The best explanation I can come up with is that they want to engage in virtual non-consenting behavior with some level of plausible deniability; most people aren't going to play a straight-up depraved SA-simulator, although such games exist.
Something actually just occurred to me: with porn or that softcore stuff you mentioned, even if non-consensual acts are portrayed, unless they're watching some horrific dark web shit (again, the vast majority will not go that far), the viewer knows that the people involved are consenting and just acting. But in a scenario like looking up Ashley's skirt in the original RE4, there are no "actors" in a certain sense. Of course, someone has to provide the voice lines, maybe mo-cap, etc., but in that moment the player personally and willfully violates the consent of the NPC, who in this case is completely powerless. And this act occurs in a context where such acts are not the focus (unlike an SA-simulator), which makes it truer to life. The only thing more visceral would be a "virtual assault" in a game like VRChat, but in that scenario there is a real human on the other side meaning that there is actual harm and potential consequences, unlike with an NPC programmed to cater to a male power fantasy. I think that even in the simple case of objectifying a character on screen without any particular action (beyond ogling them with the in-game camera), there's an element of non-consensual voyeurism that isn't present with porn.
Like I said, it's an idea that just popped into my head as I was considering your question, so it's underdeveloped. There's been a decent amount of research on objectification and violence (sexual or otherwise) in videogames, but I always viewed that as exploring the simple dichotomy of the player being an agent rather than a mere observer (as in pornography) without considering the player's subjective experience of the consent of characters (player or non-player). I'd have to dive into the literature to know how much that particular dimension has been explored.
...of course, none of that addresses outrages over other types of media being similarly "censored." So idk, maybe I'm just going off on a fruitless tangent.
CW: discussion of hypothetical SA
The best explanation I can come up with is that they want to engage in virtual non-consenting behavior with some level of plausible deniability; most people aren't going to play a straight-up depraved SA-simulator, although such games exist.
Something actually just occurred to me: with porn or that softcore stuff you mentioned, even if non-consensual acts are portrayed, unless they're watching some horrific dark web shit (again, the vast majority will not go that far), the viewer knows that the people involved are consenting and just acting. But in a scenario like looking up Ashley's skirt in the original RE4, there are no "actors" in a certain sense. Of course, someone has to provide the voice lines, maybe mo-cap, etc., but in that moment the player personally and willfully violates the consent of the NPC, who in this case is completely powerless. And this act occurs in a context where such acts are not the focus (unlike an SA-simulator), which makes it truer to life. The only thing more visceral would be a "virtual assault" in a game like VRChat, but in that scenario there is a real human on the other side meaning that there is actual harm and potential consequences, unlike with an NPC programmed to cater to a male power fantasy. I think that even in the simple case of objectifying a character on screen without any particular action (beyond ogling them with the in-game camera), there's an element of non-consensual voyeurism that isn't present with porn.
Like I said, it's an idea that just popped into my head as I was considering your question, so it's underdeveloped. There's been a decent amount of research on objectification and violence (sexual or otherwise) in videogames, but I always viewed that as exploring the simple dichotomy of the player being an agent rather than a mere observer (as in pornography) without considering the player's subjective experience of the consent of characters (player or non-player). I'd have to dive into the literature to know how much that particular dimension has been explored.
...of course, none of that addresses outrages over other types of media being similarly "censored." So idk, maybe I'm just going off on a fruitless tangent.