Gaming What's the deal with sakuragame steam published content?

[Sonic Angel Knight]

So I was doing a bit of browsing on steam lately looking for some quality games I may have missed over the last year, and I come across a lot of them which I don't remember there being since I had tried pc games before in around 5 years ago. There is a lot of Visual Novels and RPG maker games. Now that isn't a problem or anything. The problem is the ones by sakuragame, most of them have a negative review (Despite showing positive feedback on their page which is only cause there more positive reviews than negative) but the negative reviews point out that they have poor translations "As if they was just inserted into a automated machine like google translate and copy/paste just to sell" without actual localization of a team or person who understands both languages to make credible decisions to how to translate the context.

That also followed by the fact the game is as low as $2 and some offering a refund as seen in the steampage news, which to me if you say that, you obviously didn't have confidence in your game to begin with, why bother making it $2 anyway, why not free or why even put on steam? The last thing being is mostly fan service type games. Now of course there is steam games that do exist without the ERSB ratings which is legal anyway, I know these games are for adults cause every time I click to read the description, steam ask me to verify my age. (If there is a way to stop it, please let me know.) But most of my thoughts is the main 3 features I mentioned, no quality localization, Poor translation, very cheap prices, excessive fan service, mostly the same kinds of games (If we can call them that) only difference being the story and characters featured rather than unique gameplay differences.

The description doesn't really help tell me what kind of game each one of them are or point out some interesting key features that make one RPG maker game different from another RPG maker game, unless there is no way each one is different cause they all use the same one. But is frustrating knowing someone can be baited into buying a game they wasn't looking for due to false representation of not helpful descriptions, screenshots and videos that can't show off enough because they are advertising a game that clearly was censored just to be on steam to be accepted for sale and all of that is part of the game key feature of advertisement. Reading the review shouldn't be the only way to learn in detail about the game's value, but clearly they didn't make these with intentions of the english player base, it was probably a afterthought to make extra money. I didn't make this to shame anyone or anything but really, people will catch on and not support poorly made content.

I dunno if every steam visual novel or RPG maker game is like this because I hope not, but If your content is intended to be adults only and remain uncensored, please consider selling it not on steam. If you don't have a team to distribute localization, do not use a translator as a solution, is not that easy. If you bought or seen one of these unmentionable games, share your thoughts below please. If you need more idea what I'm talking about, you can look up the steam publisher sakuragame by CLICKING HERE.

 

[Taleweaver]

I'm...not really sure what you're trying to say here.

* I tried to look up a few of these critics, but it took me five attempts to find one (here). The previous ones aren't even visual novels but more match-3 games (when it comes to actual anime-"porn" on steam, look up winged cloud). But even then: the focus of the games is obviously Japanese. It wouldn't surprise me one bit that they just made the game for their audience and just threw a percentage of the remains in an English translation for the weeaboos who buy these stuff. So I read the complaints more in the sense of "the group of gamers interested in these games isn't big enough to warrant quality translations, but I'm buying these games nonetheless".

* steam is more catered towards a western market, which is more prudish. It may not even be valve's fault: I'm a member of an adult site, and once it grew enough to come on the radar, groups lobbied to banks to deny them loans and payment options for members. And you can understand that the last thing valve wants is people not being able to pay with paypal, visa or other payment options anymore. That's why even the adult games are...rather modest and rarely if ever show actual nudity (of course valve can't be blamed if the developers use full nudity patches elsewhere).

* so the games are 2 bucks instead of free. Do I really have to point out that small incomes can still become great ones if it's bought in large enough quantities? And as for why it's on steam: the obvious "it's the largest game site on the planet".


* of course there are quality visual novels out there (hint: telltale games). Whether there are quality adult visual novels out there on steam is a different matter. Something like "Song of Saya" (the only one I know) isn't on there, and I can understand why: if that had to be censored you would lose the reason of the novel(1) being what it is. RPG maker...let's say I distrust the engine. Of course it's all about how you use it ('to the moon' is an example of it being put to great use), but most games I've seen look bland and extremely similar (2) (the fact that you can instantly recognize an RPG maker game isn't a good thing).





(1): to be clear: i consider visual novels to be games. But they're on a spectrum. And Song of Saya is really right at the border of it being an actual novel, as it has only 2-4 points where you can make any choice whatsoever.
(2): I'm still on the fence for something like "Learn Japanese to survive: hiragana battle". It mixes learning the hiragana alphabet with an old Final fantasy RPG, which is interesting...but even then, it was just so freaking standard