual facts.
> Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a season one episode of Stranger Things had been edited retroactively to remove a shot of Jonathan photographing Nancy while she was changing.
This merely seems to create new opportunities for doctoral theses in Film Studies.
That's what sequels/remakes are for. Ninja edits of the originals are disgusting, especially in streaming services, when you can't expect people to have the content archived.
> Viewers who still have physical copies of Stranger Things season one noticed something odd having gone back for a rewatch on Netflix: a scene wherein one-time weirdo Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) takes spying, lewd snaps of now-lover Nancy (Natalia Dyer) from a bush has been erased on the platform. And it's not the first time the Duffers have gone back to the cutting room after the fact.
> There's a difference between correcting factual errors (or typos) and changing the story to better fit current political climate.
It's a good thing that in this case the factual error was the assertion of "changing the story to better fit current political climate."
Without that fake bombshell (that they could have validated for $XX dollars by just buying the DVD) what is the difference between an article correction and a minor plot continuity correction?
Well, no, there isn't. What's important depends on what you're trying to learn. If what you're interested in is where the incorrect claim came from, then silently editing the GQ article would be exactly the same kind of revisionism as silently changing an episode of Stranger Things.
But of course, that's not the difference here. GQ made their correction correctly: with a notice attached to the new content describing what the old content said and what changes were made. That is very different from silently editing history; that is why GQ's correction is much less problematic than the hypothetical editing of Stranger Things. (It would be better to present the old content itself, rather than a description of it, but the notice is still hugely less problematic than a silent retroactive change.)
The precedent has long been set.
So far, I only recall them doing this to fix animation and editing errors, but it has made viewers on Reddit get a bit Mandela Effect-y (when they thought they saw an animation error which was no longer visible in the updated version on the streaming platform).
> As the writing of LotR progressed the nature of the Ring changed. No longer a "convenient magical device", it had become an irresistable power object, and Gollum's behavior now seemed inexplicable, indeed, impossible. In the rough drafts of the "Shadow of the Past" chapter Gandalf was made to perform much squirming in an attempt to make it appear credible, not wholly successfully.
> Tolkien resolved the difficulty by re-writing the chapter into its present form, in which Gollum had no intention whatsoever of giving up the Ring but rather would show Bilbo the way out if he lost. Also, Gollum was made far more wretched, as befitted one enslaved and tormented by the Ruling Ring. At the same time, however, Bilbo's claim to the Ring was seriously undercut.
http://tolkien.cro.net/tolkien/changes.html
In later versions, the bet was if Gollum wins he eats Bilbo, if Bilbo wins Gollum shows him the way out.
It is then presented that Bilbo told everyone the first story although the second was the truth. Which is why the first version appears in The Hobbit as the conceit is that it is an account written by Bilbo or at least sourced from his writings.
If the Forces of Order got their way and copyright was fully enforced, changes to a show released by streaming only would be a lot more permanent and in a way "more retroactive" than they are today. Maybe that's just a minor example of the much more general problem of archival presented by DRM, but maybe it's a little more sinister because there isn't any outward indication of the thing being a "new edition" like there is with a book (publishing info page) or a software release (version number). So a historian/archivist would need to go around perceptual-hashing the whole content to determine that there were actually two or more versions of that one episode of that one show.
r/DataHoarder (of course) post for this news last week - commenters list minute changes they've noticed like reruns being cut for advertisements and copyright: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/w38e1z/strange...
In other Netflix shows:
- 13 Reasons Why: suicide removed,[1] song replaced (edit: coinciding with condemnation of the show by the artist[2])
- Dark: details changed for continuity with later seasons[3]
[1] https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=378736
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/CSHFans/comments/8tloai/oh_starving...
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/DarK/comments/ctbsbd/apparently_som...
Seems like its just something new, no need make such a fuss. Does every headline really need to be so apocalyptic.
Like old Marcus said:
Media is going to turn into software, where customers will become beta testers because studios know they can just go back and fix any mistakes.
Soon, there will be "digital deluxe" editions which contain extra scenes and you can change characters costumes.
Scene-level micro-transactions.
/s?
(Addendum: nothing is really permanent).