Sekai Project cropped G-Senjou no Maou CGs

[Down]

the guys on the other side sure are dumb, amirite guys

[Scorp]

Koestl was definitely paid for his Grisaia translations, he has said as much. And we don't have any proof that Dovac isn't taking a bigger cut, but we do have good reason to believe him. If he was pocketing as big of a percentage of that money as you think he is, SP would not have been able to expand at nearly the rate it has been able to. Like, I don't know how you don't realize this, but their expansion was insanely rapid, taking on way more projects, way sooner in its life than practically any publisher in all of video games. You don't do this if the CEO is siphoning away most of the revenue for personal gain. I don't think he's doing it for the public good or anything as he stands to make a large amount of money from this business in the future, I'm just being realistic here. You can't have these kinds of unrealistic kneejerk reactions and should focus criticism in the areas where they're actually applicable and needed, such as their troubled interactions with the fanbase or lack of transparency with 18+ content.

Also, yet again, people are forgetting that the Japanese companies partnered with SP/MG/JAST exist. And you better believe that they are the ones actually making the lion's share of the money here. 

Paid how much? Comparing to the half a million KS got. I see that they rapidly expanded, why you think I do not see that? But as I do not know where exactly money he got go - I cannot confirm your idea that he spend all money on VNs. Actually as he does not publish any real proofs of where he spend money, no one could tell that. I do not think that this is particularily is some restricted information (if publish in ambiguous way), he just do not want to tell that. In this case I have all the right to have all my paranoid fantasies go live. And I think that he does not do any real struggle for 18+ demosaic content at all, comparing with Jast USA for example and he do not interested in fans AT ALL, all he want is money, and quality is in the end of the line, right before fans, who are just lick his shoes. Nice to feel yourself there? Me - no. So I would never buy any game from Sekai or Denpa and would continue to blame them every time I could to ensure people not buying from dovac company.

[Down]

Actually as he does not publish any real proofs of where he spend money, no one could tell that. I do not think that this is particularily is some restricted information (if publish in ambiguous way), he just do not want to tell that. In this case I have all the right to have all my paranoid fantasies go live.

The proof is the size of SP's catalog of available of future available titles. That's public. Of course their finances are not public, no company is going to get out the details of their finances for a couple of nerds to see.
It's your right to think this is not proof enough but without any hint of counter-evidence at all it's irrational to claim what you claim.

all he want is money

For god's sake, stop with this argument. Nobody sane in his mind will ever think that the next big place to make money is the translation of niche porn games from Japan and quit an actually profitable job to go for it. It's even worth than thinking you'll get rich by making Youtube videos. If you think dovac isn't a fan of VNs and just an opportunist, please consider the fact that he's also been hosting out of his own pocket some VN community websites for years, before he even started Sekai Project. Or that he helped a japanese company out of the red by lending them money with no ties to it. You have all the rights to dislike the man and probably many reasons to (he doesn't seem very likable after all) but to think he's in that game for money is ridiculous.

[CeruleanGamer]

Wait what? Dovac has a white knight?   I thought everyone hated the dude...  

Edited November 4, 2015 by CeruleanGamer

[Down]

Wait what? Dovac has a white knight?   I thought everyone hated the dude...  

I'm not a fan of him no. I don't like abrasive people in general.

What irks me off a lot though is misinformation, ignoring the facts and bad argumentation. Ad Hominem and misrepresentation of the other party (that's what your post is btw) are examples of bad argumentation.

[Zenophilious]

the guys on the other side sure are dumb, amirite guys

This really pisses me off.  These threads always end with some pro-SP people trying to get the last word and call everyone that doesn't like SP dumb.  Yeah, I'm sure we all get that not everyone will agree with everyone else's opinions, but that's no reason to be an ass.  Call out the individuals that you disagree with instead of stooping to a lower level to take potshots at everyone in the opposite camp.

