Forum - View topicNEWS: Omega Labyrinth Z Game's Western Release Cancelled
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Sony of America and Europe =\= Sony of Japan. The western side bans a lot of stuff the Japanese side has no issues with. The west has deep-seated issues with sexuality. |
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Aquasakura
 Posts: 700 Location: Chesterfield, Virginia, U.S.A |
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I was thinking the same thing. I have come to learn in recent years in that the more taboo you make something or denied something to everyone the more the people want it. It's even having a bit of an affect on me, but I am not too in a hurry to look into this game. I know there must be a term or something in psychology that explains this phenomenon, but I don't know what it's called. |
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
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Sony of America are crazy for doing this, they do realize they could be responsible for sinking a perfectly good company due to their censorship. SOA got blood on their hands.
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John Hayabusa
Posts: 1270 |
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Well this is a crime shame. Perhaps they can try porting it to PC/Steam since Steam said that it is open to any game as long as it is not illegal. This is most likely the only way to localize the game, otherwise all those efforts will be put to waste.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5987 |
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The west has no more of a problem with sexuality than Japan has with sexualizing everything especially underage looking characters this is more or less one of the things Kenji Inafune was talking about regarding japanese game development and how it differs from the west.
A perfectly good company that makes niche games of dubious quality? And for what's it worth when you make a game like this you always have to concern yourself with the prospect of a company turning down the release of your game on their platform because of it's questionable content. You might want to look back into the Hot Coffee controversy. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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Hear! Hear! Give Sony the middle finger by setting an example of where to do localizations in the west. |
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Remington Steele
Posts: 63 |
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Release it in Canada then. Canada is more lax on content like this.
The content is not even objectional. Some sour puss got her panties in a twist I bet. people who care about social justice ruining games now. 
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Primus
 Posts: 2774 Location: Toronto |
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Even if you don't care for this game (I wasn't going to buy it), I don't know how you can believe Sony is justified in this. You think it's right for a hardware manufacturer to effectively siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars from a tiny publisher? Because that's what Sony has done here. If they had a problem with this game, they should've told Pqube about it months ago. Not now, when the game's already gone through ratings board approvals (and received ratings that comply with Sony's known infrastructure), which means localization work is over and the game's just waiting to be sent to manufacturing. In fact, until a few years ago, publishers had to get express written consent from Sony's various divisions before even announcing a game. They did away with that requirement to be friendlier to indie developers. Now they're using it punish indie publishers who happen upon Sony employees who don't like the content in their games. That is severely backwards behaviour because Sony is selling closed platforms. A game getting pulled off of Steam can sell on other PC stores. Sony denying the release of your game in North America and Europe means you can't release the game in North America or Europe on PlayStation 4 or Vita. I highly doubt Sony is refunding the costs sunk into projects they've denied. Your comparison to Hot Coffee is terrible. That was nearly 15 years ago and related to (at the time) one of the most successful video games ever released. Far more graphic depictions of sexuality have found their way into relatively mainstream games since. When Sony's own Beyond: Two Souls was exposed as having a realistic full-frontal nude depiction of Ellen Page unlockable with mods, there was no outcry. The ESRB didn't revert the game's rating to AO like they did with San Andreas' after Hot Coffee. The world has changed a lot. Many physical retailers require I.D. to sell M-rated games, with digital storefronts either requiring the user to lie about their age or use a credit card. On PSN, that is the case. If you're a minor you get a sub-account that won't even see M-rated content in the PlayStation Store (for years this was actually a problem as Sony didn't have the infrastructure to let those accounts age into allowing accessibility to that content). Omega Labyrinth wasn't going to get carried by mainstream retailers. It wasn't going to sell millions of copies. Given this description, Pqube did not misrepresent the game in the materials they sent to the ESRB. If Pqube is able to salvage their work for a Steam release or do something in South East Asia, they should thank Sony. Omega Labyrinth likely would've came and went, which is what happens to most games of this nature. Now Sony has given it a big (among its audience) publicity campaign at no cost. The video game Streisand Effect. |
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CrownKlown
 Posts: 1762 |
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It wasn't banned by ESRB, so it could be released in the US, but Sony of America apparently blocked it. And for the same reason you cannot release it on Steam, even in the UK because they specifically say they are not releasing it due to the right holder, so if Sony says no, doesnt matter what the rating is.
The more important question is, whether it gets an English language Asia release like Dead or Alive got. Then honestly no big deal and most people can just get it from asia. |
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Primus
Posts: 2774 Location: Toronto |
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The problem with OLZ is that it already received its non-Japan Asian print last year and it wasn't translated into English. |
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I_Drive_DSM
 Posts: 217 |
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Game with a feature about breast size growing as you level up (if I remember reading about the game right) gets it's western release cancelled. Senran Kagura series has all sorts of censor fogs added. I can probably add a few more examples but I'll stop there while I'm ahead.
