Basileus777

Unless you're including Aqua After this is not true, Himawari ends with a sequel tease/cliffhanger that I found pretty unsatisfying even after reading the side stories.

I just finished 2048 and it has actually sapped me of much of my enthusiasm for it.  The pacing was off, it just went on forever and felt like it would never end. The whole route should have been several hours shorter.  It doesn't help that I never really found
 

No offense, Zalor, but it's kind of silly to be mad at MangaGamer for torpedoing Aaeru's fanTL project.  She was intending to package it with a torrent of the game itself, IIRC, so yeah, not exactly in the grey area of the law.  Pretty much all fan translators ask that you buy a copy of the VN, and explicitly state that they don't support packaging their TL with a torrented copy, to make it less likely that they'll be slapped with a C&D.  MG was well within their rights to send her an C&D, and I don't fault them for it.  I'd much prefer an officially localized release with a proper translation and editing job over a subpar fan TL patch that gets released sooner, anyway.
Besides, she was poking the bear.  Why on Earth would she try to translate a sequel to a series that MangaGamer had the rights to?  Everyone thought the guys trying to translate ImoPara 2 were crazy for the same reason.  There was no chance that MG wasn't going to release it.

All I know about Himawari were desings of main characters, and that it's 'character driven story, set in not distant future'. And that first chapter is moeblobbing, while next ones are much more serious. So far - it's exactly what I thought it would be. Except that I don't like basically nobody except Ginga, whom I only 'tolerate'.
[Aqua in her 'route' is much more unlikeable (her attitude towards Youichi, while explainable, is still far from nice, so I just don't like her) than in 2048.]
Who cares about law? (And I do believe that law aboard space stations are clearly defined.) It's just...wrong. Creepy. From moral standpoint.
Yeha, because shoting a guy is a normal thing to do and everybody 'can' do that.
I agree that Daigo needed her. I don't see why she really 'needed' him, but there would be no progress in her character if not for him, to that I agree.
Yup, I do know. And I stay by my words.
"Stockholm syndrome is a psychological condition that causes hostages to develop sympathetic sentiments towards their captors, often sharing their opinions and acquiring romantic feelings for them as a survival strategy during captivity."
This guy was a completly new thing in her life. She, as a decent human being, out of compassion and fear, helped him and tend to his wounds. Then he started to live in her quarters. She was constantly angry at him, constantly tired and was (in her thoughts, so it was genuine) yearning for some calmness. Of course she spended time with him and wanted this time to be as enjoyable as possible - as any sane person in her situation would do. If she went to Akira (of whom she was scared), she would be in problem as well, because she was sheltering him. She was confused and didn't know what to do, to the point in which she completly enclosed herself from even her 'sisters'.
Probably most of the 14 yo girls, living in bubble of spacestation, with very little human interactions would be very confused, or even scared if 40+ yo loud and creepy guy imposed himself on her room and her life. And she couldn't even escape, because she had nowhere to go - it was her room, her one and only private place.
Well, good for you then. I believe your feelings were in writter intentions. 
I feel like I spend too much time discussing this before I even finished this title. I will come back to you after I finish this whole VN. Hopefully tomorrow.
Just hope this ending is as good as you're saying. But I have in mind fact, that I found true route in ever17 very lacking and pretty mediocre (best route was Yous' route), so I have reservations when people writting that 'XYZ is greatly tying everything together in the last chapter'. So, yeah. Let's get back to grinding.

2048 spoilers
 

Can you really call it "efficient" when the fan translation was as poorly done as it was? Quality takes time.
"Fan translators are way more efficient than the publishers!"
*looks at number of fan translations released this year versus official releases*
Oh...

I just finished 2048 and it has actually sapped me of much of my enthusiasm for it.  The pacing was off, it just went on forever and felt like it would never end. The whole route should have been several hours shorter.  It doesn't help that I never really found
 

Lol. Pretty much irrelevant on its scope. 
It's like you can't. 
Not really, as you can see, at least not from the get go and not as widespread as pc it always makes. 
What's done is done, of course, and there's not much point to starting another holy war, but I really see no reason to be happy about it in the big scheme of things even for the most cynical of pirates: pc gets even worse rep, great guys at PQube get less money, 5pb's less popular games like Anonymous;Code become even less likely to be localized. Hopefully enough people already bought it for ps4 and vita either way. 

That's tragic, to say the least, pity it's hard to sue people. 

The Chinese audience for VNs on Steam is probably larger than you think.  Look at the geography tabs on Steamspy for things like Nekopara and China is often the top country represented.

For Corpse Party, use a guide. You can find spoiler free guides for the game. The smallest of details can cause you to get a bad end. And with the lack of text skip, replaying parts of the game is very tedious and time consuming. It was such a frustrating experience until I finally caved and used a guide. 

One part of this post is correct, another part of this is pure supposition and likely bullshit. You cannot attribute fewer sales on Steam to people moving to MangaGamer's store, as simple as that. I can't even imagine how you arrived at that conclusion. VNs being in a mild decline on Steam compared to 18 months ago means fewer people are playing VNs overall compared to then, not that people are getting VNs elsewhere.

