Talking about the globalisation problems...

[IchinoseP]

I'm not necessarily "community manager", but given that I've been looking to speedrun this game, and preventing duplicate topics, might as well I look at the red herrings circulating the discussion board of this game.

The following answers are mix of my own and others' speculations. In no way these are official statements from Bandai Namco, but what I thought the most plausible cases and alternate realities.

I want to play it but it has region lock!

If you're outside eastern Asia countries, then you're SOL. At least for getting the PC version. If you're not pedantic when it comes to platform, there's still the PS4 version, and it's the safer option to go off the wall.
Sony doesn't care if your doppelganger PSN account registered as other region, you don't have to mask with VPN and you won't get banned for it. You can import a copy and play it with your PS4/PS5 just fine. The only caveat is that you need that doppelganger account to buy DLCs, and it's taken for granted in Im@s games.
Steam on the other hand, won't give you a slack in this regard. Falsifying the country registered to your account and your account is in the end of the line.

What's the point of releasing it on Steam when English is not supported?

Bamco might as well release it on Epic Games Store and GOG, if those storefronts supports region locking.
To my knowledge, only Steam supports region locking on PC. Epic Games Store and GOG don't.

I wan't to play it on PC, no matter what!

No matter what it is then. You might willing to resort to the "back alley" to get a copy, if playing it on your PS4/PS5 is not an option.

What's with the game being not supported in English?

As for official sayings goes, it's still unclear as to why Im@s games not getting out of CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean). Bandai Namco is very adamant to speak up about this.
There is one Im@s game still available for worldwide audience, although it's a PSVR spectator game for Cinderella Girls. There was an attempt to bring the mainline branch to the world - the port of Shiny Festa for iOS - however, it has since been shut down.
Here's where the speculation came in:

• Many speculated that it might've been because Shiny Festa flopped in elsewhere. I wasn't around when the game is still live, so I took their words for it. I'm not sure if the recent Elon Musk stock boom will convince them to make this game worldwide, which led me to the next point.
  
• Some people speculated that Bandai Namco isn't easy going with globalising their IPs. There was some small talks from the Im@s staff in regards to bring this game worldwide, but it wen't nowhere. In the alternate reality where Square Enix is the publisher, this game would've made it's way to worldwide release, because SE is less adamant in regards of globalising their JP only games.
  
• Some people also speculated that this was due to some niche aspect of the game that won't bode well with Western demographics, particularly the fact that majority of the idols are minor by the Western age standards (only select few idols are 18+ years old, with the youngest being 12 years old Kaho Komiya), and side activities involving "touching" the idols would likely not sit well with Western audiences. While I doubt that Bandai Namco is the type of publisher that "bow down" to the Western SJWs, their niche PSVR game, Summer Lesson, managed to be globalised.

But I'm not on the West, and I can't speak Japanese!

Aren't we playing other Im@s games in Japanese text for years now?

So, what should I do now?

Again, if you're outside eastern Asia countries, then you should look up buying the game on PS4. Your PS5 will (and should) be able to run the game just fine. If you're adamant to play on consoles, I don't blame you, but I'm afraid the back alley is the only way.

[Evangela]

Bro... you can buy the game by having your friend who lives in East Asia gift it to you. No need to go to the "black alley" method.

[The19thFighter]

Unpopular opinion:
Release it without English support,
Remove the region-lock,
Let community handle fan TL for those that require it.

[Bionicle Pizza Delivery Service]

Originally posted by Evangela:

Bro... you can buy the game by having your friend who lives in East Asia gift it to you. No need to go to the "black alley" method.

This won't work with currency pricing differences, can't gift a game bought with JPY to someone who's account uses USD. Is there any hope for play-asia or similar sites selling keys? Unless those are region locked as well.

[IchinoseP]

Originally posted by The19thFighter:

Unpopular opinion:
Release it without English support,
Remove the region-lock,
Let community handle fan TL for those that require it.

Unless the Unreal Engine modding community found a way to decrypt the .PAK file or managed to tamper with the game process, and modify the game strings... It's not as easy as older games led you to believe.
Unreal Engine 4 has automatically generated ID for every string vars, and that might be a hurdle to deal with.

[IchinoseP]

Originally posted by askasys:

I'm not from those Asia countries.
I don't have a PS4/PS5.
I undestand japanese very well, in certain cases I undertand japanese better than english, especially the spoken language.

So, reading your guide, my option to play this game is the "back alley" right?

Well, I'm afraid that's the case. Be careful about where you buy the keys from, though. I heard Play-Asia provides them.

[The19thFighter]

Originally posted by TheHoodieGuy02:

Originally posted by The19thFighter:

Unpopular opinion:
Release it without English support,
Remove the region-lock,
Let community handle fan TL for those that require it.

Unless the Unreal Engine modding community found a way to decrypt the .PAK file or managed to tamper with the game process, and modify the game strings... It's not as easy as older games led you to believe.
Unreal Engine 4 has automatically generated ID for every string vars, and that might be a hurdle to deal with.

It IS as easy.
You can just do a search for the opcodes, then hookup the string lookup function,
hash the string to be printed, replace it with your translation.
(The same way it's always been done, when people were too lazy to find out how the format works).

Unless hard anti-tamper is present, it's actually so easy any script-kiddie can do it.

You don't need to do it as cleanly. Also most Unreal PAKs are not encrypted.

