SakuraGame/Paradise Project seems dodgy, we should probably stop curating things they publish

[tenshi_a]

They're a Chinese company that put a load of eroge titles on Steam. They're just turfing them out. All of the games have terrible translations that don't make any sense. Some of the games are made by SakuraGame themselves and use stolen assets.

But a few of the games are by Japanese groups like Magic House (NSFW) http://magichouse.uh-oh.jp/ and Pin-Point (NSFW) http://www.pin-point.biz/ And - regardless of the fact that they both specialise in pornographic games, we should probably ignore them and not list any of their work.

The reason is because the publisher SakuraGame seem to be really dodgy.

First thing - they are putting fake PEGI / ESRB / CERO ratings on things, which is illegal.

There's this guy making videos about them:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk69TxLkva1ZdFnh9JGWuSJ_mQxKqhB5f

Ending in this video about how they're screwing devs over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lnVcG6u9Aw

See also:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Sentinels_of_the_Store#announcements/detail/1666769865946284024

I have heard of publishers using this tactic before, but it was a US publisher and using bundles / reaping money from trading cards.

By putting hundreds of thousands of copies of a game out there via keys:
a) The publisher takes payment for the keys, and don't have to pay the developers their fair share.
b) It makes it look like a game is enormously successful, luring in future developers as partners. They might not be aware what a bad quality product is released if they don't understand English.
c) the publisher still gets a tiny cut of thousands of trading cards traded by people trying to "make their money back" by idling the game and selling the cards. Depending on the contract, the developer may make nothing on these transactions.

e.g. there are 400,000 copies of Tricolor Lovestory out there, let's imagine most of them are free or bundled copies. So if we imagine they make an average of just 10 cents per copy, we can imagine that's $40000 already.

It has 9 trading cards, so that will mean players can idle for 4 cards. Let's imagine most people reselling them, the publishers reap 2 cents for every trading card traded - that's another $32000 "free money" that the publisher doesn't need to share with the developers.

Anyway. It all sounds really dodgy, so I propose we avoid curating games that come through this publisher.

Note: I strongly suspect that Pin-Point's "Glory of the Self-Styled Diehard girl" published by LilyGame is just SakuraGame under a different name, so I'm not curating that either. I noticed a fake PEGI rating on there, I tried looking it up on the PEGI website.

Edit by Quint to thread title: we're talking about the company "SakuraGame", just to be clear, not the infamously fanservicey series of games/VNs called "Sakura [whatever]" by Winged Cloud.

[tenshi_a]

I've added a whole load of games. I'm done for today, I have seen too much.

Still to do:
- Fortissimo FA
- Goblin Walker

The reason I think I've seen too much is I looked at the trailer for Goblin Walker and thought "huh, I play as a goblin. The ordinary mobs are ordinary soldiers but the boss fights are pretty girls" and immediately thought "when you beat the boss, the player is probably rewarded with a cutscene of her being raped by the goblin", since that's basically what would happen in the last 5 Dieselmine games I looked at. I'm just noping out of here while I am still a human.

BTW if we can add Eternal Fantasy, should we also add Da Capo III published by Mangagamer?

Or shouldn't I have curated Eternal Fantasy after all?

[dynastystar]

yes, let people make up their own mind about the game if they wanna support it. There are some of those practices that I don't agree with, at the end of the day I want a quality product that I like at an affordable price that doesn't have Denuvo, uPlay, or Games For Windows Live(which is hardly relevant but there are still SOME games that have it on the store page and haven't had GFWL removed) and the developers don't inject their personal beliefs into the game. Those are for me main dealbreakers.

[Hukdora]

Originally posted by tenshi_a:

BTW if we can add Eternal Fantasy, should we also add Da Capo III published by Mangagamer?

Or shouldn't I have curated Eternal Fantasy after all?

Meh, the attitude I have always taken is that once curated, I don't bother to take it off. There have been a couple of games I have wondered about after curating and then just shrugged. So EF can stay really. As for DC III, well I don't think it really matters, it isn't a big publisher. As long as it isn't your Bandai/Capcom/Sqenix etc, I don't see a major problem. Although I tend to skip them, most of the time.

