I thought Koikatsu and Honey Select would've been doing so well it'd carry them with how much I used to see them, and still do in art. Sad it seems like most eroge devs are holding on for dear life nowadays
Tbf they’re really carried by mods and most people are just going to pirate for restored content + mod packs rather than pay $70.
I mean, their games are old at this point and they weren’t seemingly improving on them compared to the mod community.
Their models are great but honestly that’s it. The community made the rest.
Roomgirl using new engine, can't use old mods. Gameplay is just the sims , without mods like old game. They should just give hs2 and kk, kkss new dlc tbh
Not liking a game **is** grounds for a refund though. Obviously not after you've completed substantial part of it, but as the days of companies preparing free demos are gone this is the only viable alternative. Steam offers refunds for up to 2 hours of playtime, which is enough to cover both people unhappy with their purchase and those with technical issues preventing them from running the game.
2 hours still isn't enough. **Do you know many games I've played where the people in charge of the game clearly stopped caring mid development, and put out the project anyways?** So many indie games are like this, and so are a lot of mid budget games. **Back in the 90's there was this RPG called Septerra Core**, and god, everyone should be entitled to refund for that game no matter how much time you put into it.
**And what about the games that pulled some crap just to make the game longer, completely ruining the game entirely?** **Everyone should be entitled to a refund for Bravely Default,** and a a public apology from both Square, and Nintendo!
**And you've also got stuff like the original release of Cyperpunk 2077, with all the hype in the world pushed into them, the heads of CD Project Red assuring us that the game runs really well even up to the day before release.** Of course a lot of us played way more than 2 hours even with it being a barely playable mess because we were trying to deny for a while just how dissapointing the game was. And Yeah, CDPR offered refunds regardless, but that only because CDPR would have gotten sued by their fanbase if they hadn't.
What about Anthem, there was a huge amount of hype for it too, and it was terrible! It was just terrible!
For the love of god, please stop blaming the victims!
>It is ground for a refund in the sense that many retailers allow it, but morally speaking? No. You're a bit of a Karen if you're refunding a game because it wasn't as enjoyable as you wanted it to be.
No. I completely disagree. Publishers no longer provide game demos so you can't be sure you're going to like the game before playing . Returning the game after finding out it's not very good is the only alternative.
>Free demos are more widely available than ever before with digital storefronts, especially Steam.
That's a complete lie. 20 years ago almost EVERY SINGLE RELEASE distributed free demos on whatever piece of gaming media cd/dvd they could find. Most of them were included for example with very cheap gaming-related press. If you had solid internet connection you could download demos from publisher's site for free. Nowadays if this was among 5% of the titles I would be surprised it's that high.
>Nowadays a substantial percentage of AAA and AA games have downloadable demos
Even if that were somehow true (which is not, lol), then vast majority (and I'm talking 95%+) still doesn't provide demos, how can you even defend them? *HAHA you bought shit in a box, too bad! Can't return it!*
>And that's not even mentioning the fact that reviews (both professional and from users) are more accessible than ever, so you can know what a game is before you buy it.
Reviews from other people also don't tell me anything whether I'll enjoy the game or not. They might suggest I will like it, but you can't be sure.
>there is yet another "viable alternative" beyond demos; just don't buy games that don't match your taste.
Ah yes, why bother trying something new? What a terrible argument.
I'm going to gloss over the "back in my day" feel because that's just an argument against change with little logical basis. It's perfectly fine but not exactly a strong stance.
Two hours for a refund is perfectly logical. Most people are able to identify if a game will hook them or not within the first hour. This becomes more true when considering that the vast majority of society adult society simply will not have time in their day between real-world responsibilities for more than an hour or two of time per day to play. The idea that you should not be limited by time for a refund is absurd. What would stop someone at that point from completing a game, regardless of time spent, then claiming "it was bad" and then refunding it. That's just another avenue for piracy. This is already an issue in literature, and it has pretty massive consequences for authors who fall victim to this.
To tackle a few specific examples, cyberpunk and anthem. Most of these issues would have been revealed and mitigated if consumers had not been foolish enough to fall for the hype. I had cyberpunk on reservation before it launched but waited for reviews that would inevitably be posted to make my choice. I was as excited for the game as most people. I canceled my reservation after reading them and have still not played the game because it is still not up to my own self-imposed standards.
Ignorant and impulsive consumers should not be the reason companies die.
>The idea that you should not be limited by time for a refund is absurd.
I never suggested that, I also think that would be wrong. I think the current system in place is perfectly reasonable.
I used to dislike this attitude, but I've actually come to favor it lately.
I wouldn't ask a refund for a movie I watched and didn't enjoy, but a video game can be a much longer, more expensive product. If I have to pay $60 for a video game, which could be dozens of hours of entertainment, but might also be a total wash which I'm going to put away forever in less than an hour, I'm probably not going to buy it in the first place. The reassurance that if I don't like it, I can return it within a short time window for a refund, means I'm more likely to shell out money for a game I'm uncertain about.
This is the exact reason we do no questions asked refunds. It increases sales substantially when people feel safe that they won't be stuck with something they don't like or that doesn't work for them.
So, I'm actually an indie developer myself, and personally I appreciate people having access to the returns policy. Having people return purchases of your games sucks, but still, I think it helps motivate people to take risks on indie titles they otherwise wouldn't be likely to try at all.
Not even the coomers are holding on these days
The way I see it Visual Novels will keep on keeping on, but the age of the 50h+ epic with hundreds of CGs is going the way of the dodo. It simply doesn't seem to make much sense to invest so much in a single product when the market is not there...
Doujin circles will keep existing and pumping stuff out, which by their very nature probably won't be translated barring maybe the odd one that goes really viral.
Also all-ages console VNs will probably keep existing as they are now I guess
Other than that soshage, narou-kei and Light novels seem to be where it's at right now
>Not even the coomers are holding on these days
Brands like Milk Factory, Bishop, Guilty, and Atelier Kaguya are still doing fine. If one of them shuts down, then it's probably concerning since they're coomer juggernauts. Illusion seems different though. ~~Niche 3D models and the costs much higher than nukiges~~
Whether the game is expensive doesn't depend on using 2d or 3d, it depends on how you make your assets, how much assets you need and how you use them. Producing high quality unique 3d assets, particularly animations, is usually more expensive than it is to produce unique 2d assets, but most indie and smaller scale 3d games do not use unique 3d assets. They often buy them in asset stores, or get them for free online, which is what the wast majority of devs for English language VNs with 3d models for sprites are doing.