I have 3 reasons why I don't like Sekai Project.  1) dovac.  As long as he is a part of SP, I will always feel at least slightly wary of them, and will always dislike him for being the loudmouthed, immature manchild that he is, or at least that he acts like on the internet.  There's a reason why he stopped commenting and hired a PR person, and that's because he's utterly incapable of fulfilling that role himself.  I'm content if he shuts his mouth or manages to actually put a filter between his brain and his mouth, and so far that's happening, but I still view SP with mistrust because he's the CEO.  Kinda hard to like it when the CEO of a company that localizes VNs says that he doesn't care about VN fans because we're not their intended audience.

2) So many Kickstarters.  Yeah, I get it, they're a relatively new company that doesn't have the natural advantage in the VN market that MangaGamer and JAST have, or supposedly as much money (likely true, but I seriously doubt that they're barely staying in the black like some people have tried to say).  I'm sure that the Kickstarters are helping them get licenses that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise, and that's nice for them.  That said, it's got to stop eventually, and the longer it goes on, the more people will start to harbor ill will against them.  Kickstarter is not a store.  Kickstarter was supposed to be for people and groups that actually couldn't fund their own projects by themselves or wanted to get some help starting up in the market.  By repeatedly returning to Kickstarter to fund localizations that, odds are they could fund themselves, they are abusing Kickstarter and the idea behind it, plain and simple.  If they truly can't afford to license something, then maybe it's not that good of an idea to aim for it just yet and work up to it instead, and they shouldn't rely on fans to fund their projects for them.  If they can't afford to help fund development, then how about they just don't?  That's generally how businesses work.  I doubt MangaGamer would have turned to Kickstarter if Supipara hadn't gotten funds via the profits from eden*.  Using a crutch isn't a good idea because then you get used to the crutch and can't function without it.  If all they want is exposure and to test the waters for a product, then just do that instead of making a Kickstarter campaign.  The amount of people that defend making a campaign simply to get publicity and see how many pre-orders you'll get astounds me.

3) They are so, so, soooo bad at communicating it's not even funny.  I'm not saying that we need a weekly recap of everything they're doing, but geez, largely staying quiet until you get a new license or release a new product isn't really a good idea when your competition is generally pretty vocal (well, JAST isn't that vocal, but I've heard that they're making an effort now) and a decent part of your customers are used to regular status updates.  This is especially bad considering that they tend to rely on Kickstarter, and people on Kickstarter like to know what's going on with the project they gave money to.  That's not exactly surprising, considering that there have been several Kickstarter projects where the groups receiving money tried to rip their backers off.  Trying to explain their silence away with the excuse of legal problems, while acceptable, isn't really something most people want to hear after months of silence and various excuses.  The G-senjou cropping backlash wouldn't have happened if they had mentioned it earlier instead of not mentioning it at all until someone comes along and tried to point it out on G-senjou's Steam forums, and then censoring all discussion of it (which they are still doing, even after they explained that Akabei Soft2 was behind the cropping in the first place).  That's not even mentioning them announcing that they have secured new licenses before announcing upcoming Kickstarters for them.  We still don't know if G-senjou will have an 18+ release, and there's no Kickstarter excuse for their silence this time.  I mean, Jesus Christ, put some effort into it.  That poor PR guy...

Sekai Project isn't Hitler or the Antichrist or anything like that, they just have some business practices that I disagree with and don't like.  If they solve these problems, I will have no issues buying their products, as long as they provide dual all-ages and 18+ releases, don't mess around with the VNs, have good translations, and don't skimp on the 18+ versions' production and patching, like some people have alleged.

[Darklord Rooke]

Wait what? Dovac has a white knight?   I thought everyone hated the dude...  

Mainly 4chan. Probably because 4chan represent the traditional, Eroge fanbase, and Dovac realising this fanbase consists mainly of pirates said 'fuck those people' and went looking for greener pastures. Not a popular decision, but a fairly logical business one.