[tenshi_a]

God help me, I was right about Goblin Walker. The developer has actual gameplay gifs of his game pinned on his twitter, wow.

(well I am not certain about cutscenes as I imagined, but the gif shows two compromised beaten girls lying on the streets with "rape" flashing above their heads, to indicate to the player that the goblin needs to walk over and rape them. And then it does, it certainly does. )

Sorry about getting the publisher name wrong in this thread title! I didn't mean the Winged Cloud games at all.

And to reiterate - my focus here was not about thinking against curating these games because of their content or anything to do with how they're made by the original developers.

It's purely that the games, whatever state they were in to begin with, are being brought to Steam in a terrible state, and it's not the best for the games, it's not the best for their audience, it's not the best for the developers, so I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea to promote them at all.

Because we want more J-Indie games to come to Steam, but through publishers that respect the games and work to put out a good product.

But we're an informational group, so what we need to do is inform. And I am happy to do that.

[Hukdora]

@tenshi_a, all I can reply to that is you brought it upon yourself by browsing through the devs twitter! After watching the trailer even.

[🦈Da Great Magician Aike🐙]

I don't like them, Sakura Games, especially when I heard that they were stealing other companies' games and passing them off as their own (or something along those lines). Link (Ya might want to use a translator): https://maruhoi.com/game/chinese-publisher-sakura-game/ and this: http://www.chuapp.com/?c=Article&a=index&id=283291

I found those articles from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/78fw3s/sakuragame_is_selling_someones_game_without/

[Ryuu]

Sentinels of the Store have a good article-investigation on them

[Jadomonkey]

wew, here's a more recent video on these guys: https://youtu.be/3sams946LsQ

Apologies if this dude is an alt-right nazi and harasser of trans-women, but the info seems pretty legit. Except for his closing statement about their being poised to corner the visual novel market; that's nonsense.

[dynastystar]

Originally posted by Jadomonkey:

wew, here's a more recent video on these guys: https://youtu.be/3sams946LsQ

Apologies if this dude is an alt-right nazi and harasser of trans-women, but the info seems pretty legit. Except for his closing statement about their being poised to corner the visual novel market; that's nonsense.

are you calling the uploader an alt-right nazi/harasser of trans women?

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Well this topic is sorta so completely unrelated to the usual political issues so whether or not the speaker is an "alt-right nazi" is basically irrelevant. I'm unfamiliar with this youtuber so I can't speak about his political views, but the video stands on its own.

I'm annoyed at his attempts to be cool or funny, and his t-shirt is of questionable taste, but besides that, most of the stuff he's mentioned is stuff that's at least potentially factually evaluable.

[dynastystar]

Originally posted by Quint the Cool Space Dragon:

Well this topic is sorta so completely unrelated to the usual political issues so whether or not the speaker is an "alt-right nazi" is basically irrelevant. I'm unfamiliar with this youtuber so I can't speak about his political views, but the video stands on its own.

I'm annoyed at his attempts to be cool or funny, and his t-shirt is of questionable taste, but besides that, most of the stuff he's mentioned is stuff that's at least potentially factually evaluable.

okay, thanks :) Subscribing to him.

[Jadomonkey]

Sorry, I was half-joking since he seems a little opinionated and I'm sure #FucKonami was politicised one way or another based on unrelated issues. I felt compelled to both leave a disclaimer and get in a dig at disclaimers.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by dynastystar:

Originally posted by Quint the Cool Space Dragon:

Well this topic is sorta so completely unrelated to the usual political issues so whether or not the speaker is an "alt-right nazi" is basically irrelevant. I'm unfamiliar with this youtuber so I can't speak about his political views, but the video stands on its own.

I'm annoyed at his attempts to be cool or funny, and his t-shirt is of questionable taste, but besides that, most of the stuff he's mentioned is stuff that's at least potentially factually evaluable.

okay, thanks :) Subscribing to him.

Oh, I wasn't asking you to subscribe to him.

I was just pointing out that this issue and video is basically unrelated to the political controversies of the day.

I watched the video but I didn't subscribe mainly because I have no idea who he is.