[김후유]

i don't think the reason of not release is SJW. SJW has everywhere. in my country, Korea. they always pick on. but bandai namco ignore them. because they think Korea market is worth. and close to japan so they much easier hosting event. like Voice Actor's live performance. Japan belongs to the East Asian cultural sphere, and the countries that belong to this cultural sphere have similar emotions, so it would have been much easier to release.

and they use steam because steam has region lock. and they not planned release this game outside of east asia+southern East asia

[Iblis]

Originally posted by askasys:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/736030

SIDE M anime indeed was released on Steam in English without problem.
No region lock in this case.

Just replying to this one, but we at Japan couldn't see this store page.
So I think one potential problem should be exclusive issues in different regions.
Like some PSV Complie Hearts games are shipped to the West through Steam, but we couldn't buy them here. Such a shame.

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Originally posted by askasys:

SJWs have less power in Asia.
The closer they are to Japan, the weaker they are. The closer they are to America, the stronger they are.
I calculated it after years of fighting this phenomenon and came to this conclusion. :lunar2019laughingpig:

Complete nonsense.

SJWs exist and are powerful in Japan. They just take a different form. SJWs are the people who harass idols and VAs for anything they consider a transgression which can be anything from political views to them daring to have a relationship, for example.

Media gets censored and altered all the time to appease Japanese SJWs. You just are ignorant of it because it happens in Japanese social media bubbles.

The big difference is that Japanese SJWs are just as often reactionary right wing as they are left.

[SoftpilLoW]

Originally posted by 수호랑|ユキ:

i don't think the reason of not release is SJW. SJW has everywhere. in my country, Korea. they always pick on. but bandai namco ignore them. because they think Korea market is worth. and close to japan so they much easier hosting event. like Voice Actor's live performance. Japan belongs to the East Asian cultural sphere, and the countries that belong to this cultural sphere have similar emotions, so it would have been much easier to release.

and they use steam because steam has region lock. and they not planned release this game outside of east asia+southern East asia

Reason is SJW for sure you should looks difference female game character design between your country and west that answer.

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Originally posted by askasys:

They exist, they are different. But they are not those who harass idols and VAs.
If the idols and VAs break their employment contract they are being harassed by their fans.
An idol cannot have love affairs in Japan.

This is just shifting goalposts because you believe the harassers are in the right.

It's not even "love affairs." Many get harassed into retirement (or worse) because they dared to get married. It's the very definition of cancel culture.

I don't understand what I'm ignoring, I know they exist, and I know they are weaker than western SJWs.

Delusion. They have different targets (violence and more specific sexual content) but they have at least as much pull as American SJWs (though I personally think the impact of SJWs in general is horribly inflated.)

The opposite would have been worse. Left wing SJWs are the one who censor videogames in the west. Look at the recent censorship on Mass Effect.
Every new videogame released in the west is censored or revisioned to please the morality of these SJWs.

You are obviously too young to remember the significant damage the religious right did to videogames in the 80s to early 2000s. It makes the current SJW issues (which I'm still certainly no fan of) look tame. Entire game plots completely rewritten. Entire arcs excised due to "problematic" content. Mass censorship of anything that slightly annoyed American Christian nutcases...

[Aya]

I'm mostly here because i've been wanting Bandai Namco Studios to continue their PC support and have gone as far as to purchase games that I may not necessarily be interested in just to see more Tales, SoulCalibur and Ace Combat on Steam. Yeah, I won't lie that "I want Tales of Arise's PC port to not get cancelled" is the main reason I want to buy this game, and with Japanese gamers most likely defaulting to the PS4 version, I'm concerned that they'll look back at this game and say "See? This is why we don't wanna make PC games"

[The19thFighter]

Most of these are fair points, and most of these have always been valid.
However as people already pointed out, if you really wanted to play region-locked games, there always was a way. But the way Steam currently authenticates users, it's afaik impossible to succeed buying a game without having someone vouch with their personal identification for you (e.g having a really close friend that logs into your account and purchases it with his banking and billing information for you).
On the other hand for example,
if you really wanted to play Mirishita, you can do it. You can even purchase in-game items from regions where the game is not available. This is unfortunately not possible on Steam anymore as they disabled it. Last chance might be, if Bandai released non region-locked keys via retail (I don't know if this works) and distributes them only in certain countries. If you really wanted you could import them then.

[The19thFighter]

Well, if this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOnzr8r_jFo) is not wrong, that's the main reason why we see such an increase of Japanese games and players on Steam.

Censorship is a deal everywhere. I think the biggest problem is always regarding law.
When you do a release for one region, connections are easier and more common.

Honestly if I were to release a game, I would not ever want to publish it in Europe because the laws are SO annoying (Basically to release in Europe you need to respect all member country laws, among which is Germany, which has the most annoying ones). However Bandai is no stranger and they do have expertise, so it must simply be, that it's not feasible.

They couldn't get in trouble with Imas, at least legally speaking. Most of their songs are not licenses, so that can't be it. It has to be that the idea of being an Idol Manager. I can see why it would be a real pain to market this properly to a western audience, at the same time, I don't think it would result in an outcry.

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Oh no. I'm talking waaaay before 4kids. 4kids was also minor in comparison.

Stuff like the early Dragon Quest localizations. And the scary part is those butcherings happened at Nintendo of Japan's request because they were egotistical and didn't think Westerners would understand the originals.

I still think you vastly overstate the actual power western SJWs have. The censorship is mostly affecting Japanese games on Sony platforms and most of the people who have input on such things at Sony are Japanese. It's less "SJWs causing everything to be censored" but more Sony going for the lowest common denominator approach. They're not only censoring for the woke types, but also the complete opposites, the ultra conservatives that would ban the games in many countries across the world. There are many countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East where Sony has significant presence that would ban the games for the same content.

As for Mass Effect, BioWare was always woke. It's really no surprise they're modifying the game to fit a more "modern woke" mindset.