Mixed feelings due to current controversy.

[Orange Rain]

So I was surprised of the huge review bomb (learned that term today), and so I looked into it and was unaware that Hololive v-tubers had to take down/private videos relating to this game because of the publisher(?) requesting Hololive to take them down due to political reasons.

I bought the game's base--not DLC 'yet'--because one of those v-tubers influenced me into buying it, and I enjoy it when I have the spare time to play games. Now the game's getting hate for reasons not involving the content itself, but the acts of the publishers behind this game. Basically, there's hate being directed in multiple ways, and I'm uncertain to whether I should get the DLC because of this drama.

To put my 2 cents into this discussion, yes, the publisher may have been the one to request Hololive to take it down, because it was going against this company policy that the government plays some part in. People are directing hate at the publisher for making the request for the take down, but what I want to know is 'Is it the will of the publisher, or the will of the government using said publisher to make the request?' Did the publisher have to 'agree' to this policy in order to make their game a success? That's possible, but would they go to such lengths if they didn't get some warning from the guys who made the policy in the first place?

Anyone would see that banning the company from streaming your content, the same company that helped make said content flourish, is shooting itself in the foot. You'd want your stuff to be as widespread as possible, getting anyone to buy it and enjoy it for themselves. To just cut all that off, they couldn't do something so regressive without some valid reason. My bets for why this publisher hasn't made an official statement yet (and possibly never will) is to not just garner more hate from the fans of the game, but to not get into more trouble with the people in charge of that policy. I think they're trying to play safe and reduce the number and severity of wounds afflicted on them as possible.

This unfortunately brought Hololive to cutting ties with this publisher and any companies having anything to do with the countries/regions they're associated with (a good move on their part, I think, in order to avoid repeats of this event again). This is a huge loss on the publisher's part, I think, and I'm not sure how this will affect the future content they may produce in the future (or whether they take down songs because of this event) but I think that we can agree that policies, or specifically the people who made them, are real stick up the a$$e$.

Do I have a distaste for the publisher after this? Well, that depends. If they had to resort to these measures in order to avoid having their game taken down, then I can understand why they did what they had to. If they don't care, let alone support the policies enacted for businesses in this country, then we can just wipe the majority of what I wrote down to here. Again, I think they haven't made an official statement that makes or breaks their stand to avoid receiving further damage from one of the opposing sides (more likely the side that involves government for obvious reasons). The publisher has to take responsibility for this action, but I don't think they're entirely at fault for resorting to these measures if they didn't intend to do so from the start.

So who else is to blame? The government, maybe, but unless we're willing to go to war, they can't really change their ways of how to run a country (and the 'nations' aligned with it) for reasons we may never understand. Some have pointed out it's the Antis/Haters playing a large part because of their distaste for Hololive. I don't know what it is that makes them bear such a vendetta over them, I'd love it if they just drop everything and let us all live how we see fit, but again, they're stubborn like this government, and there's not much we can do to track them down and make them pay for it.

For me, I don't think this affects my view of how I like the game itself. Sometimes you have to go against what the media says and see for yourself how well you may enjoy it. I'll still play it in my off time. I haven't got the DLC yet, but I might have to hold off on buying it for a while after all the drama it attracted. I mainly wrote this thread because I haven't seen any arguments for why this publisher may not be as 'bad or evil' as some have made it out to be (call me devil's advocate, maybe, unless I see some proof that might go against my reasoning). I'm not trying to take a side on this, I just want to make sense of the circumstances that led to this development, checking the story on the sides of every party possibly involved, and come to a conclusion once I gathered enough intel.

I'd like to hear your guys' thoughts on my hypotheses of these events (please, no harsh or discriminating language, think constructive arguments). Would you agree to my thought processes, disagree, or have your own conspiracy for what really went down? I'm curious to know.

For now, I'm just putting the thought of buying the DLC aside and go back to what I was originally buying: Nekopara Vol. 4. Catgirl muses ftw.

[Syltti]

Wasn't this entire situation caused by the publisher alone? I read in one of the threads here that PPG didn't even play a part in this. And, all because two v-tubers read off analytics provided by Youtube. To be perfectly honest, I don't know what I want to do. This is, easily, my favorite rhythm game. The last thing I want to do is give up on it, but I don't want to support XD Games when they pull anti-consumer stunts like this. And, I feel bad for PPG since they got caught in the middle of this stupidity.

