Community MetaSteam September 2022 | You were expecting Kingdom Hearts, but it’s me Dio(field)!

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toxicitizen

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I can almost guarantee that's not true. The phrasing they changed to is weird but most sites are only going to pre-sell keys they have already (for inventory and logistical purposes, if nothing else). So when you buy a game and they say they'll give you a key when it's ready, they probably already have a key, they just aren't allowed by contract to release yet. Keys can (and are) generated well in advance for stores, reviewers, etc.

Hardcopy stuff works the same way, although nowadays there tends to be way less time between receiving -> displayed for sale. I remember getting books weeks in advance that we could not put anywhere. Actually had a locked room to stash the boxes in if it was considered a big deal (like the later Harry Potter books).

Edit: Don't mean to imply this is absolute truth, I'm sure there are exceptions - but it's easier for everyone involved to have keys properly sorted at each step. Most stores would also rather send them immediately if they could because less chance of refund, and less work for them.
That's possible. Tbh I simply never had any reason to question the "we'll send the keys as soon as we have them" line because 99% of the time I get them days, or at the very least hours, before unlock time. A handful of times I even got them a few hours late. If that's the case, though, I wonder what could've caused them to change their messaging in this instance.
 
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Madventure

The Angel of Deaf
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So much for the Domina Developer. They posted one more update status to Domina and got their entire company removed from steam and all their games delisted at the exact same time (They're a solo publisher/developer)

The message says "Removed from sale at the request of the developer" but it was Steam that did it not them
Domina & Corporate Lifestyle Simulator are their games off the top of my head Lol
 

Kvik

Crossbell City Councillor
Dec 6, 2018
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Downunder.
Except now they have to spend even more money and manhours to avoid repeating that fuck up, as well as paying for extra ports and polishing, and despite all that they're still 3 games behind JP.
I feel it's misguided to place the blame solely on NISA with regard to the pacing of their release schedule. Let's not forget, the primary reason why we're in this mess is Falcom's own workflow, since they don't license out their games until they're done. CLE obviously has preferential treatment, but that's a topic for another discussion.

Secondly, we have four Trails games in the pipeline, and more than likely, Kuro I will come shortly after. All these games has very high Japanese character count. They're all require editing to get the quality up to their standard (which has been steadily improving since the original Ys VIII release). Releasing a new Trails game every 18 months is a monumental feat.

Could NISA handle this situation better? Most definitely. Trails fan translators are the most dedicated fans I know, and most will want to stand behind them. NISA will stand to lose some sales when we consider that Zero's release is just around the corner. Still, boycotting the official release like what some people in that Twitter thread suggested won't benefit the fandom in the long run.
 

PC-tan

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NISA's run with Falcom has been so weird. Even to this day I feel NISA didn't really understand what they were getting into when they started to get Falcom games instead of Xseed. Like yeah Trails was fucked with Xseed too (the Sky FC PSP release underperforming basically delayed the series for years, although in those times a Steam release would obviously be impossible so they were stuck with what they had), but what exactly was NISA's plan when they got the series? Did they think the series was bigger than expected, that Falcom games were big sellers, that it would be easy money, that they could just translate them cheaply and reap all benefits? Becaus honestly the Xseed run clearly shows this wasn't the case before CS3 even got announced. This is what I don't get. It feels like the initial Ys fuck up is how they wanted things to be: cheap. Except now they have to spend even more money and manhours to avoid repeating that fuck up, as well as paying for extra ports and polishing, and despite all that they're still 3 games behind JP.
I'm sure fans are happy they're getting something at least, but as I just said I wonder what NISA's plan was when they signed the contract. The Utawarerumono remake felt the same, they probably though it was easy money and, well, with Monochrome Mobius basically being Steam only in the west (and that's because they're simply adding the EN translation into the JP Steam release) we can kinda speculate on how it went for them
I'm guessing it didn't go well with Utawarerunono and that's why they are not touching it at all.

The situation with that games does suck for those on consoles because unless something big happens the publisher of the game is not going to all of a sudden start publishing on console.



By the way PlayAsia seems to have announced that they are going to start publishing Japanese indie games.....


PlayAsia is a lot of things, they are very vocal against censorship since it gets them support from people and stuff.


However given the whole "PQUBE" thing, I wouldn't be surprised if they turn out to be just as scummy.