Zeno pretty much states the 3 reasons Sekai are hated, but personally I'm not fussed with good PR (because PR is meaningless, really) their kickstarter use (because if you don't like it, don't participate - simple), their lack of communication (because I'm too busy to care overly and things will happen when they happen) or Dovac (because I live in Australia, which is a country full of abrasive arseholes) and thus I'm fine with Sekai. Other people won't be. 

~~~

On topic: I’ll only care about cropped images if they end up cutting out something unimportant. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was recently remastered into widescreen and released on some new-fangled format. Most likely Blu-ray. Unfortunately Whedon specifically shot the show for 4:3. To widen it, they got the originals and included more footage in the shot than what was intended. The result was footage of camera crew, actors off-screen acting out of character, actors off-screen who were meant to have mysteriously dropped off-camera, footage of camera and lighting equipment and so on. They also removed filters used for story and atmosphere purposes, like the scene where Angel was in Buffy’s bedroom at night has now miraculously transformed into the middle of the day.This is IN ADDITION to your standard cropping. This is what’s known as a severe cock-up, good job Fox.

Can you see the crew member?

In comparison, I suppose we have some cropping in G-Senjou’s visual novel. If this just reduces detail in the scene, I can live with that. 

EDIT: Double post to give the mods something to do.

Edited November 4, 2015 by Zenophilious
Thanks, Rooke <3

[KuroganeHomura]

Zenophilious: Kickstarter may not originally have been intended to be used this way, but SP are hardly the first or the most high-profile ones to use it this way. If you'd preferred Kickstarter to stay limited to usage for its original intent, well, that ship has sailed. Doesn't mean you've got to throw any money at their campaigns, of course - I pretty much never do, either, though that's because I'm just not interested in them to begin with. But I don't think it matters at this point whether SP continues using Kickstarter this way. It's not like there's some sort of finite pool of Kickstarter money that would go to other projects if SP stopped using it.

Moreover, Kickstarter is very well suited for the VN market since it allows the company to offer the main product combined with additional stuff at a much higher price than they could get from a sale on Steam. There's a decent amount of people in the community who, if given the opportunity, are willing to spend well over 100$ for a VN that by itself would cost at most maybe 40$, which makes VNs viable that otherwise might not be able to recoup the costs of localization. So it's not just a matter of pushing the risk onto the customers. Amusingly enough, that clashes a bit with the idea that the traditional eroge fanbase aren't their target audience. I'm pretty sure most people willing to spend a large amount of money on a single VN would be part of that audience. Well, maybe not 4chan in particular, no idea about them.

 

Personally, the main problem I have with SP is that they don't outright say "yes, we'll publish an 18+ version of every VN we license that has one, as long as the developer will let us", which irks me, no matter the reason they don't. But in the end that just means they get no money from me unless and until they do publish the 18+ version. I guess I'd actually be pissed if they got their hands on something I really cared about and proceeded to release only an all-ages version, but that fortunately hasn't happened so far.

[Chuee]

Wait what? Dovac has a white knight?   I thought everyone hated the dude...  

Mainly 4chan. Probably because 4chan represent the traditional, Eroge fanbase, and Dovac realising this fanbase consists mainly of pirates said 'fuck those people' and went looking for greener pastures. Not a popular decision, but a fairly logical business one.

Yet they buy products too. Ignoring a group of 200 people because you can get 300 people elsewhere doesn't make sense when you can appeal to both and get 500. 

[sanahtlig]

I'm slowly coming to terms with Kickstarter being used for eroge localization.  While Sekai Project has fudged it up, I think companies like Degica and MiKandi may actually use it for good without ignoring the eroge fanbase.  Both companies have pledged to make the adult content available through official channels.  That's good enough for me.  I may be hesitant to fund these endeavors, but if other fans want to take the risk in my stead I have no reason to stop them.  If it means we'll get more titles in English: please, take as much risk as you want!  I'll sit quietly over here while these suckers hardcore fans subsidize a wider selection of titles at no additional cost to me.

Edited November 4, 2015 by sanahtlig

[Rance]

In response to the OP:

To be fair, your post on Steam WAS promoting piracy.  And furthermore, your insistence that Sekai Project's official releases somehow have to "beat" free unauthorized fan translations really tarnishes your argument.  There's no such thing as a "free" version of a paid game.  That's piracy.  It was a little rude to ban you rather than just edit or delete the thread, but they were perfectly in their rights to censor you.