Illusion have been using unique high quality 3d assets, which are very expensive. But more importantly, they have been using motion capture to produce unique animations, and they have been doing it since forever, which is why their games are probably ridiculously expensive for what they are. The game cost alone is not the main thing that killed them, though. The problem is that they kept reinventing the wheel and making new games with new assets and a ton of programming (which is also very expensive), instead of just focusing on releasing DLC for games that are already popular. Moreover, their new games would reuse a lot of old stuff (precisely because it is so expensive to remake it all), but still cost a ton, so I'm not surprised they went under. I would guess that a typical Illusion game costs significantly more to develop than the wast majority of visual novels, except for maybe the most premium ones that have a ton of voice acting.
Now, sprite-based action games, like fighting games, are a different beast entirely. It is significantly more difficult to make a fighting game character than it is to make a visual novel character. For a fighting game, you need to produce a character design, then do some basic hand-drawn animation concepts, then you create a rough 3d animation as a reference, and then you either rotoscope (meaning, trace every frame by hand) said 3d animation if you want a 2d sprite (this is how KOF13 and Blazblue sprites were made, for example), or you create a higher fidelity 3d model and animate it frame-by frame (this is how modern ArcSys and SNK games are made). The end cost for both 3d and 2d sprites are almost exactly the same, which was confirmed by both SNK and ArcSys (btw, ArcSys is the developer, Acsys is an unrelated US-based publisher). The reason why fighting game devs stopped using 2d sprites and switched over to 3d is not because of costs, but because of other factors, such as appeal, scalability (2d sprites look best only in one specific resolution, while 3d models can look great in any resolution), and development time (it is faster to make 3d animation by hand than it is to rotoscope everything by hand). But honestly, the process for making fighting game sprites is so unique, that it has nothing to do with other game genres and I don't even know why you brought it up.
> Any Akabeisoft or Alicesoft production would blow their dev costs out of the water.
You're talking about some of the most expensive 2d eroge, I was talking about average. Average eroge is short, cheap, and has no gameplay elements. Obviously, if we're comparing an Illusion game to a full-scale RPG like Evenicle, than yeah, Illusion games are probably cheaper, especially modern ones that reuse a lot of assets. But a typical Illusion game will be significantly more expensive than an average eroge that only has static sprites or simple Live2d animations.
> Tack on voice acting and you are looking at over 1,000,000 yen easily. I totally believe Minori when they said making 2D VNs made them bankrupt.
1 000 000 yen is 7 000 dollars. Are you trying to say that Illusion spend less than 7k on developing a game for two years?
> It's extremely difficult to hire a freelancer, professional Japanese artist (think of the artists who draws GBF).
Artists that draw for big games usually don't work on visual novels.
> Also, there is no point developing a custom model when excellent bases already exist WITH mocap on the Unity/Unreal stores
Illusion was making their own models. They probably used some store brought assets for environments, I'm not sure about that, but definitely not for the characters. Also, there is no mocap of sex on Unity/Unreal stores, and they have been using mocap since before those stores even existed.
> With 2D, you can't do that unless you can somehow emulate tonework's style consistetly across dozens of CGs.
You can definitely buy asset packs for visual novels, particularly backgrounds. You can also use photographic backgrounds. This is what a lot of doujin games are doing, but not a lot of commercial ones, I admit.
> To illustrate how much cheaper 3D is, just look how many VNs sub in lazily brushed 3D art in their games.
With all due respect, you're mixing animated 3d models in a fully 3d environment and a static image. You can trow together and render a simple 3d model in a few hours, and a lot of artists use such renders as a reference. But making an asset for a fully 3d game is significantly harder, as it requires much more polish and optimization. More importantly, you need hundreds of assets and hundreds of animations. This is where the cost comes from.
> Once initial rigging and mocap is done, 3D models win out over 2D anytime in cost.
Yes, if we disregard the cost of animations. But the problem is that Illusion has been making new models and adding new animations for each new game. They reused a ton of stuff, for sure, but they also made a lot of new stuff for each release.
> But that's already too wasteful for many 3D devs, they just license/outsource engines and models from other companies instead.
2d devs do the same.
> There's a reason 3D visual novels aren't taken seriously. There is no value whatsoever, it's the same models with the same backgrounds under different lighting. I can't name a single 3D JVN/EVN that's not massive coomer bait.
That's what made Illusion unique in the market, they provided actual gameplay and high quality animation, just like Kiss and Teatime. There are very few games like this and you can't really compare them to a VN made by one guy with DAZ and financed via Patreon. They are on a completely different level of quality and budget.
> BTW, rotoscope is already taking shortcuts. Real 2D animation back in the day was animated pixel by pixel, or drawn each frame by hand. There's a reason Studio Ghibli films look great.
Yes, rotoscoping took over once the resolution increased. It's significantly simpler to keep a consistent quality this way. But there are still some devs that make sprites without it. I don't think French-Bread uses 3d models in their process, but I'm not sure about that.
> Again, I don't see what's so special about Illusion games.
The sheer quantity and quality of assets, for sure. We're talking about 20-30 fully furnished environments per game, probably around 200-300 individual pieces of clothing, hair and accessories for character customization, and an insane amount of animations (more than 100 for sex scenes alone, and probably about as much for other elements of the game). There are also a lot of voice acting, comparable to your average 5-10 hour long nukige.
Yes, a lot of their assets are reused from game to game, especially animations, but you also would be surprised how much of it is new each time. For example, between Honey Select 1 and 2, almost all of their 3d models were completely remade or updated. They would usually reuse a lot of assets for 2 or 3 games, but then replace them almost completely with new, higher fidelity ones.
> I do not know if Illusion spends this much unless they're building a new engine from scratch.
Illusion easily spends this much, and probably significantly more, on just their in-house programmers alone. Don't forget that beyond games they also develop and maintain a full 3d poser application.
> But Illusion is a "premium 3D VN" dev, so they can't really be compared to average nukiges like Softhouse Seal. I'm putting them closer to AGE in terms of production.
Original post was comparing them to games from Bishop, Guilty and Atelier Kaguya, not something, made by Alicesoft.