[Orange Rain]

Originally posted by Syltti:

Wasn't this entire situation caused by the publisher alone? I read in one of the threads here that PPG didn't even play a part in this. And, all because two v-tubers read off analytics provided by Youtube. To be perfectly honest, I don't know what I want to do. This is, easily, my favorite rhythm game. The last thing I want to do is give up on it, but I don't want to support XD Games when they pull anti-consumer stunts like this. And, I feel bad for PPG since they got caught in the middle of this stupidity.

Right, it's been said the publisher's been entirely to blame about this, but I was wondering if they did this out of ill intent, or something they didn't want to do, but HAD to out of orders from a higher power (e.g. the government).

It really sucks for PPG to get pulled into this as well. If they can find a new publisher to help them release this game, I'm all for it if it means not getting involved with anymore political bullcrap.

[TwinShadow]

The main thing when it comes to games like these is due to the music content, which is typically licensed for a specific purpose. Copyright is one of those things that has desperately been needing a completely make-over for modern times, but until that happens, we'll be stuck with what we have and deal with whatever consequences come from it.

I don't give a ♥♥♥♥ for vtubbers in general, but I've seen stuff like this in other things like Twitch and all that. I'm willing to bet copyright came into play with this as it makes the most logical sense to me and I hate to be devil's advocate, but the publisher is well within their right to file DMCA's since the devs no longer have "control" of the game other than to patch and bring new content if paid to do so. This is one thing where publishers have control, and this being a music-based game... yeah, stuff like this is going to happen.

I hate it as much as the next person, but it is what it is until copyright is brought up to modern times and doesn't last for what seems like an eternity.

[Arestris]

It's ill itend out of hate and nothing more!
No HL talent ever said anything political about China or Taiwan, NEVER!
So, their whole decision is based on a lie, made out of hate for hates sake.

I'm pretty sure the Chinese Gouverment doesn't care at all about this, after the talents and Cover apologised for the insensitivity (and even this, may only true for Chinese, not for any human being outside), gave the promise to be more sensitive about such matters in the future and also suspended the talents for three weeks.

The only ones making a ruckus are Chinese haters. That's the bandwagon the honorless bunch of liars from X.D. jumped on, made this decision based on lies, out of hate. It isn't concidence, that the only message was on the Chinese NGA board, a pure Chinese gaming board, frequently used from those Antis, those haters, but not on any official company site, not on any other social platform, that you had expected in this case, especially when a non Chinese company is involved, but just in this forum, where all those haters could read it, but they probably had the hope, it would never reach outside China.

So, like I said before, not a decision out of politics but out of pure hate.

[Atty]

I honestly don't care what is going on. I don't care about politics. I think it's a fun game and it didn't deserve the review bombing because the developer had nothing to with the whole issue, so I'm glad those negative reviews have been taken down.

[Supergang]

Originally posted by Orange Rain:

Right, it's been said the publisher's been entirely to blame about this, but I was wondering if they did this out of ill intent, or something they didn't want to do, but HAD to out of orders from a higher power (e.g. the government).

It really sucks for PPG to get pulled into this as well. If they can find a new publisher to help them release this game, I'm all for it if it means not getting involved with anymore political bullcrap.

I was planning to stop discussing about this but well, here we go again lol. Anyway, we won't know for sure the answer to your question as they will surely never say anything about it (because like you mentioned, the publisher and developer both are surely trying to avoid more hatred from both sides). Personally though, I believe, like Arestris mentioned, that the Chinese government never cared about this at all. This case is too small for them to even bother with. And as mentioned again, there was no political intention from the Hololive girls at all before and they even have apologized so pretty sure they won't care about all the drama.

This is all really just about the antis (the haters) indeed using their Social Media power to push companies to bully Hololive as best as they can just because they don't have it in their heart to forgive a very small mistake (I won't even call it a mistake). And sadly, perhaps for "self-preservation", the publisher might indeed have been forced to do what they are asking for. Otherwise, the publisher themselves might face a lot of bullying that happened to Hololive before and can't survive anymore on their own country.

This is my opinion about what you were wondering about but then again, we'll never be able to confirm what's actually happening since there really won't be any kind of official statements about this at all. The game itself is indeed great so I'd say it's better for you to just do some more research yourself perhaps and come into your own conclusion. Best of luck and have a good day.

P.S. Nekopara is good

[Syltti]

Originally posted by TwinShadow 【天狐】:

The main thing when it comes to games like these is due to the music content, which is typically licensed for a specific purpose. Copyright is one of those things that has desperately been needing a completely make-over for modern times, but until that happens, we'll be stuck with what we have and deal with whatever consequences come from it.

