I meant more, in general. Which business in their right mind considers pandering to their customers a bad thing? Do they really think that they can use guilt, shame, fear, or pity as an alternative to sell their products?
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I meant more, in general. Which business in their right mind considers pandering to their customers a bad thing? Do they really think that they can use guilt, shame, fear, or pity as an alternative to sell their products?
After it came out that they heavily censored the original ME2 romances after Fox News kept making an issue of sex scene in ME1, turns out Bioware has been one of those companies for more than a decade.
Whatever happened to all publicity is good publicity? Few people play games for virtue points.
Hot Coffee happened.
No one but the lawyers wants to spend that much money on frivolous lawsuits, especially when they mean you can't sell your product in a bunch of markets anymore.
Isn't that what warning labels are supposed to be for? That's like some idiot allergic to peanuts suing a peanut butter company.
People not understanding what they're outraged about is really common. Like Hot Coffee wasn't even in the game, it was cut content they never removed from the code that needed to be modded back in.
Steam strikes again.
Simple. Don't use Steam. Buy direct from the developers. We got along just fine before these stupid "virtual PC consoles". GOG allows games to be installed directly, despite having a virtual console option.
porn
That's a bit weird. I picked up Huniepop 2 this week and that's got it's uncensored mode built into the game instead of being a dev sponsored off site patch like the last time.
I dont think you understand how this works. Steam has borderline monopoly on PC gaming. If your game isn't on Steam, people wont accidentally stumble upon it, and buying becomes too much of a hassle because everyone uses steam but very few people bother making an account on mangagamer or JAST or denpa or whatever and buy from them. "No Steam, no buy" is even something you see in twitter comments when eroge localizing companies announce new titles. This is the conundrum the industry finds itself in: People demand fully uncensored releases AND it to be on Steam, which is often a very tricky thing to do because of Steams random coinflip policies. If you have to buy it somewhere else than steam, or if you have to get an uncensor patch from somewhere else, people very quickly resort to piracy.
Evenicle 2 not being on Steam isnt a problem for ME, i've got an account on half a dozen eroge sellers sites, it's a problem for ALICESOFT because this effectively kills all their chances of making the game successful. In eroge localization business rule of thumb is if you arent on Steam, you probably gonna bomb.
Steam is very random in what they let on the site. Stuff that gets banned can be way tamer than some other stuff thats already on the site. But it does seem that they bend the rules for streamer beloved well-selling meme games. On the other hand Evenicle 2 is by Alicesoft, theyre an eroge company from the 90s so they got a bit of that old school edge left in them even in Evenicle which is still way tamer than Rance. But then again, Evenicle 1 is on Steam in all its uncensored glory so...... yeah, its a fucking coin flip.
That's why GOG is better, given that it doesn't force you to install a player. That's actually why I don't use Steam. For me, it's literally "only Steam, no buy". I spit on the accursed common opinion. As for piracy, yeah, IKaBey.
GOG has a smaller userbase, was against visual novel in general until just a couple years ago, and are apparently even more of a bitch to work with than Steam. Even now their VN selection is very sparse, and mostly family friendly stuff. They do not allow erotic content, unlike Steam which does allow it but swings banhammer randomly.
DGS finally getting english release
Better late than never I guess.
I can't wait for Herlock Sholmes.
While true in general, it does not really apply for the niche products such purely pornographic visual novels from established developer.
While expansion of userbase is directly affected in regards to new users, simply selling through alternative marketplace or setting up your own storefront directly would still cover the already existing userbase.
You'd be surprised how low the bar is to just going "fuck it, I'll pirate" is with visual novels even with seasoned consumers. The english language VN community is built on a history of piracy after all, and its hard to teach an old dog new tricks. The ease of purchase from steam is one of its strongest assets, everyone has an account already so purchase is just a click away. Making an account on the stores of specific localizers is like a barrier many people just cant seem to get over, plus you need multiple accounts to cover every publisher while on Steam you can reach them all (or what they manage to get on steam) with one account. And then theres the added lovely little issue of mangagamers site rejecting cards of a large portion of people, just amazing.
Plus, Evenicle 1 was one of mangagamers best selling titles because it also gathered fans outside the hardcore eroge consumer niche on steam after some youtuber shilled it. I have a feeling the percentage of these people making an account on an eroge store is very low. alice soft has a strong brand and loyal core fanbase, so theyre not completely screwed, the diehards are gonna follow them to whatever site they end up releasing it on, but they're def gonna take a hit in sales. I suspect the sales of Evenicle 1 is the main reason Alicesoft wanted to try out self-publishing in the first place, cut out the middle man.
That has nothing to do with this discussion.