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Rance

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About Rance

  • Birthday 11/01/1990

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  1. I meant that you shouldn't buy things just to support an industry. There are people on Steam saying that we should buy Kagura Douchuuki because it'll help get more Japanese titles translated and on Steam. That is incredibly dumb, since it's a machine TL'd piece of gutted crap. If anything, blindly supporting companies like Debonosu will just result in the continuation of those shitty business practices and even more poorly translated, utterly gutted titles shoved onto Steam for a quick buck. In that case, "supporting the industry" would not be in anyone's benefit but Debonosu's because they don't seem to care about making a good product. I'm not saying, "Don't buy SP products," I'm saying, "Don't buy SP products that you don't want just to support them." There's no reason to artificially support a company that should be surviving by delivering you quality products that you like. Stuff like that tends to encourage bad business practices because if there's a market that will buy products no matter what you do, then there's no reason for the producer to give a crap what they want. I don't hear anyone saying that we should go and buy every MangaGamer and JAST-published VN, so I don't get why SP should be any different. Exactly.
  2. Due to legal issues, on the advice of our lawyers, we cannot talk about WAS - NJ eta: We are still committed to delivering it, we just can't talk about what happened. https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rg7y9/sekai_project_and_rvisualnovels/cwnvo4o There's been problems with the Doujin group in Japan, so that project's been a bit of a clusterfuck it sounds like. Why should we accept that lame excuse? why didn't sekai project tell us from the beginning that it wasn't them managing the project. sic "All production work was managed by the circle initially.After September of this year we've taken over" Why did I back sekai when it wasn't them who were in charge of the project and why didn't they tell us on the KS page? And why did they make a contract with them if that was the case? Something isn't right. What does anything have to do with the fact that they uploaded an old patch because nobody really checked anything to begin with and then ignoring repeatedly everything related to that issue (deleting a post on steam that told them about that mistake) and a month later giving that shitty excuse of legal issues which isn't related to the bad management and poor service customer that they have, so did "the circle" manage their steam account and upload files for them? or did their lawyer advice them to do that too huh? Why did we get to know that they were having legal issues after 9 month of the project being delayed? Come on, stop defending something that cannot be defended. I will love to give a lame excuse like that in my life and get away with it. When people don't get an answer, they start making conspiracy theories. When people do get an answer, well, they still make conspiracy theories. Literally no way to make people happy, but I guess that's the community for you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Yeah man, why even bother trying to improve amirite. Those guys are just a bunch of teens and pirates who weren't going to buy the game anyways, let's just appeal to the community on steam that doesn't know any better. Even though those other guys gave us their money and supported us up till this point, they don't count.
  3. We've been over this, did you really want to do it all over again? This is exactly why I hate debating on these forums... People refuse to back down and bring up old points again. The conversation ends up going in circles Likewise man.
  4. Actually, I'm a contractee. I work freelance so I don't do work specifically for SP, though that's where a lot of my workload is from at the moment I see that you're not taking this ban quite well though, despite stating that you didn't care before. If you honestly think that saying "I honestly recommend the original version with the fan patch instead" is okay on the G-Senjou forum, then just wow lol. Politely-worded or not, both threads were closed for the same reason (and it wasn't because they weren't being polite). That's not promoting piracy. It's promoting imports. Again, if you bothered to read the forum, you can see the second thread made by maou didn't even mention the fan patch anywhere. It was strictly informative. You can see it right there in the OP. You can't justify that one. I couldn't care less about the ban. You suppressed information because it wasn't in your best interest.