Meanwhile Grand Theft Auto 5 releases with fully topless strippers, drug usage, excessive violence, a scene of outdoor intercourse, multiple instances of domestic violence, etc. But hey "M" for mature. So if I'm following along it's ok to release nudity in modern console gaming as long as it's portraying realistic looking characters and/or going to obviously reap a tremendous amount of money for the publisher, but complete fantasy and 180'ed from anything that remotely resembles a human sans roughly a woman's figure and/or relegated to 'cartoon' cliche' realm is a no go? Makes complete sense. |
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Escaflowne2001
Posts: 468 |
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EastAsia Soft could do a play asia exclusive made to order release. They've done a few of these now. That said Pqube, EastAsiaSoft and D3 Publisher/Namco Bandai would need to come to some sort of deal. A Steam release is possible D3 publisher has already ported some of there titles to Steam. So they could do this knowing the English could be added to it. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5987 |
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Said tiny publisher shouldn't have decided all on their own to sink thousands of dollars into localizing a game with questionable content that most people weren't going to buy, potentially not recouping their budget and marketing for the localization on top of that.
Why would they? when I far as I know no publisher does this and has no reason to?
I don't recall any of these games having hardcore sex scenes that we're either in plain sight or hidden in a game that could easily be accessed through cheat devices and mods.
Having full on nudes is not the same as having full on sex scenes which is why there was no outcry with this and why there was no outcry when one of the GTA4 DLCs had it....and you're talking about my comparisons being terrible?
Yes because the game didn't come out, was found to have objectionable content that they missed the first time around, then rerated retroactively.
Yeah how did the Streisand Effect work out for DOAX3 with regards to it's western fanbade. As last I checked game still never got a western release and it's gameplay is just as sub-par as it's predecessors. With the butthurt dying down and being largely forgotten. |
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Primus
Posts: 2774 Location: Toronto |
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 Yes, it's definitely Pqube's fault that they assumed a title already approved by Sony's Asian branches would be so controversial when Sony's western branches have let games like Criminal Girls*, Dungeon Travelers*, Gal Gun and Valkyrie Drive come over. It's also definitely Pqube's fault that Sony changed their approval process that would've flagged or accepted the game well before they spent the money fully translating it. Omega Labyrinth got an ESRB M and a PEGI 18. Those are all legitimate ratings that tonnes of video games get. It would be one thing for Sony to deny a title that got an Adults Only tag (it's common knowledge that none of the console manufacturers will let titles with that rating on their platforms), it's another to not please SIEA/SIEE puritans well after you've invested significant money into the game.
I don't see why you'd defend a multi-billion dollar business bullying a tiny publisher. Pqube took a game that was already deemed acceptable for a release on PS4 and Vita in Asia. They announced their intent months ago to release it in English. They translated it and got industry acceptable ratings from the two major ratings boards. Just as the game got ready to go gold, SIEA/SIEE comes out of no where and denies its release. And it was "out of no where," as Sony has never denied release for a Japanese game publicly announced for localization anytime recently. Pqube isn't at fault here. *Before someone inevitably chimes in that these games were edited, it's really important to note that Omega Labyrinth received a M from the ESRB in its uncut format. That's the same rating the edited versions of those games received.
Sony isn't the publisher. If they were, they'd have nothing to refund Pqube since they'd have been paying them for their work anyway. Sony denied the release of a game Pqube licensed, translated, advertised and submitted to the ratings board agencies that is exclusive to their hardware. They've effectively rendered hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted due to a reaction no one rationally expected. It's poor form for a company Sony's size to do that to a partner, especially when it's a tiny independent company like Pqube. Like I said, if Sony had their earlier concept approval infrastructure in place, they could've told Pqube no before they dumped money into the game. Instead, they did away with that to "be friendlier to indies" and are now using it as a way to financially hurt an indie publisher who wanted to bring titles to market that apparently Sony's western employees dislike.
IIRC, Beyond didn't actually have any full frontal nudity in the base game. If that hack was handled in the same way Hot Coffee was, the game should've received a new rating noting that. It wasn't handled the same way because nearly a decade had passed and people had changed. Some of the sex scenes in The Witcher games are definitely more graphic than Hot Coffee was. The paparazzi mission in GTA5 was as graphic and both of those examples are in retail product you can buy from Wal-Mart. None of this really matters when it comes to Omega Labyrinth anyway. As far as I know, it doesn't have any graphic sex scenes and no one's discovered some hidden mode to do so.
We don't have a tonne of data on how that game sold because of the regions where it's officially available. According to Koei Tecmo, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 shipped (slide 4) 190,000 units within its first week of sale. Given the game had sold fewer than 100,000 copies in Japan by the end of 2016, it's not difficult to draw a conclusion of where those sales came from. That number is likely now much higher than 190k, but we just don't know as KT hasn't published the data since. They typically only highlight individual game sales once a year and focus on new releases unless something in their catalog has done spectacularly well (like Nioh). DOAX3 might have been a poorly made game recycling loads of assets from Xtreme 2/Paradise and DOA5, but it definitely seems to have benefited from the controversy surrounded by its release. It became the best selling video game Play-Asia ever stocked. I don't doubt a similar reaction could happen for Omega Labyrinth, especially as a western release was attempted but cancelled and import impressions paint it as a better game. |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Given Inafune's completely failure that was Mighty No 9 and his reliance on the western market sinking his career and led to his company going under and being bought out, I think we've established he has zero credibility. His was the grumblings of a man who could not find work in the industry that moved ahead and left him behind.
DOAX3 was a success here, apparently. Over half the copies sold were from the Asia-English release. Best selling game in the series, actually. |
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