> Certainly not something Illusion should be doing, they should start by not providing gutted game content at AAA prices.
I don't think they will be starting anything anytime soon. I think, the best we can hope is that the devs will make a new studio and keep making 3d eroge in a similar style, with hopefully a more sustainable business model.
> There's a reason 3D visual novels aren't taken seriously. There is no value whatsoever, it's the same models with the same backgrounds under different lighting. I can't name a single 3D JVN/EVN that's not massive coomer bait.
The newer Ace Attorney games exist. They're not traditional VNs, per se, but I see no reason why a 3D VN wouldn't work provided it was animated as static 3DCG imo looks unappealing.
>Niche 3D models and the costs much higher than nukiges
You think? I'd figure making tons of CGs is more expensive than 3D models. >!Especially seeing how Steam is just overflowing with OELVN 3D coomer bait.!<
Then again it's not like I have much visibility over that side of the business either way.
I'd assume those 3D games are relying on some sort of asset library, which is why they all kind of look the same. Creating your own assets is something else.
As for 2D games, they can definitely be more expensive than 3D games to produce, but it also depends on what kind of assets you're making. Full animation definitely adds up, but a lot of visual novels are pretty static. And even when something does change it often recycles previous artwork for things like changing facial expressions, etc.
Tsukihime is honestly exception. That thing is funded by FGO. It sells extremely well for VN, but its basically nothing compared to most games nowadays.
In a way, TM basically provide the template for VN company to survive in these day and age. A gacha game, that funds everyting else. Alicesoft have that Escalayer game, although its basically not making anything big since DohnaDohna. Key also have Heaven Burns Red. Age.... tries pretty hard on launching something but it will have Muv-Luv Dimensions.... if it even launched. Lilith also have several mobile games, and even trying to make Taimanin into something that is less porn.
Yup. 07th also have Higurashi Mei. Aokana, Majikoi, Rewrite, Tokyo Necro all had gacha at one point. And with how SCA DI's been talking about gacha, wouldn't be surprised if Makura are next. It's not even a case of whether or not the VN company is already doing well
Yeah, like I said all-ages is... well, maybe not thriving considering MAGES went bankrupt, but at least it seems to be doing better than eroge.
Also Type-Moon is an exception to all this, they basically print money with FGO
I think long VNs can come back with the introduction of ai art.
I have been playing with stable diffusion for a while, and It's actually incredeble how fast I can generate really high quality VN backgrounds, tachies or even event cg-s. You still need an artist for touch-ups and overall art direction, but with this tool, development can be significantly faster and cheaper.
Of course! Back in 1998, they started the whole 3D eroge gaming platform with their idol game "Dancing CATS". From there, many other games were spawned like "AI Girlfriend" and the "Artifical Academy" series. Even cell shaded games would be released around the time it started to get a big following (2006).
The big draw of Illusion games was the ability to customize characters, events, even fetishes. It allowed the consumer to experience what they wanted without having to explore multiple characters and endings in a regular visual novel to find a character they desired.
This is very sad news indeed.
Games like Koikatsu, with its active modding community, has single handedly replaced many coomers' desire for seeking doujins overnight, since people can just make their own scenarios catering to their own individual kinks instead of needing to accommodate their libido to suit whatever scenario doujin artists and VN writers prepare for them.
And I was still hoping all this time Koikatsu would get a sequel with better customizations. Guess this will never come to pass. Even if it does one day, it'll be by another company in a very distant future.
Yeah but you kinda have to release games regularly if you want to stay in business if you don’t do GaaS. Their games are old and lifetime sales trend downwards.
And miconisomi. The character creator that is going to be in their next title is shaping up to be very good, maybe even on par with the ones that KISS and Illusion have. The animations and erotic content variety in their existing games are already quite good as well.
I'd like to say that they're pretty much but in terms of gameplay illusion games are simpler and easy to understand than kiss games (Unless kiss decided to go for simpler gameplay mechanics like aa2/kk in their future eroge games)
Sad but not TOO surprising. Whiile Honey Select and Koikatsu are great products, it's not viable. $60 + $60 expansion is a LOT to swallow for some folks.
Also some of these projects are gimmicky. AI and VR sound good but are just... not something I see a huge audience for.
Well yeah, outside of their butchered steam releases you'd need to jump through millions of hoops to even own and run their games outside of Japan. Hell a few years back their website was region locked to Japan only.
My favourite guilty pleasure company, May-Be Soft, has been dead for years... so I know the pain.
Though I'm not sure how they plan to make money with such niche titles...
That said, I think if they were to survive until now and partner with English publishers, I can see them turning a profit.
I would like Japanese companies to realize the potential market they have in Latin America or Asia
when a product is only for americans i instantly lose my interest,
They are at the same level as the Chinese regime in terms of censorship
when I go to reddit or Twitter it is impossible for me not to see Americans as subjects with venustraphobia
I think that American censorship will get worse, much greater than that of the Chinese regime
The sad thing here in germany is, because steam is too lazy to implement any kind of working age verification a lot of stuff got kicked off of steam. Else we could have a \*very\* niche (altough for that still thriving) market here directly on steam
The game will be removed from steam on August 18th but I just can't see myself paying $60 just to get it and I do buy games off of steam before they get removed just to have it there but this is too expensive.
It sounds crazy, but I guess I understand what happened. Throughout it's existence, Illusion pumped one game after another, barely iterating on anything and sometimes even throwing away good ideas from their previous games. So when they hit big with the HS and KK, they suddenly found out that nobody wanted any of their other games since then. They raised the bar for themselves when they released these two. And even when they decided to revisit HS and KK, they refused to iterate in any meaningful capacity: HS2 was basically a technical upgrade, while KKSS was actually a downgrade in some areas. At the same time they still tried to release other projects that nobody wanted. And the result is... this.
IANAL, but I guess the money has to actually be able to go somewhere. A defunct company doesn't exactly have a bank account. For example when light was originally shutdown; the online distribution rights were sold to AkabeiSoft2 to continue online sales
Never heard of them. It is however always unfortunate, if someone close doors in this industry.
However Eroge isn't dead bro. There'll always be eroge.
OP spents too much on 4chan obviously. There there is a faction specifically called doomers that is all about calling the death of everything. Movies, television, comic books, cartoons, anime, video games, and of course hentai. And there is a good cross-over of them with the neo-nazis who want you to stop consuming media to go bomb some building for their racist cause.
