Let me rephrase: niche as in, while business is technically booming, the market that this kind of game is going to enter—artisinal boardgames? Designer boardgames? I forget the exact wording—is largely still a field of and for collectors and hobbyists.

Can most of the male writers on this site not write articles that sound like you’re all fucking sneering at your keyboards when you have to talk about something/one/etc that you’re not exactly 100% fans of?

Fair enough, even if it’s still highly disappointing.

So, they can do this, but not restore the cut LGBT content in the first game?

/shrug

That’s the thing: this is an obvious movement toward saying or giving the impression they want more control—moral or otherwise—but, on the other hand, games and “normie” entertainment in Japan have never been fucking hornier in the history of the genres. The premier market for these things is creepy otaku, but instead…

My concern is that it’ll lead to an environment where, like, you’re only going to be able to produce “sanctioned” fan content if it fits some whatever the fuck guideline that also asks you to pay royalties to some entitity in order to not get sued into the ground or DMCA’d.

A statement that directly/indirectly—take your pick—supports current legislative and legal moves being undertaken across the Japanese entertainment industry to regulate how, where, when, and to what degree fans can profit off fanworks.

My worry is moreso that this is just a small step forward to normalize the end-goal of Japanese companies putting prohibitive restrictions on how people make money off fanworks—gross porn or not.

The issue I’m trying to get at is that guidelines like these, especially at a time when Japan is cracking down on how fans make money through fanworks and fandom, tie together in ways that don’t just—for me—make this about censorhsip or protecting an IP.

Okay, here’s gonna be my pat response: where were these guidelines and these statements about morality and protecting our IP and X/Y/Z when stuff like guro, loli and the shota genres became huge things in Japanese fandom? When incest and rape did as part of the larger culture driving hentai and other pornographic works…

I mean, in the case of Yoko Taro? Yeah, I’d believe it.

That’s the thing, though: the doujinshi market has existed for years without any company stepping in—afaik—to try and police it like this. Porn studios regularly sell videos with models dressed up in cosplay of many different characters, and even outside of a pornographic context: fanworks have and continued to be…

Two things with that, though:

Yeah, in a vacuum, I’d agree. But this is also part of legislation, iirc, that goes hand-in-hand with how Japan is trying to push for creators to pay royalties to corporations for producing fan works that use their characters.

Okay, let me rephrase: how is the threat of legal action not actively contributing to an “obstacle” being put in the way of creators?

How is that any different from trying to stop them?

That’s absolutely part of the reason they’re cracking down like this—because Rule 34 artists and Cosplayers are making money that Squeenix depserately wants to have control over—because capitalism lmao—and the only real way to adequately start approaching that problem is the tired and true “But we’re really doing it…

When will companies learn that you...cannot ever stop people from making porn of your characters? Or cosplay? Or fanfiction? Or fanart, just in general?

There’s actually a mod for TW2 that lets you play as Kislev, and it’s fantastic--imo--if you’re into modding the game just slightly.