• Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Status
Not open for further replies.

purseowner

From the mirror universe
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,444
UK



So I saw this on Twitter. I wasn't familiar with the game before now.

I can find no evidence of the supposed calls for censorship the developers are complaining about.

In my opinion this is an appeal to the worst crowd, perhaps emboldened by the success of Cyberpunk's GamerGate/alt-right--courting PR campaign. The dismissal of apparent criticisms from those who feel the game is problematic, and the subsequent misrepresenting of them as 'calls to censorship' leaves me very unimpressed. I'm not pro-censorship myself but I see no evidence of people actually demanding that.

Thoughts?
 

Jakenbakin

Member
Jun 17, 2018
11,796
Every single person that has said "you've got my support" that I've clicked on has had hentai on their timeline, and/or MAGA shit. There's definitely a crowd this game is aimed at.

I also have no idea what this game is and will go out of my way to continue not knowing anything about this shit.
 

Deleted member 10737

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
49,774
seems like an obvious attempt to appeal to the gamergate crowd to me.

this is what the characters designs in the game look like, for reference.
 

Nights

Member
Oct 27, 2017
866
The only thing I could think of when I read this was "This must be in regards to the character art" and I really think that's it. I've barely even heard about this game, let alone heard literally anyone say it should be censored.

I think its a marketing ploy for the GG crowd and nothing more tbh. "I'll buy a mediocre game to own the libs" etc etc
 

Android Sophia

The Absolute Sword
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
6,096
Apparently, this game's already out on Steam? I didn't see any calls for censorship reading the reviews there.

If this is just a marketing ploy, it's really unfortunate and undermines legitimate issues. Especially the trans issues surrounding Cyberpunk. : \
 
Oct 26, 2017
1,029
Says a lot that the statement claims to be a "strong" rebuke, yet it doesn't once mention exactly what it is they're pushing back against. It's just vague as hell. Reads less like strength to me and more like posturing -- if not just a flat-out cynical attempt to manufacture a groundswell of support from the worst crowd.
 

Rosebud

Two Pieces
Member
Apr 16, 2018
43,507
I never heard of this game before, and honestly it should stay that way lol

Game art:

29dd1e95bbefbcf048de98a98a01f223149a24db.jpg


So, so brave of them...
 
OP
OP
purseowner

purseowner

From the mirror universe
Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,444
UK
An effective PR stunt to get the anti-SJW crowd to buy your relatively unknown indie game, yeah.

Maybe they have received death threats, who knows, but they're trying to paint all criticism of their game's handling of certain content and artstyle with the same brush.

They're incredibly dismissive of the social impact media can have when they represent their critics as 'Those who believe words and images can inflict 'violence''. Pure anti social-justice-in-games arrogance quite frankly.
 

SteveWinwood

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,675
USA USA USA
Yeah I can't find any amount of widespread calls for censorship. Or honestly any calls at all.

Seems to be mostly deafening silence about it. Which makes sense why they might try this marketing strategy.
 

HardRojo

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,096
Peru
Well, now I know about this game and its "interesting" character designs... which are terrible, actually.
 

rpm

Into the Woods
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
12,348
Parts Unknown
I skimmed through a YouTube video (from a "the social studies warriors are ruining everything" type person) linked in the replies and it shows a grand total of one angry Tweet replying to a Nintendo Life tweet about the game, I went to that Tweet and all the replies are just complaining about the ess jay dubyas and there's no one actually complaining about the game

"large amount of messages" yeah, okay, sure jan. Game's been out for months on Steam and it has pretty low numbers (all time peak of 53 players, 93 reviews), no one has heard of this shit

Smart PR stunt, I guess, probably sold several times more copies today alone than in the past 4 months it's been on Steam
 
Last edited:

fulltimepanda

Member
Oct 28, 2017
5,795
it seems the controversy is a few people calling out the character designs on twitter after coverage on a few nintendo focused outlets.



I think this sums it up.
 
Oct 28, 2020
631
Watching a video by some idiot on YouTube that has around 250k subs. The one tweet he shows that is against this game has a massive 36 likes on it. Such an uproar from this game seemingly noone has heard of.
 

LavaBadger

Member
Nov 14, 2017
4,986
This is a cry for attention.

"It's come to our attention that some people think out game and art is shitty, and we stand firmly in saying we have no intention of changing that. Also, here's the word 'censorship' so it seems like we're being brave. Buy our game please. No one else seems to be."
 

No Depth

Member
Oct 27, 2017
18,266
Seems more like a desperate attempt to create exposure on the eShop/Steam ahead of release.

Statement is suspect though, the lengths they argue about "rejecting grandstanding" by writing three paragraphs that read like pure unfiltered grandstanding to appeal to a specific audience is quite the soapbox moment.
 

edgefusion

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,865
Whenever it's stuff like this it's always "a-bloo-bloo stop censoring de poor devewepors T_T aRtIsTiC eXpReSsIoN" but when a gay character is too gay or a black character too existent they're screaming from the rafters to have it patched away. When Gamers are demanding changes be made it's never about 'artistic expression' then.
 

deepFlaw

Knights of Favonius World Tour '21
Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,494
They RTed a GG outlet reporting on it, they're absolutely just pandering with barely any actual criticism, if any. Very much doubting someone said it "encourages violence", in particular.
 

Kyuuji

The Favonius Fox
Member
Nov 8, 2017
32,045
Seems more like putting up a flare to attract a certain type of gamer than anything else.
 

Dice

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,225
Canada
This is a cry for attention.

"It's come to our attention that some people think out game and art is shitty, and we stand firmly in saying we have no intention of changing that. Also, here's the word 'censorship' so it seems like we're being brave. Buy our game please. No one else seems to be."

It's this. Pay it no mind and hentai players will find it and play it in their bubble and don't excite the trolls more than they want.

giphy.gif
 

Izanagi89

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,565
The people applauding the devs for not giving in to outrage and censoring their game is hilarious given that, you know, there's no outrage? This is also a really fascinating case study in how easy it is to mobilise folks on social media.
 

Seafoam Gaming

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 3, 2017
2,692
I love Clock Tower and games inspired by it, but dear lord, never heard of this one before, and this announcement confused and came out of left field for me. Looked into it more, and I found a thread of people complaining about the character designs being too ridiculous... And that was it. I literally couldn't find much of anything else, which is pretty telling since almost always whenever gamers get really angry at a developer they almost never shut up. I tried looking to see if the censorship was instead concerns about China to prevent a situation like Devotion, since someone replied in a tweet the dev is from China, but I can't seem to verify that.

Literally the only public reaction things I found about this game are that people don't like how dumb some characters look due to weird designs and nothing related to an outcry or major revolt whatsoever. I legitimately think this announcement was really just done to be a PR move to get the weeb gamer crowd that are mad about stuff like Gal gun getting canned on XBOX to go to their side, even though this game isn't even one that I'd consider controversial in the same sense and I bet if they said nothing about such nobody would even have issue with the game.

Yet the devs decided to make a huge statement and blow it out of proportion, even though death threats are still 1000% NOT OK and I won't doubt that happened since people are awful and I would sadly, not be surprised if it did considering how many devs I've known who've gotten threats for the stupidest of reasons. Not really gonna touch this game now if this is the audience they're catering to.
 

Yasumi

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,569
They're definitely milking the "anti-sjw" crowd with this. And they're 100% falling for it.

A shame, as I thought some of the games Top Hat's publishing looked interesting.
 

elenarie

Game Developer
Verified
Jun 10, 2018
9,798
Whatever the story here is, you've just given all of this more publicity. šŸ˜›
 

weblaus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
933
Let's just say as someone who has dabbled with this game a bit: It's no surprise to me they're trying to go that route as they'd have a hard time getting people to buy it based on gameplay quality.

The handful of reviews for the PC version you can find on Metacritic (all written way before today) are pretty much spot on and mabe even a bit too generous, and none of them have any real issue with the character design or artstyle...

I just hope easiasiasoft doesn't jump in as well as I actually quite like that company and so far have the impression they don't have to stoop to such measures even when it would be really easy epecially with a handful of their very explicit recent releases (which actually are better games in their own way than this one).
 

In Amber Clad

static and disarray
Moderator
Aug 26, 2018
5,502
London
There doesn't seem to be anything to this, and I don't think we need to signal boost it. As such, this thread is now locked.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.