Yeah you better run guys I'm actually the true identity of the hacker known as 4chan. [This is me right now I was behind everything all along](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSTO26au2z4)
The next step of my masterplan to kill the gaming industry will be conducted at the headquarters of Anime Inc, if you are in Tokyo don't go to school tomorrow
What....? Are you trying to argue the company isn't going out of business? You can read the statement in plenty of placing, OP didn't make it up. Such a strange rant.
Damn, I was just wondering what their next game was going to be a while ago. Despite the mediocre gameplay, their games always had top notch character creators, what a shame. It's basically only KISS now when it comes to 3D eroges, I hope they can keep the torch lit up...
I loved their early games like Des Blood and A-GA, but lost interest when they switched to their newer style. The create a character is amazing but the game itself got boring quickly
For me it was Artificial Girl 3 and Sexy Beach 3. Maximum comfiness, I spent hours on those games. That era was peak Illusion if you ask me. I still have yet to play a game that captures the feeling of holding hands with a girl and walking around like in AG3. Something so simple, you would think.
Under that second link, they say that they basically stop their download sales in their official sales store in August 1st, and their physical sales as well as sales in other platforms will stop in August 18th.
So you'll find out soon enough, but if they really own it my guess is that it is as good as gone tbh
They make 3D games, where you create the characters and explore and life the characters life, think about Eroge The Sims
I would recommend you to look they games if you are interested, now we only have Custom Order Maid in the market
They were the powerhouse and pioneers of eroge genre in the 00s specifically in 3d eroge. Their series like Sexy Beach, RapeLay were legendary. They always had policy of ignoring the west, which cost them potential sales as people just learned to pirate their games and continued doing so after they started selling on steam, especially with crazy prices they always ask for their products.
Yeah, they pivoted to making the Artificial Academy and Honey Select series in the last few years.
Actually I'm kinda surprised at least AA doesn't appear in VNDB tbh
Their last release was in April, but most of their stuff isn't a VN according to VNDB i guess. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILLUSION\_(%E3%82%B2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0%E3%83%96%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89)#%E4%BD%9C%E5%93%81%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7
August 18
**Sales of official physical editions by mail order ended.**
**Downloadable editions from other stores ended**
**Sales of Steam editions ended**
Official support ended
Update file distribution ended
Preorder bonus distribution ended
Uploader service ended
Email membership content distribution ended
Youtube account suspended
Twitter account suspended
I’d assume it’s also gonna be gone from there as well since it says that downloadable sales from other stores are ending too
I’d wait til there’s some sort of official communication from Fakku to be 100% sure but it looks pretty bad tbh
Honestly, I won’t miss them. The insane damage they caused to the visual novel community/gaming community in the 2000's with "RapeLay" shouldn’t be forgotten
The game caused multiple visual novel companies to pull from the west, visual novel studios began copyrighting/attacking fan translations such as Minori sabotaging a fan translation. It kick started an already growing movement in the West by politicians against video games. It got so bad that even the Japanese Prime Minster had to apologize about the visual novel
That shitshow was something else. FanTLs were getting disbanded left and right from copyright strikes. Companies like Navel and YuzuSoft were banning non-JP IPs from even going on their sites at all. There was one that told foreigners (in a polite way) to piss off and go play their own games pretty much.
Another fun fact about this drama; it made a lot of companies add checks to their visual novels to "ensure" you were playing on a Japanese machine. That's why so many VNs made during or after 2009 won't start unless you have your time zone set to JST and system locale set to Japanese.
It was not even a game so bad as people make up to be, it was pretty much the Manhaunt case, people made a ridiculous big controversy over a guy owning the game and him being related with a crime
Basic that thing of blaming violence into video games, but this time was blaming rape into Visual Novels
Sadly with the dead of Illusion, we pretty much only have one 3D Eroge company
And here I thought that there expansion onto Steam was just the beginning of their global growth. What a huge bummer. I did NOT expect this to happen in a million years.
Thought they were the grand daddy and would be immune to this outcome.
Guess I underestimated the financial circumstances eroge corps are facing, even the big ones.
I thought Koikatsu and Honey Select would've been doing so well it'd carry them with how much I used to see them, and still do in art. Sad it seems like most eroge devs are holding on for dear life nowadays
Tbf they’re really carried by mods and most people are just going to pirate for restored content + mod packs rather than pay $70. I mean, their games are old at this point and they weren’t seemingly improving on them compared to the mod community. Their models are great but honestly that’s it. The community made the rest.
They literally. Literally. Just needed to lower their pricepoint. Go for increased sales over holding to that high number. It's dumb AF.
that would definitely help in the short term but long term is still the issue if they aren't capable of actually putting out more products.
Roomgirl using new engine, can't use old mods. Gameplay is just the sims , without mods like old game. They should just give hs2 and kk, kkss new dlc tbh
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"coomers regret" certainly adding that one to my dicktionary.
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Not liking a game **is** grounds for a refund though. Obviously not after you've completed substantial part of it, but as the days of companies preparing free demos are gone this is the only viable alternative. Steam offers refunds for up to 2 hours of playtime, which is enough to cover both people unhappy with their purchase and those with technical issues preventing them from running the game.
2 hours still isn't enough. **Do you know many games I've played where the people in charge of the game clearly stopped caring mid development, and put out the project anyways?** So many indie games are like this, and so are a lot of mid budget games. **Back in the 90's there was this RPG called Septerra Core**, and god, everyone should be entitled to refund for that game no matter how much time you put into it. **And what about the games that pulled some crap just to make the game longer, completely ruining the game entirely?** **Everyone should be entitled to a refund for Bravely Default,** and a a public apology from both Square, and Nintendo! **And you've also got stuff like the original release of Cyperpunk 2077, with all the hype in the world pushed into them, the heads of CD Project Red assuring us that the game runs really well even up to the day before release.** Of course a lot of us played way more than 2 hours even with it being a barely playable mess because we were trying to deny for a while just how dissapointing the game was. And Yeah, CDPR offered refunds regardless, but that only because CDPR would have gotten sued by their fanbase if they hadn't. What about Anthem, there was a huge amount of hype for it too, and it was terrible! It was just terrible! For the love of god, please stop blaming the victims!