Moogy, Conjueror, etc all publicly congratulated Aroduc as soon as Baldr Sky's localization was announced. Doddler was part of his team, but didn't know anything about the licensing. Furthermore, Aroduc said:
 
So it seems obvious that they were in communication about it, and that he was working on it was an open secret within the VN industry. He likely asked around about getting it licensed at some point.
And Aginyan said yesterday:
Not that there was one or work had already begun.
It's silly to take these at anything other than face value, especially if SP isn't denying any of it.

Just like we all assumed G-senjou no Maou would eventually be available on Denpasoft.

Audi went into full Nutaku Protection Mode, which even caught me by surprise.  Also, this sounds like a deal negotiated specifically for this title, as he mentioned that other upcoming titles will still see releases on the Denpasoft store.  Nutaku may have negotiated for exclusive distribution rights.

As for someone who did followed Mangagamer blog or tweets(and the forums before it got bombed and still haven't recovered T_T), Da Capo III is a huge game. The prologue itself is big, The common route is also big. Overall DC3 is pretty much comparable to more or less Koihime Musou length which was the longest VN MG had worked on at the time. IIRC, perhaps Koryuu has compared words length of DC3 to LOTR novel length.
As for 3 years, Koryuu is the only assigned translator on it and it's mainly because for keeping the translation quality consistent as opposed to 2-3 translators on the project.
The point is: DC3 was never expected to be released within small timeframe after its announcement. And people who may want something similar to Da Capo has Princess Evangile for their fix. But most important of all, MG Project Status is steadily updated so people knew of its progress.
Well, aside from cons, SP did announce titles outside of them after all, and people may be including what accumulating to "announcing too much" backlog.

That example doesn't really illustrate your point as all of those MG titles other than Kuroinu are fully translated and near release while those SP titles are in early stages and probably a year+ away from coming out.  Clannad is pretty much the only example of a major SP title that was translated internally that wasn't beset with delays.  MangaGamer has the occasional project that takes too long, but they churn out longer titles much more reliably than anyone else in this business right now.

The difference is that Sekai Project relies on Kickstarter.  Having a large backlog makes backers uneasy.  The more projects going at the same time, the greater the loss to backers if Sekai Project suddenly folds.  A growing cascade of crowdfunding campaigns suggests reckless expansion, or worse, starting new projects to fund previous ones (a.k.a., a pyramid scheme).  Finally, too many simultaneous projects could stress the organizational apparatus overseeing all of them, resulting in lack of proper oversight and quality control.  These are all serious concerns.
MangaGamer is established, experienced, and boasts a fast-paced release schedule AND the quality control to back it up.  Not to mention that if they suddenly collapse, backers won't be left with the tab.

Sekai Project continues to string fans along while keeping them in the dark about their actual intentions. Typical Sekai Project. I kind of expected this after dovac contacted me on Twitter just to gripe at me.
I don't think I can continue to give this company the benefit of the doubt.

SP already has PR people. Dovac just constantly undermines them by ranting and getting involved in petty shit.  The guy just can't keep his mouth shut and it has hurt his company.

Seriously though, he's a grown man and the CEO of his company. I can't comprehend what caused him to behave that way out in the open regarding his company's business. Do it behind close doors, quickly, and settle the matter. If it requires legal, then bring them in and discuss it between legal. This is ridiculous to me.
Why would you go on twitter and say "Let's talk in public what do you have to hide?". Why talk in public in the first place? . It's embarrassing for the company as a whole I think. I do understand that it's extremely frustrating to deal with a situation like this but you're the freaking CEO, handle it or hire someone to handle it for you [lawyer].
Nice article @sanahtlig, I don't follow twitter stuff so I wouldn't have been aware of it otherwise. It's pretty eye opening. 

Those patch notes are the pretty much the exact same that Sekai Project has used for Nekopara and KARAKARA. I just tested it out with Nekopara Vol. 2 and you can printscreen just fine; it's only when you use Steam's screenshot feature that it blurs the entire image.
Basically, it's a system in place to prevent people from streaming porn using Steam's broadcasting service which could get the developer in trouble.

Sorry, but you're deluded, and you're spreading your delusions by preying on the vulnerable.  Please stop.

I think the failure of this campaign is a combination of a lack of marketing (launching the campaign a few days before Anime Expo was a bad idea that resulted in any traction slowing to a halt) and an overestimation of the demand for this VN. It's been fan-translated for a while now, doesn't have an anime, and even though it's well-regarded it doesn't have anything close to a fandom like Grisaia or Muv-Luv. $140,000 as the base goal is asking for a lot, and the stretch goals are practically impossible.
It's a shame, because I would've liked to reread this officially and with a better translation, but it doesn't look like it's gonna happen at this rate. At a lower goal and with better planning this could've been successful. It's got a good average pledge per backer, but not enough reach to reel in the necessary number of backers.
The whole thing just seems like one big miscalculation.

Author's imitate the way people talk. Young adult fiction imitates the way young adults speak without replicating the way young adults speak, because the results would be utterly tragic. And they definitely don't write like a young adult.