Why would they need to do something as complicated as this when they can just remove the gesture? Do you really NEED that gesture to play the game?
I don't need that "It's me" from Mario either...
To expression of joy on very this way is part of the character and complety fits with the Splatoon franchise. I wouldn't expect Peach to ever express her joy this way. Would you?
The desicion to remove it in favor of not hurting anyone in a country where it's not a rude gesture at all means that a creative decision was branded as wrong without any logical reason for this countries.
It means that this very way the artist wanted to let express there character the joy of winning was forbidden without any locigal reason.
Some marble figures you see in greece or italy e.g. which where made several hundreds years ago are considered rude in some parts of the middle east because you can see the breasts. Statues that get shown to kids living in this countries.
In todays international art market some of this beatiful creations maybe wouldn't have ever been made if everytime a artist starts a project he would start with a "scissors in his head".
A scissor that makes him think before every move and before every detail he is adding to the artwork. Not if what he wants to add is the right thing to do to express or show what the artist wants to express or show with the artwork, but as in "Is it offensive to any group of people? Maybe I shouldn't add this part to my artwork".
This scissor in the head of the artist makes the artist truely unfree.
It's the scissor of censorship. If you love the freedom of art, you have to consider if what Nintendo did maybe was wrong.
If you consider videogames a form of art, then you maybe should consider that this new exciting technology empowers us to make art for all children around the world while still beeing able to hide stuff that is wrong for one location
within this location and still don't completly destroies the artwork in total.
We can cut out small details if needed or we can cut-out a large part of our opportunities of our freedoms in thinking and expressing. We either can respect local culture or cut out part of our brains.
If censoring is around you it maybe serves a purpose, but if all kinds of censoring around the world enter your brain and change your habits you're hardly yourself anymore. You're nothing more then a prisoner in your own mind then.
They should do something "that complicated" for freedom of art. It may sound cynical to you, but Nintendo as a family-friendly company in small part raises our children. Nintendo games are part of the childhood and imagination of many. What they did was the opposite of beeing family-friendly.