Narcosis

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.

No. If I remember correctly, one of our users - Clephas - made a list of japanese titles that are fairly easy to get into and read in japanese. You should give it a try.

You were right - I omitted that one ending. I rewrote the Walkthrough part to better reflect how the story flows; it should also make it far easier to follow the entire guide from now on. Thanks! That one took me an entire year to spot, haha.

I have no idea what was the point in releasing it on Steam, but whatever. What really bothers me though is that creating a new butchered version (no pun intended) does a crack on this otherwise timeless gem.

As much as their front-end is somewhat to blame, the real issue comes from the fact their payment processor had to deal with huge amounts of fraudulent chargebacks and stolen credit cards, which forced them to cease their contract with MG. It's a fairly common occurrence within the umbrella of 18+ industry. It may sound stupid, but a lot of people don't want their families to know they buy porn.

I presume the poor writing might be a result of a really rushed job. The game was announced shortly after Okami and released afterwards in what was a really short period of time. I didn't try the trial yet. How does it feel in terms of general quality compared to their previous titles, mainly art and sound departments? If it's worse or simplified, Clock-Up may have released more of a budget game instead.

You don't need to be a weeb to create good visual novels with anime aesthetics, nor is being one a requirement. The core people responsible for KS weren't weebs; they were mostly troll extraordinaries, which is a norm for many respectable 4c users.

The lead dev and creator behind LiS is a hardcore weeb himself; expecting some sort of a miracle in this case was a bit of a stretch.

VNs were a mistake.

*wink* TO LOVE-Ru *wink*

I'm so glad you've reviewed this title, it's been on my backlog for quite a while. Now I have a proper reason to fire it up this summer as well!

Those games never sold well to start with. Japanese fans have a tendency to jump into subjective bandwagons, where they favor the single best game of the month, while the others remain either unpopular or fade into obscurity with passing years, causing actually good studios to close. Within their perceived culture of cute, they prefer light-hearted vns or eroge over plot-heavy stories full of dramatism. Exceptions happen, but in general I'd say it's one of the reasons moege/charage games became the most prolific genres within the industry at the moment, whilst around 2000's, they barely existed as extensions of SoL-focused games. Makes you wonder, huh.

I don't celebrate my birthday anymore, but thanks anyway

You're probably thinking about Tenkiame; publisher pulled it off the Steam in favor of a more safe store.

How surprising.