  5. Since when was planning, running, coming up with rewards, and advertising a KickStarter - on top of the translation itself - any less work? I can't exactly make you like him, but I'd appreciate it if you stopped making baseless slander about dovac. If you've seen his Twitter at all, you'd see that he's really not eating well (if at all, save for the 20 cans of Red Bull daily). I'm not speaking as an employee or anything, but he was a really kind and down-to-earth person when I met him even before I started working for the company. I first approached him at the SP booth at SakuraCon last year and to be honest I was slightly intimidated about talking to Sekai's CEO. In the end, he was very welcoming, and not in a superficial marketing/business type of way. Maybe he rubs off on people the wrong way online, although I've personally never experienced this. But you have to realize that even though he's the co-founder of SP, he's also a regular person, and you can't always expect him to be talking on behalf of his position as the CEO of SP. People take his comments on his personal account as bad PR for some reason when he's not even talking on behalf of the company. Sure, his words do hold weight, but can't he just speak his mind as an individual for once without getting grilled about it? I noticed a lot of people talking about freedom of speech or something, so I find this to be a tad bit ironic. Maybe SP could take criticism better, but I find that people are just really bad at criticism on the internet even if they don't know it. A portion of the people genuinely have complaints but don't actually know how things work, resulting in unreasonable suggestions. Some simply complain because they want to stir shit up. And there are those who actually give helpful critique but are drowned out by all the flaming and complaining that really helps no one at all. Not to mention, most of the flaming is based on assumptions and ignorance. If I were the CEO of a company, I'd be more than a bit annoyed at this. Also, @ OP, Whether you agree with it or not, you were banned for promoting piracy and that is what you did. Maybe you're upset because you were banned without a second chance, but this industry takes piracy very seriously. I hope you don't think you're special or anything, because many people are banned on Steam every single day for more ridiculous reasons (although people normally write up an appeal instead of an entire paragraph to call out the company in question about it). Pretty snide remarks from a Sekai employee, as expected. Maybe you should actually take the time to read the forum properly. Any kind of feedback or criticism that could potentially harm your sales is considered "Promoting Piracy" to you. You've just proved my point, because you came here specifically to mock the audience who disagrees with you, like Sekai always does. You must feel pretty offended yourself as an employee. I hope you don't think you're special or anything, because people boycott companies for less every single day for more ridiculous reasons (although people normally don't give them the chance to improve first). Go on you had your say, now you can run back to your employees and tell them how you really put us in our place. You represent your company perfectly.
  6. You got banned for promoting piracy, you said as much in your OP. I'm assuming the other guy was banned for spamming or for another reason. Because there's a distinct lack of evidence available, all we have to go on is the word of the people involved, and let me be pretty frank by saying you don't come off very well when discussing issues relating to SP. Your stated objective was trying to raise awareness, and it isn't a very large stretch from this to the spamming of that link in every discussion thread on the STEAM boards, spend any amount of time on the internet and it's apparent that this is common behaviour, it's as though a certain section of the public believe that a good way to raise awareness is to shove stuff as viciously as possible into as many bystanders faces as possible. Furthermore, SP stated their reasoning on a very public forum, Steam is also a very public forum, you would think if they were lying someone would be along to dispute their statement. Yet it was posted almost a full day ago with no disputing comment and yet 20 upvotes. While not conclusive, that leads me to think that maybe there's a modicum of truth to that statement. Now, It IS possible that someone ELSE spammed the link, and SP just banned them and Maou, but who knows, it's a mystery and one I can't be bothered speculating on. Really, while SP have trouble communicating, you’re not a very trustworthy fellow when discussing the moral behaviour of SP. So no, I don't believe you, and I will continue to sit on the glorious and comfortable fence on the matter, which is what I'd like to think rational people tend to do when faced with emotional 'he said, she said' situations. I will nod my head and smile in a vacant manner, if it appeases you any. Back on topic: I should point out that while Doddler doesn’t agree with their public relations behaviour (for obvious reasons,) he says the game looks much better in 1280x720 than it did at 800x600, even with the cropping. So there you go, an endorsement from someone many in the VN community respects and adores. Maybe that will calm the hyperbole over the issue. Cropping itself isn’t a bad thing. They seemed to have exchanged a higher resolution for less overall information. It becomes a bad thing if important aspects are chopped out, so some kind hearted guinea pig really needs to play through and offer some feedback for the fans (didn’t enjoy the VN so it won’t be me.) I've gathered as must evidence as I possibly can in the original post. I can't speak for the nameless who may or may not have found out, read my post, or decided to spread the word themselves. But here's how it happened, I created a single thread so the information would be there and left it at that. It was deleted and I was banned. So Maou made a single far more polite and neutrally informative thread than mine. Same thing happened. That's hardly "spamming links in every discussion". Don't you think the staff on SP would want to save face when it's brought to light that they were emotionally banning people and censoring information? You're free to disagree with me and even dislike me, that's your call.