As for the second thread, that's genuine suppression of dissent, and that shouldn't be tolerated.  That's reason enough to boycott a company.  I suggest Sekai Project explain themselves quick, or I might just throw them in the "never buy from this company" category.

As for the issue of cropped CG itself, that was known since they first released screenshots.  I thought it was dumb then and I think it's dumb now.  Cropping CGs is a demerit not a feature.  Normally people can choose to set their monitor/video card to deal with the aspect ratio issue in one of three ways: fullscreen mode with sidebars, full screen mode zoomed (crops the image), full screen mode stretched, or stick with windowed mode.  Cropping the images manually removes user options and is generally inferior to fullscreen mode with sidebars anyway.  I'm not sure why a company would even do this except to tick a feature checkbox. 

 

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.

[solidbatman]

Off topic: If it takes sex to fully portray a character, then the writers just suck. I can name countless novels, movies, books, and games that don't use sex to give you insight into a character and I felt a strong attachment. I've yet to read a VN, see a movie, or play a game that uses sex to give "insight into that characters personality." Its just an excuse to show some boobies to an audience, that if we are being realistic with Japanese otaku, will likely never see em on account of being wizards. 

[sanahtlig]

Oh, I wouldn't buy a censored eroge on Steam.  You're preaching to the choir there.  Sekai Project is clearly focused on non-adult releases, which isn't where my interests lie.  Yet they haven't abandoned eroge fans either.  Maybe there will be an adult release eventually?  I don't want censored games, so that issue is more important to me than some clumsily cropped CG.

So the other guy got banned too?  Jeez.  If that's how they're treating people then perhaps Sekai Project doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.  What is it with developers censoring criticism on Steam?  Seems like a common theme recently.  If it keeps up the Steam forums will be useless for objective discussion, since only pro-company opinions will be allowed.  I heavily value free speech, and I'll personally boycott any company I feel is trying to suppress valid criticism just because it's bad for business.

A veteran of VNDB was complaining that he didn't trust company forums because they had incomprehensible rules and censored dissent; I dismissed it as a bit alarmist at the time, but maybe he had a point.  I've tended to hang out on company forums because they tend to attract interesting discussion and you get some insider info from employees, but Steam in particular is looking increasingly worthless as a community and forum for discussion.

 

[XReaper]

I've yet to read a VN, see a movie, or play a game that uses sex to give "insight into that characters personality."

read hana to hebi, or watch its movie & there´re still few others left, but basically your right with your assumption of most japanese writers doing a fairly bad job when handling ero content, or intertwining it with the plot itself, so that eroge these days consist of poorly executed fanservice btw mindless fuck for faps sake only.

[Darklord Rooke]

So the other guy got banned too?  Jeez.  If that's how they're treating people then perhaps Sekai Project doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

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. 

[Decay]

Oh, by the way, this is releasing tomorrow.

Really.

[Scorp]

Actually as he does not publish any real proofs of where he spend money, no one could tell that. I do not think that this is particularily is some restricted information (if publish in ambiguous way), he just do not want to tell that. In this case I have all the right to have all my paranoid fantasies go live.

The proof is the size of SP's catalog of available of future available titles. That's public. Of course their finances are not public, no company is going to get out the details of their finances for a couple of nerds to see.
It's your right to think this is not proof enough but without any hint of counter-evidence at all it's irrational to claim what you claim.

all he want is money

For god's sake, stop with this argument. Nobody sane in his mind will ever think that the next big place to make money is the translation of niche porn games from Japan and quit an actually profitable job to go for it. It's even worth than thinking you'll get rich by making Youtube videos. If you think dovac isn't a fan of VNs and just an opportunist, please consider the fact that he's also been hosting out of his own pocket some VN community websites for years, before he even started Sekai Project. Or that he helped a japanese company out of the red by lending them money with no ties to it. You have all the rights to dislike the man and probably many reasons to (he doesn't seem very likable after all) but to think he's in that game for money is ridiculous.