So depending on their contracts Japanese devs will potentially get screwed over, well at least those indie will self publish on PC.

I'm guessing this also means those physical copies of games will be PlayAsia exclusive?
 
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spindoctor

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If that's the case, though, I wonder what could've caused them to change their messaging in this instance.
The Fanatical social media manager said on reddit that the key situation was due to a miscommunication with the publisher.

In general, you never get keys immediately when the seller receives them (unless they are authorized to distribute them on receipt). Publishers will usually set a release date/time so that all keys go out at once. So generally speaking, as a customer, you won't know that the seller has received the keys until they become available on your order page. In this particular instance, Fanatical chose slightly weird messaging where they said they have the keys but they're not giving them out yet, leading to questions of why they wouldn't do that. But the reason was that they were not allowed to release them until a specific time.
 

Amzin

No one beats me 17 times in a row!
Dec 5, 2018
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They were probably trying to say "the publisher won't let us release them yet" without actually citing the publisher to try and handwave away any blame but the wording isn't the best.

At the end of the day it's a weird choice to me for publishers to restrict keys anyway since they can say the game doesn't get released till it gets released on Steam but not every pub/dev knows how to navigate review copies + 3rd party keys + Steam releases so who knows.
 

toxicitizen

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Oct 24, 2018
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The Fanatical social media manager said on reddit that the key situation was due to a miscommunication with the publisher.

In general, you never get keys immediately when the seller receives them (unless they are authorized to distribute them on receipt). Publishers will usually set a release date/time so that all keys go out at once. So generally speaking, as a customer, you won't know that the seller has received the keys until they become available on your order page. In this particular instance, Fanatical chose slightly weird messaging where they said they have the keys but they're not giving them out yet, leading to questions of why they wouldn't do that. But the reason was that they were not allowed to release them until a specific time.
Yeah, ok. That reddit comment explains why the keys were released like 2 hours after the game unlocked on Steam (which was already like 5 hours after the usual time). Sounds like Bamco just fucked up the timing of this launch all around lol.
 
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Ascheroth

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Nov 12, 2018
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New thread smell :coffee-blob: Thanks Mor!
Some responses in that Twitter thread makes me unwilling to identify with the Trails fandom any more. :flare_pout:
Honestly yeah. I'm reading some responses about it now and I'm really weirded out.
We're getting one Trails game this month and then THREE more next year. If these people can't see NISA's trying to catch up I don't know what to tell em.
And honestly the people complaining Reverie is taking so long can fuck off into the ether. Trails fans will tell you every chance they get how important the Crossbell arc is, but suddenly making sure that people can finally experience these games properly and officially, so that everyone has the chance to go into Reverie equipped with all the required knowledge, is a bad thing. And no, telling everyone to "just play fantranslations" is a moronic take.

The Dalk Fukters are still cool though :pikkardblanket:
 

Lashley

Computer Cowboy 🤠


So much for the Domina Developer. They posted one more update status to Domina and got their entire company removed from steam and all their games delisted at the exact same time (They're a solo publisher/developer)

The message says "Removed from sale at the request of the developer" but it was Steam that did it not them
Domina & Corporate Lifestyle Simulator are their games off the top of my head Lol
:coffee-blob:
 

crimsonheadGCN

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I would be excited for Twin Snakes related announcement.


"We're not stopping making games at all. Valve has a lot of games in development. We will continue to release games," Coomer said.
 

ZKenir

Setting the Seas Ablaze
May 10, 2019
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We're getting one Trails game this month and then THREE more next year. If these people can't see NISA's trying to catch up I don't know what to tell em.
the thing is they wouldn't have stopped the kuro spreadsheet if they didn't want to loc it, regardless if this was started by NIS, NISA or Falcom you can at least assume that behind the scenes something has been inked regarding the Kuro arc so that bodes well at least.
The real issue is not NISA stopping the spreadsheet as far as I am concerned, it's Falcom and their weird policy regarding localization
 

Ascheroth

Chilling in the Megastructure
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the thing is they wouldn't have stopped the kuro spreadsheet if they didn't want to loc it, regardless if this was started by NIS, NISA or Falcom you can at least assume that behind the scenes something has been inked regarding the Kuro arc so that bodes well at least.
The real issue is not NISA stopping the spreadsheet as far as I am concerned, it's Falcom and their weird policy regarding localization
Yeah, with Crossbell finally out of the way soon, I'm sure we're going to shorten the gap between JP and EN releases in the future, but as you say as long as Falcom doesn't let them start localizing before the game is out in JP, there will always be a 1+ year wait.
 