  7. I think it would be best to get both sides of the discussion before making any decisions. For example, on Reddit SP has explained one of the bans by saying: The thread was deleted and user banned because the user started to spam the link to every discussion thread. As of a few hours ago, all bans were removed Taking a look at the initial post and it's fairly dickish and disrespectful manner of speaking, I wouldn't discount it. To put it another way, I make it a rule to not completely trust the viewpoint of those with an agenda to push. I can assure you that's a lie. I posted once on steam, and was immediately banned. There's no way I could copy and paste or spam anything. Same goes for the other guy, he was banned, and no, they have not been lifted. That means being unable to post anything else and having the original thread deleted. If there were any other posts being made and deleted, it wasn't us. They probably used the "spam" excuse so they wouldn't look like dicks, or just assumed every post was the same person for whatever reason.
  8. I can see why you might think that, but I was simply saying to stick with the original and use the fan patch. Whether people legally import or torrent it is out of my hands. Importing would be ideal but no one is going to buy it just because I told them to, just being realistic about that. As for having to "beat" free fan translations: The fact is the torrent has been available for years, just taking that into account. If the official release is worse than the original that people could easily get for free, it gives them no reason to buy it. You're not gaining anything then, you're just losing out. Why waste your money in that case? From a business perspective it's just a bad way to make sales. If they even offered the original up without the widescreen and cropped cgs, or cut sex scenes, I would have no problem buying and supporting that. As it stands though there's just no reason to support or buy this release. It's incomplete. Like I said you can't expect sales out of sympathy or pity alone. If a more holistic version easily accessible, why should anyone go out of their way for less? I'd love to support this release because G-senjou no maou is a great title, but I don't think people are about to pay full price on a cut down release. While some may think I have this personal agenda, and am just hating on Sekai because I was banned, as I said earlier I'm not angry nor do I take it personally. I just think it's petty and disagree with their tactics. You saw the other post by Maou who was far more neutral than me and didn't even mention a fan patch, and he got perma banned too. We made these posts specifically to inform people, because we want everyone to have the best experience possible. If I was simply hate mongering and had no intentions of supporting these releases and was just going to pirate them anyways, do you really think I'd waste even a second on forums talking about it? I want them to do better, and I want them to give us a reason to support these titles so we don't have to resort to importing or piracy. Visual Novels are my life's passion, they can give us some of the most significant experiences, make us feel emotions we didn't even know we had, and help us through the darkest of times in our life. I want to share those experiences with as many people as possible. That's why it kills me when titles like this get cut down and treated the way they do. While a sex scene might seem like "useless porn" or "filler" some, it gives a strong insight into that character's personality you wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise. Every detail counts when you feel a strong attachment to something.
