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Sekai Project cancels campaign of WAS The Hourglass of Lepidoptera


Deep Blue

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To Our Backers,

Due to ongoing legal issues and noncompliance by the circle, SRL, we regret to inform everyone that we must cancel this campaign. While due diligence was made to make sure that all aspects of the Kickstarter campaign were fulfilled, in the end the great financial loss and damage to our reputation was too much.

It was also discovered that SRL engaged in stealth marketing tactics using paid reviews which violates Steam's Terms of Service. At that point, we had no choice but to terminate our relationship with SRL.

Refunds will be offered for undelivered physical copies of the game. Please email [email protected] with the subject "WAS Backer - Physical Refund" and in the body of the text please include your paypal address.

Whatever physical products that were made will still be shipped to backers. More details will be made available once fulfillment begins. 

Regarding the shikishi, unfortunately, requests to SRL to make sure that there were enough shikishi for the backers was unfulfilled.Thus we will be also offering refunds for the shikishi as well.

Circumstances beyond our control prevented us from better informing everyone of what was going on as it serves no one any good to speak negatively about the developer. Nevertheless, we at Sekai Project want to extend a sincere apology to everyone affected.

The Hourglass of Lepidoptera will be removed from Steam as soon as possible. However, those of you who already have a Steam key will still be able to keep your copy of the game.

Thank you very much for your understanding.

At least they are giving refunds.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sekaiproject/bring-was-the-hourglass-of-lepidoptera-to-the-west/posts/1503519

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5 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

All I saw was "sekai project cancels campaign" and I thought it was about root double. Scared me for a second there.

I didn't back this, though it's still a shame to see a SP project go down the drain.

I should have left the tittle as "Sekai project cancels campaign..." just to troll a little bit xD

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Now this makes sense lmao

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198163307617/recommended/340090/

Spoiler

Was wondering whether to buy it is the best work a high degree of completion .
What background you come out to this game will be real in Japan .
Beautiful background of the Japan Quality is was impressed high .
I do not have that love Japan visited .
Someday visit to Japan , the background that came out in this game I want to have seen in my eyes.

Stories have been well written , I have to play to forget the time .
There is no worry can change the transparency and the display speed is when the painting is felt ugly .
Production , there is no problem with the music . It is easy to play satisfaction .

This game is for us and you a happy feeling .
You should buy without hesitation this game .

I was waiting for the full voices patch I guess I will have to play it without it now, also I have this weird presentiment that the game will be all over the internet even if is taken down from steam, probably in 1 or 2 days but don't quote me on this:rolleyes:

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Yes, it was released in December. What this ultimately means is that none of the physical goods yet to be shipped will be shipped, the voices won't ever be patched into the game like they were supposed to be, and it will be delisted from Steam, meaning no one will be able to buy it anymore.

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the game is partially voiced (very very few lines are voiced) same exact amount as the original jap game that was released back on 2014, the second stretch goal (30k) was for paying the licensing of those voices the 46k goal was to unlock the full voices which they were recording (or so they said)... and probably will be added to the jap version at some point because SRL is still working on the game and they plan to add more stuff even do a sequel (all the updates are on their facebook page)

Spoiler

they are doing weird things... but this proves that they did record more voices 

 

 

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That one negative review: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198075519657/recommended/340090/

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The saddest part is the negative reviews made in the past has been removed for unknown reasons & no one has complained those issues with the publisher, meaning the publishers have won & got away with this scandal.

Sekai Project was in on this.

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You people are silly, blaming Sekai Project, saying they are getting what they deserve. Simply stupid. It sounds more like a company who simply would not play ball with their publisher. The amount of time some of you spend hating on SP for the smallest of reasons is very petty, and only adds to the reasons I hate the VN community. Entitled, whiny, arrogant, pretentious, belittling, weebs. Keep in mind that this KS was done before people started crying over Sekai Project using Kickstarter. Call me a shill if you want, report this post if you want. The people in this thread hating on SP are just plain dumb. 

Could SP have avoided this? Who knows? None of us know what goes on with the contracts and licensing talks. For all we know, maybe Sekai Project is the absolute evil some of you act like they are. Or, they could be doing thins the way they work and letting the market decide if it will keep working. After Root Double, I'm pretty sure the number of Kickstarters is going to go down, because people don't want to keep doing that (especially after 3 burns now basically). But, none of us actually know what goes on with them, so at this point, its criticism without any evidence or facts to back you up. Just what you see on the surface. 

 

Anyway, as a backer who has the VN, its a shame, because the VN isn't all that bad. I am about halfway through it or so, and I'll still try to push a review out.

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Well  hopefully the other Kickstarters I've done with Sekai Project do not go under like this one did...thankfully I only backed for a digital copy so not a huge amount of money was lost (and I got the product as unfortunate as it was) but this definitely is a good reason to only back kickstarter projects with actual companies behind them. The amount of attempted oelvn that have simply failed or have problems is immense. It's unfortunate but it seems most of the people who do attempt these are not accustom to dealing with the costs nor do they have products worth the quality of the idea behind the projects. Unless there is an actual company behind it I simply feel as if it is not a good idea to even attempt this (and even then it might be questionable considering Sekai Project seems to be having trouble even with titles that it does have a semi-major company behind). It's unfortunate because thanks to things like this even if someone does have a solid idea and would put out a brilliant vn people simply are not going to risk it. Shame really but at least Sekai Project is beginning to see the pitfalls of using kickstarter.

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I think this means Sekai Project will be more choosy when picking crowdfunding partners. Which is good, because they have plenty of interesting original projects right now (Memory's Dogma, KARAKARA) and they shouldn't need to bother with untrustworthy doujin groups anymore. Hopefully they can move on from this project quickly and better allocate their time where it's needed.

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3 hours ago, solidbatman said:

You people are silly, blaming Sekai Project, saying they are getting what they deserve. Simply stupid. It sounds more like a company who simply would not play ball with their publisher. The amount of time some of you spend hating on SP for the smallest of reasons is very petty, and only adds to the reasons I hate the VN community. Entitled, whiny, arrogant, pretentious, belittling, weebs. Keep in mind that this KS was done before people started crying over Sekai Project using Kickstarter. Call me a shill if you want, report this post if you want. The people in this thread hating on SP are just plain dumb. 

It's not silly because the very last thing we need to do is keep white knighting Sekai Project for all their fuck ups, broken promises, and ridiculously late delivery of pledges/rewards. 

This experience should have been a good lesson for them, so they will try to pick partners with better reputation and track record. I prefer a small number of high quality content VNs from respectable partners over high quantity. Quantity isn't everything. Customer satisfaction is a huge determination of sales in this day and age. See Apple.

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