Mivey

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I would be excited for Twin Snakes related announcement.

I really hope we get some kind of sequel to Half Life Alyx. I loved that game, felt like the perfect translation of the Half Life formula into VR and there's still a ton they can explore. I guess they'll wait for their new headset to drop. It makes sense to wait for that, as I feel current VR hardware is still a far cry from being perfect. Both in terms of the specs, and comfort too. Having a fully wireless HMD with some kind of connection to your PC would be amazing, if the latency problems can be dealt with.
Honestly yeah. I'm reading some responses about it now and I'm really weirded out.
We're getting one Trails game this month and then THREE more next year. If these people can't see NISA's trying to catch up I don't know what to tell em.
And honestly the people complaining Reverie is taking so long can fuck off into the ether. Trails fans will tell you every chance they get how important the Crossbell arc is, but suddenly making sure that people can finally experience these games properly and officially, so that everyone has the chance to go into Reverie equipped with all the required knowledge, is a bad thing. And no, telling everyone to "just play fantranslations" is a moronic take.
Very well said
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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If it’s Twin Snakes, you don’t want that.

Now if Konami were willing to take the best bits of The Twin Snakes, remove all shit and merge the game with some of the better bits of the original, you’d have a new classic.

Just imagine the direction of MGS1’s cutscenes with better animation and visuals.
 

ezodagrom

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Nov 2, 2018
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New thread smell :coffee-blob: Thanks Mor!

Honestly yeah. I'm reading some responses about it now and I'm really weirded out.
We're getting one Trails game this month and then THREE more next year. If these people can't see NISA's trying to catch up I don't know what to tell em.
And honestly the people complaining Reverie is taking so long can fuck off into the ether. Trails fans will tell you every chance they get how important the Crossbell arc is, but suddenly making sure that people can finally experience these games properly and officially, so that everyone has the chance to go into Reverie equipped with all the required knowledge, is a bad thing. And no, telling everyone to "just play fantranslations" is a moronic take.

The Dalk Fukters are still cool though :pikkardblanket:
This. The biggest reason for the current gap for the global Trails releases was XSEED skipping Zero and Azure, NISA had to deal with these 2 releases sooner or later.
Also people forget that it's not just the localization that takes time, there's also the development for the Switch and PC versions, I rather wait for all the extra bells and whistles that we're getting in the global PC versions.
 

PC-tan

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By the way from what I remember I think Bandai Namco is soon going to try to get its own launcher, it will mainly be for it's free to play games and I think Gundam Evolution is one of those.

How ever this will mainly be for it's Japan customers. Everyone else will be using Steam but they will have their Japanese customers use their own launcher.
 

Arc

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Sep 19, 2020
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By the way from what I remember I think Bandai Namco is soon going to try to get its own launcher, it will mainly be for it's free to play games and I think Gundam Evolution is one of those.

How ever this will mainly be for it's Japan customers. Everyone else will be using Steam but they will have their Japanese customers use their own launcher.
The English site shows the Steam logo while the JP site has a generic PC logo, so you're probably right. I thought they already had a dedicated JP launcher for Blue Protocol.
 
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FeedMeAStrayCat

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Decided to start playing Immortality yesterday. Played for about an hour by myself, then after work I resumed playing. I noticed my partner was intrigued by the game, as she enjoys FMV stuff (like Phantasmagoria 2) and I asked if we should just play together instead. So started over again already last night and put about another hour in.
:steam_cleanseal:

It's pretty intriguing so far, even if I don't understand a whole lot (...yet?).
It doesn't run quite as well as I'd hope, though... at least the PC Game Pass version, dunno if Steam version is same way. Videos at 1440p aren't as smooth as I'd like (with a 1070/32gb DDR4).
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
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It doesn't run quite as well as I'd hope, though... at least the PC Game Pass version, dunno if Steam version is same way. Videos at 1440p aren't as smooth as I'd like (with a 1070/32gb DDR4).
I have no knowledge about FMV games but... how do you get slowdowns on a video file ? I mean sure, I got into troubles myself, but that was years ago trying to stream a 4K movie via err, PLC, maybe.
I guess it's far more CPU dependent than GPU, but even then, aren't they just video files ?
 
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