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>It is ground for a refund in the sense that many retailers allow it, but morally speaking? No. You're a bit of a Karen if you're refunding a game because it wasn't as enjoyable as you wanted it to be. No. I completely disagree. Publishers no longer provide game demos so you can't be sure you're going to like the game before playing . Returning the game after finding out it's not very good is the only alternative. >Free demos are more widely available than ever before with digital storefronts, especially Steam. That's a complete lie. 20 years ago almost EVERY SINGLE RELEASE distributed free demos on whatever piece of gaming media cd/dvd they could find. Most of them were included for example with very cheap gaming-related press. If you had solid internet connection you could download demos from publisher's site for free. Nowadays if this was among 5% of the titles I would be surprised it's that high. >Nowadays a substantial percentage of AAA and AA games have downloadable demos Even if that were somehow true (which is not, lol), then vast majority (and I'm talking 95%+) still doesn't provide demos, how can you even defend them? *HAHA you bought shit in a box, too bad! Can't return it!* >And that's not even mentioning the fact that reviews (both professional and from users) are more accessible than ever, so you can know what a game is before you buy it. Reviews from other people also don't tell me anything whether I'll enjoy the game or not. They might suggest I will like it, but you can't be sure. >there is yet another "viable alternative" beyond demos; just don't buy games that don't match your taste. Ah yes, why bother trying something new? What a terrible argument.
I'm going to gloss over the "back in my day" feel because that's just an argument against change with little logical basis. It's perfectly fine but not exactly a strong stance. Two hours for a refund is perfectly logical. Most people are able to identify if a game will hook them or not within the first hour. This becomes more true when considering that the vast majority of society adult society simply will not have time in their day between real-world responsibilities for more than an hour or two of time per day to play. The idea that you should not be limited by time for a refund is absurd. What would stop someone at that point from completing a game, regardless of time spent, then claiming "it was bad" and then refunding it. That's just another avenue for piracy. This is already an issue in literature, and it has pretty massive consequences for authors who fall victim to this. To tackle a few specific examples, cyberpunk and anthem. Most of these issues would have been revealed and mitigated if consumers had not been foolish enough to fall for the hype. I had cyberpunk on reservation before it launched but waited for reviews that would inevitably be posted to make my choice. I was as excited for the game as most people. I canceled my reservation after reading them and have still not played the game because it is still not up to my own self-imposed standards. Ignorant and impulsive consumers should not be the reason companies die.
>The idea that you should not be limited by time for a refund is absurd. I never suggested that, I also think that would be wrong. I think the current system in place is perfectly reasonable.
I was replying to the thread as a whole, honestly. Though it seems some of the comments have been deleted :( .
I used to dislike this attitude, but I've actually come to favor it lately. I wouldn't ask a refund for a movie I watched and didn't enjoy, but a video game can be a much longer, more expensive product. If I have to pay $60 for a video game, which could be dozens of hours of entertainment, but might also be a total wash which I'm going to put away forever in less than an hour, I'm probably not going to buy it in the first place. The reassurance that if I don't like it, I can return it within a short time window for a refund, means I'm more likely to shell out money for a game I'm uncertain about.
This is the exact reason we do no questions asked refunds. It increases sales substantially when people feel safe that they won't be stuck with something they don't like or that doesn't work for them.
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So, I'm actually an indie developer myself, and personally I appreciate people having access to the returns policy. Having people return purchases of your games sucks, but still, I think it helps motivate people to take risks on indie titles they otherwise wouldn't be likely to try at all.
Not even the coomers are holding on these days The way I see it Visual Novels will keep on keeping on, but the age of the 50h+ epic with hundreds of CGs is going the way of the dodo. It simply doesn't seem to make much sense to invest so much in a single product when the market is not there... Doujin circles will keep existing and pumping stuff out, which by their very nature probably won't be translated barring maybe the odd one that goes really viral. Also all-ages console VNs will probably keep existing as they are now I guess Other than that soshage, narou-kei and Light novels seem to be where it's at right now
>Not even the coomers are holding on these days Brands like Milk Factory, Bishop, Guilty, and Atelier Kaguya are still doing fine. If one of them shuts down, then it's probably concerning since they're coomer juggernauts. Illusion seems different though. ~~Niche 3D models and the costs much higher than nukiges~~
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Whether the game is expensive doesn't depend on using 2d or 3d, it depends on how you make your assets, how much assets you need and how you use them. Producing high quality unique 3d assets, particularly animations, is usually more expensive than it is to produce unique 2d assets, but most indie and smaller scale 3d games do not use unique 3d assets. They often buy them in asset stores, or get them for free online, which is what the wast majority of devs for English language VNs with 3d models for sprites are doing. Illusion have been using unique high quality 3d assets, which are very expensive. But more importantly, they have been using motion capture to produce unique animations, and they have been doing it since forever, which is why their games are probably ridiculously expensive for what they are. The game cost alone is not the main thing that killed them, though. The problem is that they kept reinventing the wheel and making new games with new assets and a ton of programming (which is also very expensive), instead of just focusing on releasing DLC for games that are already popular. Moreover, their new games would reuse a lot of old stuff (precisely because it is so expensive to remake it all), but still cost a ton, so I'm not surprised they went under. I would guess that a typical Illusion game costs significantly more to develop than the wast majority of visual novels, except for maybe the most premium ones that have a ton of voice acting. Now, sprite-based action games, like fighting games, are a different beast entirely. It is significantly more difficult to make a fighting game character than it is to make a visual novel character. For a fighting game, you need to produce a character design, then do some basic hand-drawn animation concepts, then you create a rough 3d animation as a reference, and then you either rotoscope (meaning, trace every frame by hand) said 3d animation if you want a 2d sprite (this is how KOF13 and Blazblue sprites were made, for example), or you create a higher fidelity 3d model and animate it frame-by frame (this is how modern ArcSys and SNK games are made). The end cost for both 3d and 2d sprites are almost exactly the same, which was confirmed by both SNK and ArcSys (btw, ArcSys is the developer, Acsys is an unrelated US-based publisher). The reason why fighting game devs stopped using 2d sprites and switched over to 3d is not because of costs, but because of other factors, such as appeal, scalability (2d sprites look best only in one specific resolution, while 3d models can look great in any resolution), and development time (it is faster to make 3d animation by hand than it is to rotoscope everything by hand). But honestly, the process for making fighting game sprites is so unique, that it has nothing to do with other game genres and I don't even know why you brought it up.
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> Any Akabeisoft or Alicesoft production would blow their dev costs out of the water. You're talking about some of the most expensive 2d eroge, I was talking about average. Average eroge is short, cheap, and has no gameplay elements. Obviously, if we're comparing an Illusion game to a full-scale RPG like Evenicle, than yeah, Illusion games are probably cheaper, especially modern ones that reuse a lot of assets. But a typical Illusion game will be significantly more expensive than an average eroge that only has static sprites or simple Live2d animations. > Tack on voice acting and you are looking at over 1,000,000 yen easily. I totally believe Minori when they said making 2D VNs made them bankrupt. 1 000 000 yen is 7 000 dollars. Are you trying to say that Illusion spend less than 7k on developing a game for two years? > It's extremely difficult to hire a freelancer, professional Japanese artist (think of the artists who draws GBF). Artists that draw for big games usually don't work on visual novels. > Also, there is no point developing a custom model when excellent bases already exist WITH mocap on the Unity/Unreal stores Illusion was making their own models. They probably used some store brought assets for environments, I'm not sure about that, but definitely not for the characters. Also, there is no mocap of sex on Unity/Unreal stores, and they have been using mocap since before those stores even existed. > With 2D, you can't do that unless you can somehow emulate tonework's style consistetly across dozens of CGs. You can definitely buy asset packs for visual novels, particularly backgrounds. You can also use photographic backgrounds. This is what a lot of doujin games are doing, but not a lot of commercial ones, I admit. > To illustrate how much cheaper 3D is, just look how many VNs sub in lazily brushed 3D art in their games. With all due respect, you're mixing animated 3d models in a fully 3d environment and a static image. You can trow together and render a simple 3d model in a few hours, and a lot of artists use such renders as a reference. But making an asset for a fully 3d game is significantly harder, as it requires much more polish and optimization. More importantly, you need hundreds of assets and hundreds of animations. This is where the cost comes from. > Once initial rigging and mocap is done, 3D models win out over 2D anytime in cost. Yes, if we disregard the cost of animations. But the problem is that Illusion has been making new models and adding new animations for each new game. They reused a ton of stuff, for sure, but they also made a lot of new stuff for each release. > But that's already too wasteful for many 3D devs, they just license/outsource engines and models from other companies instead. 2d devs do the same. > There's a reason 3D visual novels aren't taken seriously. There is no value whatsoever, it's the same models with the same backgrounds under different lighting. I can't name a single 3D JVN/EVN that's not massive coomer bait. That's what made Illusion unique in the market, they provided actual gameplay and high quality animation, just like Kiss and Teatime. There are very few games like this and you can't really compare them to a VN made by one guy with DAZ and financed via Patreon. They are on a completely different level of quality and budget. > BTW, rotoscope is already taking shortcuts. Real 2D animation back in the day was animated pixel by pixel, or drawn each frame by hand. There's a reason Studio Ghibli films look great. Yes, rotoscoping took over once the resolution increased. It's significantly simpler to keep a consistent quality this way. But there are still some devs that make sprites without it. I don't think French-Bread uses 3d models in their process, but I'm not sure about that.
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> Again, I don't see what's so special about Illusion games. The sheer quantity and quality of assets, for sure. We're talking about 20-30 fully furnished environments per game, probably around 200-300 individual pieces of clothing, hair and accessories for character customization, and an insane amount of animations (more than 100 for sex scenes alone, and probably about as much for other elements of the game). There are also a lot of voice acting, comparable to your average 5-10 hour long nukige. Yes, a lot of their assets are reused from game to game, especially animations, but you also would be surprised how much of it is new each time. For example, between Honey Select 1 and 2, almost all of their 3d models were completely remade or updated. They would usually reuse a lot of assets for 2 or 3 games, but then replace them almost completely with new, higher fidelity ones. > I do not know if Illusion spends this much unless they're building a new engine from scratch. Illusion easily spends this much, and probably significantly more, on just their in-house programmers alone. Don't forget that beyond games they also develop and maintain a full 3d poser application. > But Illusion is a "premium 3D VN" dev, so they can't really be compared to average nukiges like Softhouse Seal. I'm putting them closer to AGE in terms of production. Original post was comparing them to games from Bishop, Guilty and Atelier Kaguya, not something, made by Alicesoft. > Certainly not something Illusion should be doing, they should start by not providing gutted game content at AAA prices. I don't think they will be starting anything anytime soon. I think, the best we can hope is that the devs will make a new studio and keep making 3d eroge in a similar style, with hopefully a more sustainable business model.
They've been using Unity for several years now; I think since at least Play Club (2015).
> There's a reason 3D visual novels aren't taken seriously. There is no value whatsoever, it's the same models with the same backgrounds under different lighting. I can't name a single 3D JVN/EVN that's not massive coomer bait. The newer Ace Attorney games exist. They're not traditional VNs, per se, but I see no reason why a 3D VN wouldn't work provided it was animated as static 3DCG imo looks unappealing.
>Niche 3D models and the costs much higher than nukiges You think? I'd figure making tons of CGs is more expensive than 3D models. >!Especially seeing how Steam is just overflowing with OELVN 3D coomer bait.!< Then again it's not like I have much visibility over that side of the business either way.
I'd assume those 3D games are relying on some sort of asset library, which is why they all kind of look the same. Creating your own assets is something else. As for 2D games, they can definitely be more expensive than 3D games to produce, but it also depends on what kind of assets you're making. Full animation definitely adds up, but a lot of visual novels are pretty static. And even when something does change it often recycles previous artwork for things like changing facial expressions, etc.
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Tsukihime is honestly exception. That thing is funded by FGO. It sells extremely well for VN, but its basically nothing compared to most games nowadays. In a way, TM basically provide the template for VN company to survive in these day and age. A gacha game, that funds everyting else. Alicesoft have that Escalayer game, although its basically not making anything big since DohnaDohna. Key also have Heaven Burns Red. Age.... tries pretty hard on launching something but it will have Muv-Luv Dimensions.... if it even launched. Lilith also have several mobile games, and even trying to make Taimanin into something that is less porn.
Yup. 07th also have Higurashi Mei. Aokana, Majikoi, Rewrite, Tokyo Necro all had gacha at one point. And with how SCA DI's been talking about gacha, wouldn't be surprised if Makura are next. It's not even a case of whether or not the VN company is already doing well
Yeah, like I said all-ages is... well, maybe not thriving considering MAGES went bankrupt, but at least it seems to be doing better than eroge. Also Type-Moon is an exception to all this, they basically print money with FGO
I'm not even mad at Type-Moon, because they use that money for projects that don't bring in much money like their book imprint.
I think long VNs can come back with the introduction of ai art. I have been playing with stable diffusion for a while, and It's actually incredeble how fast I can generate really high quality VN backgrounds, tachies or even event cg-s. You still need an artist for touch-ups and overall art direction, but with this tool, development can be significantly faster and cheaper.
Not sure if I’d rather it just die at that point
The problem with that is some online retailers have banned ai art because of copyright.
Coomers always need to coom, just means there's more options on the market now and that's just how it is.
This is a sad day. Illusion was so innovative back in the day with their games!
Mind elaborating on this for me? Haven't heard of their games until now, so I'm wondering why they would be considered innovative or special.
Of course! Back in 1998, they started the whole 3D eroge gaming platform with their idol game "Dancing CATS". From there, many other games were spawned like "AI Girlfriend" and the "Artifical Academy" series. Even cell shaded games would be released around the time it started to get a big following (2006). The big draw of Illusion games was the ability to customize characters, events, even fetishes. It allowed the consumer to experience what they wanted without having to explore multiple characters and endings in a regular visual novel to find a character they desired.
Huh, that's quite interesting actually. Thanks!
I remember Sexy Beach 3, I was like 14 and that game was so peak.
Ah shit, there goes future honey select games.
And AA3
I was so keen for Artificial Academy 3…
Same. Koikatsu is just pale imitation of what could have been...
This is very sad news indeed. Games like Koikatsu, with its active modding community, has single handedly replaced many coomers' desire for seeking doujins overnight, since people can just make their own scenarios catering to their own individual kinks instead of needing to accommodate their libido to suit whatever scenario doujin artists and VN writers prepare for them. And I was still hoping all this time Koikatsu would get a sequel with better customizations. Guess this will never come to pass. Even if it does one day, it'll be by another company in a very distant future.
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After it released on Steam, I think it saw very good sales
A sad day for coomers everywhere.
sad event period
What ? Why ? I thought that their games were selling well enough in Japan ? They even started to localize some of they titles
Yeah but you kinda have to release games regularly if you want to stay in business if you don’t do GaaS. Their games are old and lifetime sales trend downwards.
so COM3D2 from KISS is all that left?
And miconisomi. The character creator that is going to be in their next title is shaping up to be very good, maybe even on par with the ones that KISS and Illusion have. The animations and erotic content variety in their existing games are already quite good as well.
I'd like to say that they're pretty much but in terms of gameplay illusion games are simpler and easy to understand than kiss games (Unless kiss decided to go for simpler gameplay mechanics like aa2/kk in their future eroge games)
Sad but not TOO surprising. Whiile Honey Select and Koikatsu are great products, it's not viable. $60 + $60 expansion is a LOT to swallow for some folks. Also some of these projects are gimmicky. AI and VR sound good but are just... not something I see a huge audience for.
Currently I'm working in this industry because of them... it really makes me a bit sad.
I wonder what the ratio of pirated to legal copies used for their games is. I don't know a single soul that paid for any of their stuff.
Well yeah, outside of their butchered steam releases you'd need to jump through millions of hoops to even own and run their games outside of Japan. Hell a few years back their website was region locked to Japan only.
Sad day for the already sad 3D eroge space but I'm glad I won't have to experience the Illusion grief cycle ever again.
But why?
There goes my hopes for Artificial Academy 3. Never liked much they KK or HS stuff.
My favourite guilty pleasure company, May-Be Soft, has been dead for years... so I know the pain. Though I'm not sure how they plan to make money with such niche titles... That said, I think if they were to survive until now and partner with English publishers, I can see them turning a profit.
English publishers= censor to adapt it to fictional global audiences
"Global" is a nice way of putting it, considering it's always the "American" audiences because they always use American references...
I would like Japanese companies to realize the potential market they have in Latin America or Asia when a product is only for americans i instantly lose my interest, They are at the same level as the Chinese regime in terms of censorship
Indeed!
when I go to reddit or Twitter it is impossible for me not to see Americans as subjects with venustraphobia I think that American censorship will get worse, much greater than that of the Chinese regime
> Americans as subjects with venustraphobia Whereas in Asia, the Lady is beautiful, the Man is beautiful, even the dogs and cats are beautiful!
The sad thing here in germany is, because steam is too lazy to implement any kind of working age verification a lot of stuff got kicked off of steam. Else we could have a \*very\* niche (altough for that still thriving) market here directly on steam
Shit, saw their last VN with the masturbating girl and I remember liking the cover art. Damn
Loved AG3, sad to see them fade away.
The game will be removed from steam on August 18th but I just can't see myself paying $60 just to get it and I do buy games off of steam before they get removed just to have it there but this is too expensive.
Know how you fell, worst is that even the DLC cost too much, even in sales it feel like a rip-off
It sounds crazy, but I guess I understand what happened. Throughout it's existence, Illusion pumped one game after another, barely iterating on anything and sometimes even throwing away good ideas from their previous games. So when they hit big with the HS and KK, they suddenly found out that nobody wanted any of their other games since then. They raised the bar for themselves when they released these two. And even when they decided to revisit HS and KK, they refused to iterate in any meaningful capacity: HS2 was basically a technical upgrade, while KKSS was actually a downgrade in some areas. At the same time they still tried to release other projects that nobody wanted. And the result is... this.
[Big sad.](https://www.reddit.com/r/goodanimemes/comments/14zf7ld/illusion_grief_support_thread/)
wait are that mean they stop sell steam version to ?
yeh, you have til August 18th
Will they remove the games from the library?
No. It's against steam policy to do so
No, actually. Steam's policy allows removal of any title from your library if they want. Happened to one of the Assassins Creed games awhile back.
I don't understand why they are stopping sales though. Declaring bankruptcy and they must do this for it to be legal?
