Stellar Blade became rather controversial with critics in large part due to the sexualization of its protagonist Eve. They argued that the game's marketing leaned heavily into her sexual appeal by focusing on elements such as revealing costumes and suggestive character designs for its promotional strategy. This got to the point where the South Korean version of the game received an "Adults-Only" rating due to suggestive images, nudity, and violence. Hyung-Tae Kim, the game's director, defended these design choices, stating:


This controversy culminated when the game released with a Day 1 update that patched out unintentionally offensive graffiti, and censored two revealing outfits for Eve, the Holiday Rabbit and the Cybernetic Bondage, but these are not the only affected outfits. When the player finds their first unlockable Nano Suit blueprint on the overworld, a tutorial pop-up appears featuring a video that scrolls through a montage of other Nano Suits that can be unlocked, and among them is an uncensored version of the Moutan Peony, an outfit that features dark pantyhose covering Eve's skin up to her waist in both the base game and the Day 1 patch. It appears that the developers forgot to remove this video when changing the costumes during development, and it's currently not known if other outfits in this video were changed in the final game.

These changes contradicted a claim from the game's official Twitter account stating that all versions of the game worldwide would be released uncensored, leading to the changes being widely criticized by players on social media and speculation that the game's publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment mandated the changes after addressing the offensive graffiti. However, Kim addressed the matter during a Q&A at a launch event for the game, stating that the costumes in version 1.0.0.2 was their "final product", but claimed that "the answer is not enough to convince our users" and that an ongoing internal discussion was proceeding. Kim later reaffirmed his stance on the changed costumes in a later interview, stating:


Despite this, subsequent updates starting with version 1.0.0.3 would cater to the complaints by adding more erotic costumes, including two new variants of the Holiday Rabbit and Cybernetic Bondage with the censored parts reverted, and new costumes like the Black and White Kunoichis.

The speculated tensions between Shift Up and Sony during development were actually highlighted by Drakengard and NieR creator Yoko Taro, a developer with a history of tensions with Sony, during a joint interview with him and Kim for IGN published a little over a week before the game's release: