Izanagi Games to ban 'Death Come True' playthrough and live stream videos to block spoilers

[Arthands]

Izanagi Games is announcing that they are going to ban gameplay videos and live stream of their upcoming game Death Come True to prevent spoilers. This is a new full motion video game written and directed by Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka that will come onto Switch and mobile phones on 25th, and then PS4/PC at a later date.

Details:

 

[Lant_War]

Bold strategy. It's not gonna pay off.

 

[Lashley]

I'm sure this will please their fans....

 

[Tohsaka]

The Atlus approach.

 

[Dest]

Cause that has totally worked in the past.

C'mon now.

 

[THRILLHO]

Bold strategy. It's not gonna pay off.

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first post, etc.

 

[LazyLain]

They aren't concerned about people being spoiled, they're concerned about people watching the game for free rather than paying for it.

Somewhat understandable given the FMV nature of the game, but disappointing all the same.

 

[FluxWaveZ]

The Atlus approach.

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At least Atlus officially allows most of the game to be streamed/uploaded. This is straight up everything.

 

[CelestialAtom]

Ouch. Not a wise position to take in the current gaming climate.

 

[Tohsaka]

At least Atlus officially allows most of the game to be streamed/uploaded. This is straight up everything.

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Yeah, it's actually worse. People are more likely to most spoilers now because of this, sadly.

 

[KaiPow]

There are a lot of restrictions in place for review coverage but it's not too far from what I had to agree to in order to cover Danganronpa and The Last of Us Part II.

I suspect I'm one of the few Western content creators that'll have a review up for launch in a couple days.

 

[darkside]

I know this entire thread is going to be people saying "it wont pay off" but does anyone actually have anything to back that up? I know Atlus tried a similar approach (although nowhere near this level) with Persona 5 and its hard to argue that the game wasn't a massive success sales wise. Still a really dumb policy though.

 

[Patazord]

Never heard about this game, Danganronpa creator ? now i'm intrigued but even Atlus allowed Persona 5 to played for around 40% at released ( not a single streamer was banned for played 100% of the game).

 

[Noodle]

This is at least mitigated by the fact that it's an FMV narrative game so it's like a TV show with choices rather than gameplay-centric, but you still shouldn't use legal measures to suppress videos of your released product for marketing purposes.

 

[Starlatine]

I know this entire thread is going to be people saying "it wont pay off" but does anyone actually have anything to back that up? I know Atlus tried a similar approach (although nowhere near this level) with Persona 5 and its hard to argue that the game wasn't a massive success sales wise. Still a really dumb policy though.

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It doesnt pay off regarding spoilers. Persona 5 was both a success and i already knew its "twist" before the game was out without even going out of my way to look for it because blocking streamings made people even more likely to spread spoilers
But the spoiler justification is BS anyway cause

They aren't concerned about people being spoiled, they're concerned about people watching the game for free rather than paying for it.

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[Palette Swap]

Nothing says more "buy our upcoming game" than "here is a threat from our attorney".

 

[waugh]

Yeah, it's actually worse. People are more likely to most spoilers now because of this, sadly.

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I wish gamers weren't like this. So incredibly childish. Whether you disagree with this choice or not spoiling the game to spite the company only hurts the consumers.

 

[Fisty]

Yeah, streaming an entire FMV game is basically putting up a movie on Twitch or something. If people want these games to keep being made, they need to make concessions because the light interactivity in most FMV games means somebody watching a stream on YouTube can have almost exactly the same experience as someone who paid $20/40/60 for the game

Its gotta be really tough to get a greenlight from pubs for these types of games, especially if they are asking for a decent budget. These types of sacrifices are probably what allow them to be made

 

[Laser Ramon]

If you don't want people streaming your game because other people might see it in 2020 then maybe you shouldn't make it.

 

[Kyle Cross]

Companies have every right to not want their games played through on social media. Most companies let it be, but that doesn't mean those that don't are wrong.

 

[Komo]

Welp good one you just caused every single video about the game to contain spoilers. All trailers, everything now will contain spoilers.

 

[Wreckord Collection]

Yeah, streaming an entire FMV game is basically putting up a movie on Twitch or something. If people want these games to keep being made, they need to make concessions because the light interactivity in most FMV games means somebody watching a stream on YouTube can have almost exactly the same experience as someone who paid $20/40/60 for the game

Its gotta be really tough to get a greenlight from pubs for these types of games, especially if they are asking for a decent budget. These types of sacrifices are probably what allow them to be made

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If you don't want people streaming your game because other people might see it in 2020 then maybe you shouldn't make it.

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I love seeing these posts next to each other because it perfectly reflects why there are relatively few commercially successful games in this genre and how gamers are essentially incentivising pubs and devs to not take risks on narrative-centric experiences.

I love these types of games and want more to be made, but some of the attitudes displayed here aren't helpful. The default assumption that anything/everything is okay to stream doesn't help every project.

 

[Vexii]

Who do they think they are, Atlus??

 

[Arcana Wiz]

Companies have every right to not want their games played through on social media. Most companies let it be, but that doesn't mean those that don't are wrong.

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Of course they have the right to do this.

But as a consumer I have every right to say that I don't like this practice and this make me less interested in their games.

 

[Deleted member 5322]

I am extremely clued into what's going on in gaming and when I saw the title of this thread I went "Wait....what game is that again?" And then remembered I had seen an announcement about it.

What I'm getting at is that people probably already have no idea of this game's existence despite it being by the Danganronpa creator. Blocking footage of the game online isn't going to help build awareness for it, it's not like it's Last of Us or something.

 

[Mankoto]

I've heard the game is less than 10 hours long to 100% it. So yeah, I understand that they don't want the game to be out there all like that.

 

[Trelova]

its a visual novel of sorts so this certainly makes sense.

you can argue Persona 5 streaming ban is weird since the gameplay element is so big and folks would buy regardless, but this is just all story. you can quite literally get the entire experience for free by just watching a stream.

 

[Kyle Cross]

Of course they have the right to do this.

But as a consumer I have every right to say that I don't like this practice and this make me less interested in their games.

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I understand. Over the years I've seen a lot of people say that companies don't have the right to do this so that's what my post was about.

 

[Starlatine]

The default assumption that anything/everything is okay to stream doesn't help every project.

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Everything is okay to stream though. If you bought a game and you want to stream yourself playing it, you should be able to. Being a story based game that can "be ruined" if people watch it is not your fault. And for some reason this justification only work for certain games of certain companies? Why dont you see capcom complaining about people streaming Ace Attorney (an incredibly linear game easily "ruinable" by knowing the solution of the cases) or CtrlMovie complaining about people streaming Late Shift? Why always just these odd japanese companies and no one else?

 

[Laser Ramon]

I love seeing these posts next to each other because it perfectly reflects why there are relatively few commercially successful games in this genre and how gamers are essentially incentivising pubs and devs to not take risks on narrative-centric experiences.

I love these types of games and want more to be made, but some of the attitudes displayed here aren't helpful. The default assumption that anything/everything is okay to stream doesn't help every project.

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Does streaming a narrative game actually impact sales? Is that even possible to prove?

 

[admiraltaftbar]

Does streaming a narrative game actually impact sales? Is that even possible to prove?

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I mean I've seen quite a few comments online of people who think they have "experienced" The Last of Us 2 because they watched a cutscenes movie of it on youtube. That's with missing a pretty huge part of the game. If you can experience literally everything a game has to offer for free through playthroughs (and you don't even have to click) why wouldn't you.

 

[Starlatine]

I mean I've seen quite a few comments online of people who think they have "experienced" The Last of Us 2 because they watched a cutscenes movie of it on youtube. That's with missing a pretty huge part of the game. If you can experience literally everything a game has to offer for free through playthroughs (and you don't even have to click) why wouldn't you.

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the people who wanted to "experience" TLOU2 via youtube were invariably not buying it

 

[Wreckord Collection]

Does streaming a narrative game actually impact sales? Is that even possible to prove?

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Why dont you see capcom complaining about people streaming Ace Attorney (an incredibly linear game easily "ruinable" by knowing the solution of the cases) or CtrlMovie complaining about people streaming Late Shift? Why always just these odd japanese companies and no one else?

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It's a stab in the dark, but Capcom might be more lenient here because Ace Attorney has a long history that established itself before streaming was mainstream. CtrlMovie seems to be a notable exception. I'm glad that they were able to make their game happen, but if we want to highlight that we should note the more likely experiences of studios that specialize in this content, like Telltale and Tale of Tales that struggled to keep audiences over time.

For me, this is less about sales (which I agree, not possible to prove) and more about how publishers see this genre and how they select games to greenlight. I'm a dev that's worked in narrative games for about a decade. Trying to get any publisher to greenlight something in this genre is more difficult than others because of how many of them view streaming. It's a very difficult mindset to combat that most of them share.

 

[Jorgie]

When will they realize they are hurting themselves when they try to do this lol .Then try to excuse it with "we want to avoid spoilers". No, you don't. You just want more people to buy the game to see it rather than watch. Which is completely fine! It's a business! Just be real for once.

 

[CaptainBojangles]

I was thinking about this game after the recent Stadia streaming comments debacle, and now that the dust has sort of settled on this one, I don't know if this was really the best approach for this game, or for other narrative-driven games going forward. The fact that this is a niche game absolutely does matter (There's not exactly a strong market for FMV games), but I feel like I have heard nothing about this game since maybe a few social media posts on its launch day.

What really stood out though, was how small this game's presence on YouTube is. It seems like the devs allowed DashieGames to make a video on the game back in July that performed well and got 625,000 views, but if you look for a review on this game on the platform, you won't find a video with more than 2500 views, and even some of those have practically no footage given the publisher's stringent rules on showing off the game.

The game has over 400 reviews on Steam, which isn't too bad for a niche game like this, but looking at the dates in which these reviews were made reveals that there was a very significant drop-off in the number of reviews the game received, which may indicate a lack of word-of-mouth going around.

Compare this to (And I know this is not the most fair comparison, but it's another of his own works) Danganronpa V3:

Obviously, I understand developers' concerns about not getting their games into players' hands if they're going to just watch it online, but I have to wonder if they lost out on a lot of long-term sales given this move.

 

[Holundrian]

Dinosaur move, won't support.