Let me have my ridiculous opinion, ok? I do not believe dovac is the person who does things in sake of community, nowhere near. Dovac before and dovac now seems two complete different persons, he now got lot of conceit and egotism, at least this is how I see it. My mails with questions and suggestions got ignored, my opinion was ridiculed... I was initially very neutral, even positive towards Sekai. But after this mess with 18+ releases and talk with great dovac himself on vndb I got impression that this guy never care about audience he supposed to work for or even want to know anything apart money he got on KS (sort of that was told, I can find you quote, if you want). So by me it is your reasons to see him as white knight are kind of ridiculous, maybe because they still did not chopped to death your favorite VN? Mine was G-Senjou, this is why got so hyped before and so pissed off after.

[Rance]

So the other guy got banned too?  Jeez.  If that's how they're treating people then perhaps Sekai Project doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.

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. 

[XReaper]

as far as i remember each post had max. 2-3 links in it (vndb or such), with the one from maou definitely non including anything that looked like spam, or links towards external discussions at all.

[Darklord Rooke]

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. 

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.) 

[Scorp]

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. 

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.

Well, as I saw from his screenshots he have big resx and I suppose big monitor, and it is 16:9, so no wonder 4:3 with lesser resx would look worse on that. Btw, maybe you will provide a link, where it was told?

[Darklord Rooke]

 Btw, maybe you will provide a link, where it was told?

Sure thing.

The statement from SP was this: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rg7y9/sekai_project_and_rvisualnovels/cwnvo63

It was in response to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rg7y9/sekai_project_and_rvisualnovels/cwntsb5 

EDIT: Doddler's was this: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rg7y9/sekai_project_and_rvisualnovels/cwog2ut 

Edited November 5, 2015 by Rooke

[Rance]

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. 

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.

[Scorp]

 Btw, maybe you will provide a link, where it was told?

Sure thing.

The statement from SP was this: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rg7y9/sekai_project_and_rvisualnovels/cwnvo63

It was in response to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rg7y9/sekai_project_and_rvisualnovels/cwntsb5 

EDIT: Doddler's was this: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rg7y9/sekai_project_and_rvisualnovels/cwog2ut 

Well, that's just his opinion. We all saw screenshots of G-Senjou, and I cannot tell that I like how it looks on 1280 (apart the crop I do not like that screen became very empty, as before there were less width space, so characters looked good, now the scenes with only 1 character look empty). For the bottom text more width is better, as now character image fits perfectly, without text going over head. So I would still prefer old release, as in MY opinion it looks better - maybe just remove some unneeded interface buttons and that's all - but this I can do myself without problem, if I will ever want it - probably would release a patch one day for community with interface mod.

[Darklord Rooke]

 I've gathered as must evidence as I possibly can in the original post.[1]  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.[2] So Maou made a single far more polite and neutrally informative thread than mine. Same thing happened.[3]  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?[4]  You're free to disagree with me [5] and even dislike me, that's your call.

[1] The evidence you gathered is almost non-existent for what you’re trying to claim, which is that Maou wasn’t spamming links to his thread before he was banned.

[2] You wrote in your OP that you were banned for promoting piracy. Companies, rightly or wrong, equate promoting fan-patches with piracy due to the radically small number of people who go out of their way to import a Japanese copy. Combine this with your ‘failing as a company’ statement, and remembering it was most likely the original Japanese devs who are doing the cropping, and maybe they considered that a stab at more than one company and as encouragement for people to seek out alternatives to supporting either one. Who knows, but it’s pretty common sense to not promote fan-patches on an official thread when the official release is imminent.

[3] I don’t believe you wrt Maou, basically because you have nothing to offer but your word.

[4] I would think it happened in the public arena and that if it happened the way you said it did, somebody would have disputed their version of events on Reddit. That's my initial gut reaction.

[5] Indeed I am