I don't give a ♥♥♥♥ for vtubbers in general, but I've seen stuff like this in other things like Twitch and all that. I'm willing to bet copyright came into play with this as it makes the most logical sense to me and I hate to be devil's advocate, but the publisher is well within their right to file DMCA's since the devs no longer have "control" of the game other than to patch and bring new content if paid to do so. This is one thing where publishers have control, and this being a music-based game... yeah, stuff like this is going to happen.

I hate it as much as the next person, but it is what it is until copyright is brought up to modern times and doesn't last for what seems like an eternity.

I highly doubt this is a copyright issue. The Hololive girls weren't the only ones streaming this game. A lot of people streamed it on Twitch, and Youtube has plenty of videos uploaded of people clearing songs. If copyright were ever an issue, we'd have seen something happen much sooner.

[Supergang]

Originally posted by Syltti:

I highly doubt this is a copyright issue. The Hololive girls weren't the only ones streaming this game. A lot of people streamed it on Twitch, and Youtube has plenty of videos uploaded of people clearing songs. If copyright were ever an issue, we'd have seen something happen much sooner.

Yes and the ban also happens right after one of the girls that mentioned the "word" streamed the game. I checked with the others and a few weeks before, other girls are still streaming the game and it was all good. But when this one girl streamed the game, in just a few hours, Hololive is suddenly banned from ever streaming the game again. So yes, we can assume that this ban has a lot more to do with this rather than copyright (and the game also has a few Hololive songs in it so there must have been some agreements about that so there should be no copyright issue).

Although, they do can perhaps use copyright as the reason when they are asking Hololive to stop streaming the game but well, we'll never know.

[MSentis]

Can someone please explain what exactly the controversy is (as neutral as possible)? I'm kind of out of the loop on that.
From what I gather some vtubers allegedly criticized the Chinese government's handling of the Taiwanese situation while playing the game and the publisher decided to disallow streaming the game because of this. Is this about right?

[Supergang]

Originally posted by MSentis:

Can someone please explain what exactly the controversy is (as neutral as possible)? I'm kind of out of the loop on that.
From what I gather some vtubers allegedly criticized the Chinese government's handling of the Taiwanese situation while playing the game and the publisher decided to disallow streaming the game because of this. Is this about right?

It's quite close but the main fault from your statement is that the VTubers never ever did anything political at all. They never criticized Chinese government at all, nada, zero. This is something that people seems to misunderstand sometimes. So let me try to explain this but this might be a bit long haha.

There are 2 VTubers and they were streaming and one of the things they did was reading Youtube Analytics to find out from which countries people are watching their stream and they are thanking those by mentioning it one by one. And sadly, one of the countries shown on the list by Youtube Analytics is "Taiwan" and so they went and said "Thank You Taiwan" (something close to this, of course they mentioned a bunch of other countries too). And that, started this whole thing. So for the antis (the term people are using for the haters), what they did somehow means that those VTubers acknowledged Taiwan as a country and thus, starts the attack on them.

After that, the VTubers company had to suspend the VTubers as a punishment for 3 weeks and said sorry to everyone (the VTubers said sorry too) for not being sensitive enough about this and hope that everyone can forgive them. They promised that they won't repeat the same mistake and they made sure that they never had any political intention at all when they did the stream.

Alas, that's not enough, the antis doesn't seem to be able to forgive them. They then asked the VTubers company to fire those 2 VTubers. However, the VTubers company decides that the mistake they did is not big enough to warrant firing them and thus, they decided and announced that they are not firing the 2 VTubers.

And thus the bullying starts. The antis starts to bully the VTubers company and not just the 2 girls anymore (the other VTubers from the company is getting bullied too on a certain video social media website). Things are getting worse and so, the VTubers company decided that they can't solve this no matter what they try to do and decided to let go of their branch in China.

And that's pretty much what happened. Though the 2 VTubers are still bullied by the antis even to this day (especially one of them, if you check the chat, it's currently heavily spammed by the antis to make it so that people can't chat with the VTuber). And then a few weeks after this happened, 1 of the 2 VTubers decided to give Muse Dash a try and stream it. And then boom, in just a few hours there's suddenly an announcement on one of the Chinese board websites that the publisher has requested Hololive to never ever stream their game again. And all videos of their past streams of the game is now either removed or made private.

The last part above is pretty much an assumption because again, there's no official statements from the publisher or the developer at all (aside from the one in the Chinese board website but we're not sure if that's an official one or not). But it's really easy to assume so because the removal or privatization of the past videos and none of the girls have ever touched or mentioned about Muse Dash anymore until now (and it's been weeks). Lots of them were saying that they are going to stream this game again because they like it so much before the ban too but it has never happened again so far till now.

