The CEO of PocketPair has commented on the scandal surrounding a Japanese visual novel.

In July, Takiya Iijima, the creator and developer of the visual novel Apathy Murder Club, took to Twitter to threaten a streamer who had violated a request he made on the game’s Steam page. The request was that no one stream the game until August 8th. Normally, developers and publishers don’t have much of a say in this, but Japan is a different story, especially when it comes to a visual novel. One of the “criminals” has been arrested and charged… for uploading some footage to the Internet!

The thing about a visual novel is that the person we are watching is doing for us what we would do for ourselves, so we get the full experience. Iijima’s tweet was echoed by Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe. The studio’s game Palworld has managed to attract 2 million concurrent players and is easily reaching 50,000 today. Mizobe sympathizes with Iijima mainly because of someone’s bad manners in the whole affair, and it would be important for developers and players to respect each other’s rules. He adds that most content creators follow the rules, and many developers are happy to have their games live-streamed on YouTube or Twitch, for example…

ゲームの実況に関して、ゲーム開発者ごとにスタンスは違うと思いますので、開発者と実況者が、お互いに尊重し合い、各人がルールを守るのは大切だと思います。

その上でですが・・・・

ポケットペアのゲームは全て配信自由です！…

— Takuro Mizobe | Palworld (@urokuta_ja) July 30, 2024

However, Palworld’s popularity came about because many people were broadcasting the game. Therefore, Mizobe cannot thank them enough for the fact that Pocketpair’s games are enjoyed by so many people. He says that the culture of streaming games is a beautiful thing in itself, and that content creators play a big role in stimulating the game industry because of it.

And it’s hard to argue with that. The success of a game is not only up to the developers, it’s also up to the audience. If the player has a lot of fun, then more people will be interested in the product, and that’s a self-reinforcing process, so more people can watch it, and more people can have a good time.

Source: PCGamer