  9. Nah, you're putting words in my mouth. I don't even care about having a 16:9 ratio, I care about the details that are left out of the cropped CGs. Just like I care about H content being removed. You can argue it's irreverence but that's all subjective to you. Obviously this stuff matters to us otherwise this topic wouldn't have taken off like it did. The point is to hold localization to higher standards, not mindlessly support every half-assed release because "If we don't support this then we'll never see another VN in the west again". It doesn't work that way, as a business if you expect to make sales, you have to make something worth buying. Quality matters, and expecting sales by guilt tripping fans into buying out of pity or sympathy or using incomplete releases as "hostages" so to speak is absolutely unprofessional and unacceptable. And for the record, we did forward ideas to them. That was the whole point of why I posted in the Steam forums, was to raise awareness so something can be done about it. But they decided to delete our threads and permanently ban me and anyone else who brought the topic up, and only after word spread did they make any remark on the matter. They never once said "This is why the CGs are cropped, there was nothing we could do." they just outright banned us in the most childish manner and claimed we were promoting piracy and tried to sweep it under the rug. It's a huge slap to the face of fans in general. They've proved themselves with their actions as an untrustworthy company, and I'm not just speaking solely about this incident. It's the culmination of how Sekai Project has operated thus far as a whole. I'm not even upset about getting banned, I just think it's petty. This isn't pointless hate mongering, it's valid concerns being ignored or silenced and seeing no improvement whatsoever. They keep taking advantage of us because they know they can. People will mindless support them on false promises or being guilted for using fan patches. We've seen the way they treat their customers, and if they want to be treated like a business then the simply truth is this is an inferior product to the original. Cropped CGs, cut sex scenes, split into voiced/unvoiced, DRM. Does that sound like it's worth full price to you? Especially when the original has been out for years with a fan patch already made. We're being sold a butchered version of a genuinely great title. What are the chances of them coming back and doing a re-re-release and fixing it? None. For the title to sell it needs to be better, not worse.
  10. I'd say this comment really hits the mark. https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rds22/gsenjou_no_maou_steam_version_169_cgs_are_cropped/cwndsse
  11. Same here man. I'm about ready to abandon western localization as a whole and start importing. It's good motivation to learn Japanese and ultimately far more rewarding. There's so much we are missing out on here in the west, and I really wanted to share the emotions and experiences Visual Novels bring with as many people as possible. I didn't support official releases to see them butchered like this.
  12. UPDATE: SP will ask AKB2 about possibility of 4:3 support): http://steamcommunity.com/app/377670/discussions/0/490124466479176329/ ~~ I wanted to inform everyone that in order to achieve "HD widescreen assets" Sekai Project severely cropped all existing CGs in the laziest manner I've seen. Check this out: You can't even see his arm, the plate, a chunk of his head, the sake bottle and glass. The dead guy's arm which used to be in full view is now barely visible. When I posted these examples on steam they permanently banned me and claimed I was promoting piracy. My post was completely deleted without a trace. Not only that but someone else decided to take up the task to post a more neutral thread on steam and the thread was instantly locked. http://steamcommunity.com/app/377670/discussions/0/490124466477714445/ [Edit: as of this moment the thread that used to be locked is now also entirely deleted.] Deleting and locking anything that might criticize their shortcomings is rather petty even for Sekai Project. They're splitting releases into voiced and un-voiced versions now which is just ridiculous, what's next microtransactions? Split each route into paid dlc? They've made it clear that they treat adult content as if it were cancerous, yet they continue to pick up titles with +18 content. Personally speaking, I've been supporting visual novels for a long time now and I've bought just about every release because I used to believe in western localization and that things would improve if we showed our support. But things are just getting worse at this rate and that was more or less my wake up call to stop investing money in companies like Sekai Project. It's really tiring having to ask every time a title is announced "Will we even get the full +18 release?", "what's getting censored?", "How will it be handled?", "Do we have to buy the goddamn game twice if we also want it on steam?". Like you can't even be excited because there's so many questions left unanswered we can only expect the worst and they completely ignore us hoping we'll buy the steam version, and then announce the +18 at the last minute expecting us to double dip, rather than just offering steam keys like MangaGamer does. Not to mention they suck funds out of us through kickstarter for practically every release. They're just abusing it now, taking already translated games that fans did on their own free time, and charging us money for it while making us pay for the licensing fees. That's just fucked up. Welcome to the new EA games of Visual Novels everyone. [Edit: Looks like reddit caught wind and has been following the whole thing as well. Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rds22/gsenjou_no_maou_steam_version_169_cgs_are_cropped/ ]
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