I think doing so would be a mistake, honestly. Gamergate is about ethical journalism, not controversial/potentially controversial games selling more than they would otherwise to prove some bigger point. To that end, I think we need to be careful not to go to bat for certain developers, instead focusing on the unfairness of the weirdly puritanical outrage coming from "gaming journalists" that potentially affects how those titles are perceived (which I'd guess is similar to how gaming media has colored the way we're so often seen). Anything beyond that risks some opportunist playing us against outrage warriors to bolster their own sales, and the last thing we need is a professional victim of our own.

Does the timing matter, though? Sure, it could all be interpreted as them floating the idea, no one biting, and them subsequently using outrage to fuel interest in the game, but it's just as likely that they decided three or more months ago that the outrage journalism would be a hindrance/annoyance and things just happening to work out this way after that. I'm more inclined to believe the latter version, especially since the DoA franchise has been localized for a long time and this seems to be the first exception.

(That I could find, at least.)

Not that I don't share your suspicions of companies using us. Part of me suspects Play-Asia of doing just that with their incredibly pander-y tweets WBGhiro linked to; the salt one in particular is unbelievably petty, and honestly, beneath all of us. We should leave that kind of bridge-burning snark to the Arthur Chus of the world despite the temptation to revel in it.

So please point me to Koi Tecmo's DD site where the market decided it didn't collectively want this game. The market can only decide on what is in the market. Dragon Age Inqusition and Fallout 3 were both withheld by their shithead retarded publishers in India even though many people want and still want both of them. Who decided in this market, tell me please. The people who wanted to buy were not given an option to spend their money on this ''free'' market you describe. This is the same thing.

I'm sorry but how do you expect sales figures for a game before its made? And if its such a plausible reason DOA is being withheld, why don't KoI Tecmo do this same 100% accurate social media interest test for all their other games? I think they even had English subs from very early in development. Or what about their words? They said. On facebook?

And why aren't you happy?? Mommy made the baddy baddies go away so games can mature as a medium! I'm sure we're on the verge of our first gender change simulator here.

Your "outrage journalism" is a baseless scarecrow, as we've seen in Witcher 3 reception already. One, two, three articles about cultural implications, total: completely disproportionate outrage about those. One, two reviews even mentioning these imlications at 8.0 'excellent' scores: completely disproportionate outrage about those. Once more with feeling: Gamergate embodies the "SJW outrage" you're looking for. And look at all the further proof right now.

These people are telling you they cancel a game release in western territories because of expected criticism, because of a discussion that is going on over here, and hasn't even yet occurred sensibly about a game that's not yet out in Japan.

Come on, that's hogwash.

The DoA franchise had its releases in 2015 already, and will continue to have its releases in western territorries. Criticism didn't deter them here and won't deter them from anything in the future. They expect the sales, they bring it over here. Why shouldn't they. If they think enough of that billion potential customers will buy their game, what keeps them from releasing it over here. No person alive.

Please do research reception history of the last X-part though. Essentially, reviewers considered gameplay mechanics to be really lame while those really into the series' softcore vibe were dissatisfied with the realism of the breasts physics. In other words... they could not even satisfy their core target group over here.

They're testing the waters to manipulate you just by conjuring up that enemy that doesn't exist with all the hypothesized influence that enemy doesn't have and definitely hasn't practiced for that third part of a game series almost no one over here liked the second part of. That's as plain as day.

Stop falling for that.

Repeat performance:
A game gets released in foreign territories if adequate sales are expected.

You can still vote with your wallet though! That's what imports are for.

But let me guess: You don't give a shit about DoAX3 as well.

Not the only baseless scarecrow here by any means. So if a murderer set out to to do a killing spree but didn't do it, it automatically absolves them of their guilt? Its the principle. You cannot inject personal politics, beyond a degree into something titled ''review''. There is no problem if its an opinion piece, no problem if its a little additional comment not part of the review itself (both are subject to criticism though). Just because you see journalism as some golden key to become a minority saving ''all for a good cause'' job doesn't mean it is what it is professionally. A doctor doesn't tie up stitches in an inclusive way and a lawyer doesn't decide for his client. Same here.

And please go on bitching about your objective standard of ''disproportionate outrage''. You might as well just discard any words describing anything specifically from your vocabulary. It'll all be better if the laws were written like ''whoever harasses gets his balls eaten'' or ''whoever looks at a woman gets a limb taken''. At least try to understand the concept of specific descriptors. How much do you consider ''disproportionate''? What is not ''disproportionate''?

What are the basis of those expectations and how does this company gather the data to make sure it will sell well? Do they gauge interest through social media? How many likes / dislikes on videos? If you're so sure about this, please address the part you skipped over and say why other Koi Tecmo games didn't go through this.

Yeah I wouldn't mind jumping through hoops to get a game for a higher cost probably illegally. What if all companies just released in the US and all the other people just imported? Wouldn't that save them enough money to make the hipster trash you want because you somehow think seeing tits on a screen turns a normal socialized person into a rapist and believe the opposite to be true? Are you seriously crazy??

Either way I don't expect you'd be very worried if all the userbase isn't treated equally and some people would have to pay more for the same. I don't expect you to.

I want it to do well so I can get it on PC.

