An excellent answer. The only thing you might add is some mention of the fact that it matters how this is implemented. If you're excessively 'in the player's face' about the whole thing, that can come off as needless attention grabbing. If you treat it as if it's the most normal thing in the world that's often much more well-received.

In Russia it's not allowed to tell minors about LGBT. Rating "18+" should save you from troubles. (IANAL.) Plenty of games with LGBT characters are avaliable to minors, but nobody cares. There was some issue with FIFA 17, but seems it stalled.

@Rain And that’s exactly what I’m worried about. In Russia, that’ll harm our sales. Our audience will be limited to those that are 18+, giving our game a label as an adult game, which, honestly, we really don’t need. It’s like releasing an album with one explicit song, only to have the entire album be labeled as explicit.

@ND523 in practice you should be concerned only if minors are your main target audience, i think. Can you please edit you question to clarify target audience (age in particular)?

I think your exception is really an exception to your point that it's too late to create controversy. If this game were to get banned (or more likely, rated 18+) in Russia just because of the inclusion of some LGBT characters, that would probably make publicity more likely. Which would overall increase the number of people who hear about the game in countries with a less screwed-up attitude to personal rights.

@ND523 in that case, you release two albums, one with and one without that track. Sell the "full album" wherever you can, and the "tame album" where you can't. Although a different scenario, this isn't much different to e.g. censoring L4D in Germany. You could have one of these characters have a gender neutral name, and just switch out the character model (or change the name as well, but you will have to re-do audio in that case as well as the model)

@ND523 Speaking from personal experience, no one gives a damn about ratings in Russia, it's up to kids' parents to enforce them. It's true it may be not received well, everything depends on how you depict your LGBT characters. If they keep that as an aspect of their personal life, it's OK. If they kiss with the same sex in public, that won't be (kissing is more of a private activity in Russia anyway).

@Malcom Yeah, kissing between them certainly won't occur. Being secondary characters, their relationship isn't something that receives a ton of time in the game—it's just there.

@ND523 Then I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.

@Malcolm Nobody really cares about ratings on video games in the USA either, except that the big retailers won't typically distribute a game rated AO. But AFAIK nobody enforces anything at the point of sale - if a 12-year-old has the cash, they can buy a game rated M.

@DanHenderson I certainly don't remember stores refusing to cell, for example, Manhunt 2. Besides, if it's a PC version, it's unlikely that many people will walk into stores, they will buy it from Steam (or pirate it if it's not there or unreasonably priced).

@Malcolm from en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhunt_2 "the game... was refused classification in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and was given an Adults Only (AO) rating in the United States. As Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony Computer Entertainment do not allow AO titles on their systems, this effectively would have banned the game in the US as well. In response to these ratings problems, Rockstar censored the game... This edited version was rated M in the US by the ESRB."

@DanHenderson Perhaps I should've clarified that I spoke about Russian Federation specifically. In there it was definitely published as an 18+ game.

@Malcolm ah, well when I said "except that big retailers won't typically distribute a game rated AO", I was still talking about the USA.

@DanHenderson Yeah, I got it, I wanted to point out it isn't the same in Russia.