Narcosis

>VtM >5th Edition At least it does look genuinely good for an adventure game.

I still wonder who actually buys these vns. Definitely not the original target audience. But you know? I'm totally not surprised and it's a perfect case study. This is what mindless piracy does. You have all these horny teens pirating every single game out of two reasons: 1. They have better things to spend what little money they have on 2. Why buy anything at all, if it's always available for free? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You're either bold or stupid... or both. Have to commend you for that.

The world is ending.

Examples? Majority of the global IT/internet tech/media businesses operate from the Eastern US, Steam included and they're all currently under the influence of left-wing American activists who aim to pigeonhole people in order to control their speech. In truth, it's not really even as much of an left-wing ideology being the culprit, but social justice narrative that comes with it to scrub all the content deemed as "offensive" and "hurtful" off the internet and it varies from party to party; a trend, that surfaced lately to score points with various groups of people to win them over. Straight from Google's social engineering, Sony's ubiquitous "censorship of the lewds" to certain third wave feminist groups literally attacking everything I and people similar to me hold dear; what these companies do is pander to a fringe minority of complete screwballs, lately going amok to try and restructure the entire world to fit their viewpoint. Certain communities - including those of gamers, old-time hobbyists and anime/manga/pop culture fans - are considered by them to be the last bastions of everything that's oppressive, which must fall in order to make place for their ideal interpretation of a brave new world. Why is this so unnerving to many people in the first place? Because a business should aim to deliver products to people, not advocate for sociopolitical viewpoints and it's been something that has been predicted by many of the outstanding sci-fi writers of the past century as the rise of collective corporatocracy. It's clearly an ideological issue that has its roots in politics; how much of a threat you consider it to be to your own hobbies and your own well-being is up to you. To those social collectivists, Japanese pop culture in general is considered to be deeply rooted in "patriarchal" and "misogynist" ideologies and as such, it needs to be eradicated before it causes more harm; nothing else but buzzwords for being unable to mind your own business. Their self-need to validate their own moral superiority is slowly leading them to the point where they want to dismantle the entire system we built so far - one that gave us relative peace and prosperity for the last 75 years or so - in order to build their beautiful communist utopia. All under the guise of "compassion" and "mutual understanding". As for your previous remarks - censorship in general is neither left or right wing; it's a tool to subdue people. There are certain right-wing christian activists advocating for the ban of porn who did meddle with gamers, but let's be honest - they've been making fools of themselves for the past 15 years or so and many of their latest claims on successful censorship have been debunked as well. If it comes to myself, I'd gladly prefer these old boomers over the social justice activists; the former are just religious lunatics, the latter are insanely dangerous people who justify and advocate for physical violence as an accepted tool in conversation. It's slightly amusing to see such a train of thought coming from a fellow countryman, but who am I to judge. This is exactly where both companies and fans need to be more transparent about their goals. This is exactly where translators should unionise and fight for their rights in this growing market. This is exactly the time to finally show the publishers that the community ascended from simply being mindless consumers into more self-aware group that also strives for the well-being of the entire market they get their beloved entertainment from. It is not only to show we're aware of the issues that ail all of us, but also to stop the scummy businesses from exploiting said issues for their own benefit. TL&DR a clearer conversation is needed between all the parties. In my opinion, our western publishers should also strive to help the japanese developers willing to reach out to us, so they can secure a safe marketing space to publish their works. I would rather not believe in such a pessimistic future, where crowdfunding suddenly becomes the only safe way to localize or even release these games at all. It's because at a certain point, it becomes a habit. It's no longer a "phenomenon" in one's life - a hobby, side-job or a way to spend free time - but a part of their life and with it, so comes the need to sustain it in the only adult-like way possible - by earning money for the work they do. Either way, this entire community is an ecosystem of it's own; take one part away and everything will crumble down. Exploit it and you'll feel the wrath of nature raining down upon you like the dozens of thousands of weebs reeeeing in unison.

Naivety at it's finest. Do you even know who's actually influencing these laws in the first place? If there's any sort of strawman to be had, it's blaming the current industry issues on cultural differences; the greatest otaku demise of it all. Furthermore, are we talking about vns or precisely about 18+ eroge counterparts? There's a major difference between these two. One is a self-restricting niche, the other is just not as popular and won't ever be. This brings us to the beginning point - how in the world are you expecting an ultra niche market to sustain it's profitability, while satisfying everyone's needs? But hey - it's much easier to look for scapegoats, than take responsibility for one's own actions.

There's not much of advocating caution in here; all the TLs know about this. Every sensible community member knows about it. It's more of a market problem and balancing between profitability and future versus labour satisfaction in an ever increasingly hostile growing waters. If all the publishers go down under, there won't be any market and no games; It's all back to unofficial translations and piracy. As such, MG will either go bust or will have to adjust their wages, if applicable. Free market. That aside, there's a very delicate line between balancing worker rights and market needs. I doubt vns and eroge have any place in this cucked future, hence I'm expecting things to only grow worse on the west. For a while, Steam had a chance to open up a new market, but they chose to pander to the left-wing social justice activists instead. Off-site adult patches can only take it as far and as expected from latest developments - if a game is deemed "harmful", target audience does not matter; as a developer, you're being devoid of any chance to publish your works. Does that mean all-ages games are the only choice? Not really, since they're often rejected as well. Without a large, safe and stable outlet, there's no chance for this industry to fix itself out of it's own problems. Maybe it's time for the devs, publishers and community to sit down and have a chat?

The guy has a choice. I'm not defending MG in this case, as they're a business highly fraught with issues, but downplaying them to suit a single side is just hilarious. You should know best, of all the people. This IS NOT an industry for sensible people looking for stable, high-paid jobs and judging from where we're heading with all the latest surfacing problems, I doubt it'll ever change.

That guy needs to grow up. If he wants money, what is he doing translating japanese eroge? That aside, talk about complete lack of professionalism, self-entitlement and narcissism. I'm tired of people nowadays taking their problems onto social media and constantly virtue signalling.

Visual novels are like an abusive wife.

People should be prepared for even more studio closures in the near future. Many of them will most probably be quite famous. At this point and time, under current circumstances the shrinking otaku market is simply unable to support this colossal industry by itself. It's either restructuring or a complete burst that will swallow many companies in the process.

You sound upset most people here are pragmatic and have little to no personal feelings towards Feng? From our perspective as consumers and fans of the genre, Feng has little to no value, therefore no one cares it's going down under. I feel sorry for the devs, but it won't change the fact they made weak games that brought this entire situation upon them. Nothing will change that.

If a company creates shitty products no one's really interested with, then by all means, they should go bust. That's how open market operates.

Plenty of studios went down under as of late; Feng isn't the only one. Point is, Feng has never achieved any sort of a success and their games were completely unremarkable so it's not much of a loss, as harsh as it sounds.

Can't wait to see the shitstorm. What entertains me though is the fact of the amount of self-entitled fanboys pretending to be capable of swallowing the game. If lucky, MG will maybe recoup the costs but Maggot Baits' hype is insanely overblown. Speaking of Dead Days, it turned out to be weak and feels more like a budget production. Considering they like to experiment, this is typical for Clock-Up with their ups and downs in terms of quality.