Just for a reference :
Shameful display

So basically peoples shouldn't believes their conspiracy theory but instead should believe your very own conspiracy theories instead.

And for info it's not the first time the Japaneses do something like that; during the Rapelay "controversy" the first reaction of the Japanese H games publishers was to region lock their web sites to prevent anybody from outside japan to connect to them, stopped selling their games internationally and some gone as far as to region block the games to prevent them from running on non Japanese Windows (i.e. even for peoples using AppLocal).

Japanese have usually very little patiences for the crazy gaijin tantrums, they usually censor stuff preventively or simply stop selling their stuff outside of Japan.

Once again our resident nutter chimes in...

Seriously?
So someone asks them on Twitter if the game will be released in the West...
They say no, blaming the culture of Social Justice Wannabes...

And your claim is the company is trying to take advantage of the outrage?
Because of this one Tweet in response to a fan?
I mean, wow, what a great marketing plan. Cheap marketing for sure. A single Tweet to market a game, must save them a lot of money...

Or, one can believe they are stating the truth and don't want to risk the image of their company.

Yup, it's all a conspiracy according to Vain the nutter, it's his "magic Tweet theory"...

This is exactly why they won't release here. Rapelay got enough SJWs riled up that the game was even removed from existence within Japan - despite there being hundreds of games worse than Rapelay. Publishers closed their doors to the west because they didn't need their products banned in Japan cause some idiots feel the need to police a culture they're not even remotely part of.

Well, that isa good point. But I still think there must be a way to tell devs that free speech should come first and that they should never bow to SJWs or whatever you might want to call them.

That is something that got me angry. To be honest I do like erotic games, but mostly Japanese ones since Western ones tend to be often about slitty blonde bimbo women, you rarely find cute women. And I knew most of those games never got a release in the west because of moralists. I never realized to what extent though. To be honest I find RapeLay, and any other game in which you sexually abuse someone to proceed, abhorrent, but I firmly believe such games have the right to exist and let the customers decide if they want it or not. I always thought most of the causes of RapeLay's failure had to do with poor sales globally, but taking into account the outrage it caused, it worries me that maybe that was not the case.

I remember a documentary series about video games I watched arround 2010 or something on Discovery Channel. It had a big pro free speech topic. Even one of the persons interviewed in the documentary said something arround the lines of "Video games should be able to explore difficult topics. If someone wants to make a video game about rape so be it." How comes in less than a decade such views changed so much.

I kind of agree but I can also perfectly understand HuniePot from an economical point of view and people that would only buy it to spite a certain circle of "critics". I wouldn't call it "abuse" as it was named so colourful here although I can actually understand Mr Fanatic's point of view on this one. It's just taking advantage of a situation where there is demand but no supply, without any dishonesty involved from HuniePot's side.

I have bought games in the past only because they were DRM free and had a Linux port although I knew, that I probably won't get to play them in a while and maybe they are not really for me, so in a way, I could understand people buying this silly bouncy beach volley ball game only to vote against circles in gaming journalism that have agreed on certain agendas.
If this game would get realeased here and would get more sales under HuniePot than it would have gotten under Koei, the original influence in all this would come from the audience of the gaming journlists circle jerk, just with the opposite result.
I guess the gaming outlets couldn't care less if the game gets released here or not, because they are making money from tearing something apart and would always find something to sell to the outrage-happy crowd.

It's a bit like the Streisand effect.

I can't imagine Koei selling the distribution rights to a small western company like this one though, they will have their pride and it's probably way more expensive.

Yeah I agree, stuff like Rapelay is sick, but so is Manhunt and Postal and it's always a bit arbitrary what gets chosen to be censored or forbidden. Since the state shouldn't really be involved in such things for it would be censoring art indeed, customer boycotts which lead to shops stopping to sell it are the only way of regulation I can imagine and if a company fears that one of their titles gets such a treatment, it may be logical to not invest into a relase in certain countries indeed. Treating the whole western world the same is very silly though. Every country is handling this in a different way, Germany and Australia being two of the more restrictive examples although Germany would never ban something like the Dead or Alive beach volleyball games. I wonder why they aren't regarding Europe as an important market anymore and only seem to regard America when it comes to the western gaming market.

BTW: Remember Custer's Revenge from 1982 for the Atari 2600?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY2AqKCpGkk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer
Now this is a weird part of gaming history. It's not only like spitting but rather cumming on all the victims of the American genocide and I wonder how people reacted back then.

Yeah, back in the day Custer's revenge was not very controversial. It was seen as low quality stupid crap, but went mostly ignored because it was crap. People in previous generations had more backbone.

And where I grew up the denier was inevitably the supplier.

What's in the food and water of your country?

I don't think that's the problem. to me the trouble started with "Child Welfare" while it has helped in many instances it has also IMHO created or exacerbated where parents are afraid of their own children. So many parents have tried so hard to be "friends" that they haven't set any reasonable boundaries for the children plus the phase where "all children needs a trophy" this country went through. & now these children are now "adults" & they still think they are the only ones who matter. if you think what we're now seeing is bad I've seen evidence that in a gen or two (if we make it that long) could make Idiocracy look like a utopia by comparison if things don't change.