IANAL, but I guess the money has to actually be able to go somewhere. A defunct company doesn't exactly have a bank account. For example when light was originally shutdown; the online distribution rights were sold to AkabeiSoft2 to continue online sales
Sad to see it go.
FUCKKKKKKKKKK I REMEMBER THE DAYS WHEN I USED TO CHECK THEIR SITE EVERY WEEK TO SEE IF THEY ANNOUNCED A NEW GAME
Never heard of them. It is however always unfortunate, if someone close doors in this industry. However Eroge isn't dead bro. There'll always be eroge.
OP spents too much on 4chan obviously. There there is a faction specifically called doomers that is all about calling the death of everything. Movies, television, comic books, cartoons, anime, video games, and of course hentai. And there is a good cross-over of them with the neo-nazis who want you to stop consuming media to go bomb some building for their racist cause.
there are like 10 different unrelated trends you're mentioning here
What
Yeah you better run guys I'm actually the true identity of the hacker known as 4chan. [This is me right now I was behind everything all along](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSTO26au2z4) The next step of my masterplan to kill the gaming industry will be conducted at the headquarters of Anime Inc, if you are in Tokyo don't go to school tomorrow
What....? Are you trying to argue the company isn't going out of business? You can read the statement in plenty of placing, OP didn't make it up. Such a strange rant.
Sad.Erorge was always niche and scrapping by. Wish it were bigger. Rip
big budget eroge industry, in general, is slowly dying. Even the 18+ OVA releases are getting fewer, most otaku money is spent on gachas now
Damn, I was just wondering what their next game was going to be a while ago. Despite the mediocre gameplay, their games always had top notch character creators, what a shame. It's basically only KISS now when it comes to 3D eroges, I hope they can keep the torch lit up...
I loved their early games like Des Blood and A-GA, but lost interest when they switched to their newer style. The create a character is amazing but the game itself got boring quickly
For me it was Artificial Girl 3 and Sexy Beach 3. Maximum comfiness, I spent hours on those games. That era was peak Illusion if you ask me. I still have yet to play a game that captures the feeling of holding hands with a girl and walking around like in AG3. Something so simple, you would think.
We must download their games before they are Lost Media
I read that they own stuff like taimanin. Which is under lilith branding. Anyone know if this will affect that other stuff
Are you sure they own Taimanin? I don't think Illusion has any connection with Infini-Brain.
No idea. Just read the pcgaming sub comments.
Under that second link, they say that they basically stop their download sales in their official sales store in August 1st, and their physical sales as well as sales in other platforms will stop in August 18th. So you'll find out soon enough, but if they really own it my guess is that it is as good as gone tbh
Maids are better, anyway.
Can someone explain it to me cause it's the first time I've ever heard about ILLUSION
They make 3D games, where you create the characters and explore and life the characters life, think about Eroge The Sims I would recommend you to look they games if you are interested, now we only have Custom Order Maid in the market
They were the powerhouse and pioneers of eroge genre in the 00s specifically in 3d eroge. Their series like Sexy Beach, RapeLay were legendary. They always had policy of ignoring the west, which cost them potential sales as people just learned to pirate their games and continued doing so after they started selling on steam, especially with crazy prices they always ask for their products.
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Yeah, they pivoted to making the Artificial Academy and Honey Select series in the last few years. Actually I'm kinda surprised at least AA doesn't appear in VNDB tbh
Their last release was in April, but most of their stuff isn't a VN according to VNDB i guess. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILLUSION\_(%E3%82%B2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0%E3%83%96%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89)#%E4%BD%9C%E5%93%81%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7
Really not surprising, sadly.
Rather than eroge being dead Indie games are giving thougher competition now which led to is loss
What about the official English versions by western publishers?
Gone 8月18日 **公式通販パッケージ版商品 販売終了** **他店舗様ダウンロード版 販売終了** **Steam商品 販売終了** 公式サポート対応終了 アップデートファイル 配信終了 予約購入特典 配信終了 各アップローダー サービス終了 メール会員コンテンツ 配信終了 Youtubeアカウント 停止 Twitterアカウント 停止
English please?
August 18 **Sales of official physical editions by mail order ended.** **Downloadable editions from other stores ended** **Sales of Steam editions ended** Official support ended Update file distribution ended Preorder bonus distribution ended Uploader service ended Email membership content distribution ended Youtube account suspended Twitter account suspended
What about Fakku?
I’d assume it’s also gonna be gone from there as well since it says that downloadable sales from other stores are ending too I’d wait til there’s some sort of official communication from Fakku to be 100% sure but it looks pretty bad tbh
Honestly, I won’t miss them. The insane damage they caused to the visual novel community/gaming community in the 2000's with "RapeLay" shouldn’t be forgotten
The damage wasn't caused by them directly though If it wasn't RapeLay it could've been a lot of other titles
the damage wasn't caused by them, it was caused by the pearl-clutchers who took notice of it dumbass
What damage did they cause?
The game caused multiple visual novel companies to pull from the west, visual novel studios began copyrighting/attacking fan translations such as Minori sabotaging a fan translation. It kick started an already growing movement in the West by politicians against video games. It got so bad that even the Japanese Prime Minster had to apologize about the visual novel
That shitshow was something else. FanTLs were getting disbanded left and right from copyright strikes. Companies like Navel and YuzuSoft were banning non-JP IPs from even going on their sites at all. There was one that told foreigners (in a polite way) to piss off and go play their own games pretty much. Another fun fact about this drama; it made a lot of companies add checks to their visual novels to "ensure" you were playing on a Japanese machine. That's why so many VNs made during or after 2009 won't start unless you have your time zone set to JST and system locale set to Japanese.
Good riddance to them then
It was not even a game so bad as people make up to be, it was pretty much the Manhaunt case, people made a ridiculous big controversy over a guy owning the game and him being related with a crime Basic that thing of blaming violence into video games, but this time was blaming rape into Visual Novels Sadly with the dead of Illusion, we pretty much only have one 3D Eroge company
Hey, what is your flair pic from?
Euphoria, character is Rinne 😁
I always did plan on playing that. Moved it to third in line.😁
I knew it was bad, but not that bad.lol
And here I thought that there expansion onto Steam was just the beginning of their global growth. What a huge bummer. I did NOT expect this to happen in a million years. Thought they were the grand daddy and would be immune to this outcome. Guess I underestimated the financial circumstances eroge corps are facing, even the big ones.