And so imo, the publisher ban them from streaming the game again not because the VTubers criticized the Chinese government at all, but rather because they have to do what the antis are asking them to do. It's more of a "self-preservation" decision I believe because yes, I can see that if they don't agree with the antis and still allow the VTubers to stream their game, they will end up getting bullied big time and that might end up killing their company. Though personally, I understand their reason but that still doesn't make it the right thing to do.

This is everything that I've found out from my personal research. You can Google it easily too if you want to research it yourself too. Others can perhaps have another view on this and so feel free to chime in.

That is all from my side about this and very sorry for the long wall of texts (and no potato).

[ZeroPantz™]

Yeah, exactly! Thank you for that thorough explanation, Supergang!

My two cents in how I see it is that the preservation of a company, their livelihood, is a VERY valid reason, even if that reason is still mere speculation.

Was it ultimately morally right? No. But this is pretty much like the trolley problem. There is no real right decision. Someone's bound to suffer, unfortunately. But, if the girls would have been able to continue to stream Muse Dash, would that have made the bullying they're victim of stop? Nah.

First of, it seems like it was not Muse Dash who had issue with them mentioning Taiwai. It didn't become an issue and possible threat until China and the antis made that into an issue.

Does it feel and is interpreted as a lack of support for those girls and their situation? Sure, and I get it. But that still doesn't mean Muse Dash stands behind the whole anti bs. And nothing of the sort has been said, either, by them from what I know. It's not like they can if it is the case, either, because that defies the whole purpose of trying to stay uninvolved. So it's just as easy to assume, and give them the benefit of the doubt that, they clearly don't want to get involved, not because they agree, but because, indeed, it could lead to detrimental consequences for the company.

It would ultimately not have made a difference in regards to the situation the girls are in. So, in the end, what they did was still the better choice. The other choice would have caused more suffering overall, after all. And, just because Muse Dash MAY have consciously pulled out, does not mean that they per default don't care about the girls, about what's happening, and aren't perhaps trying to do something else in the meantime, in silence. Sometimes, people have to do what they gotta do to get by in this world, it is a company in the end. But that doesn't mean they're happy about it.

In the end, even if some facts are known, most of the things surrounding Muse Dash's side, remains nothing but speculations, so I feel it's not fair to pass judgment, and so harshly as some people do. Sure, the devs/publisher aren't saying anything to address the issue, but perhaps that could very well be because their opinion is against the government. They can't take that risk.

All in all though, I agree with the people that say it does not deter from how good and fun this game is. And, in the end, I feel the people harassing the developers and leave nasty reviews on this game's steam page, are nothing better than those antis. Take a look in the mirror, yo.

[MSentis]

Thank you for taking the time to explain it @Supergang and @ZeroPantz™.
It's sad to see that not even gaming is safe from being politicized. And more so that saying thank you to people living in Taiwan is triggering to other people.

[Orange Rain]

Man, this blew up more than I thought.

[sheldonbunny]

I appreciate the lengthy explanations as well. Personally I don't allow politics to affect my feelings on art, creations, etc. I enjoy the game. It's that simple. The rest is white noise I have little interest in, and I find the idea childish in general to "review bomb." It's as immature and senseless as cancel culture.

People should look at a product itself. It's no better than Amazon users giving bad reviews of a product based on how something was poorly shipped.

[Supergang]

Originally posted by sheldonbunny:

I appreciate the lengthy explanations as well. Personally I don't allow politics to affect my feelings on art, creations, etc. I enjoy the game. It's that simple. The rest is white noise I have little interest in, and I find the idea childish in general to "review bomb." It's as immature and senseless as cancel culture.

People should look at a product itself. It's no better than Amazon users giving bad reviews of a product based on how something was poorly shipped.

I would say the issue is, there's really no other way to let people know about what the publisher has done except doing something like this (and also to get the publisher to notice that they have done something that upsets people). Also, rather than politics affecting people's feelings, it actually affected the publisher first as they are the one who did something political. And so they should be ready that there would be repercussions for it and can't just blame people for giving bad reviews for just "politics" reasons.

And lots of people actually bought this game because of the streamers so pretty sure they are all got really upset about the situation. Not saying that giving bad reviews is the right thing to do but it's a bit of a difficult situation. I do see some reviews giving thumbs up while saying bad things about the publisher so that might indeed be a more neutral approach.