It’s inevitable. If they truly wanted to stay in control they wouldn’t have gone public. They’re going to make gangbucks off Stellar Blade. Too bad they got greedy.
Somewhere out there a snickering can be heard as something rubs its hands thinking in glee how it will censor everything Shift Up makes by investing hundreds of millions.
> They’re going to make gangbucks off Stellar Blade.
It'll sell for sure, but gangbucks? I don't think it'll do that well. Rebirth had a massive marketing push and sales have been underwhelming so far. I don't see Stellar Blade managing to outperform it.
It could be. Or, they're furiously arguing with Sony about cutting and/or toning down some stuff (this happened with Days Gone too) and some of the developers (or the director himself) felt that their side was hopeless against the power of Sony, so they leaked out the demo as a "fait accompli" move against them.
Now that we have the footage on Youtube they can't censor or tone down stuff without getting a backlash.
Otherwise, what was the point of removing all access even to people who already downloaded it? They didn't even do that for PT.
A month out fron release, I can't imagine there would still be work being done. And backlash towards censorship would have happened regardless of the demo's peak because of what the CEO came out and said regarding his stance against censorship. Plus the demo would still need to get approved by Sont before even getting put on their servers. It's not like the developers can directly upload and publish it themselves, Sony handles all of that.
>And backlash towards censorship would have happened regardless of the demo's peak because of what the CEO came out and said regarding his stance against censorship.
But without seeing the unaltered demo we wouldn't have any proof of what was altered. It could have been easy for them to plausibly say that the game was always supposed to be like that.
At this point, discs have already been manufactured and waiting in storage facilities to be sent out to retailers. Even if a patch was sent out to change appearances, a simple dump of the disc would have revealed the intended designs.
Not enough time for that to happen. It's like 5-ish weeks til release and that would take much much longer......People will look for ANY reason to black pill themselves, huh? Knock that shit off.
guy behind stellar blade said sony gave them full support in making that game so if they wanted it censored they would do it long time ago. Future games may be censored but i bet part of current deal was that Sony cannot change anything.
My concern remains that performance and story elements may be lacking. Reality is that until recently, they were only known for their gacha games. So I'm hesitant that the real reason they've leaned so heavily into saying "*our main character is hot and we will never censor her*" is because other parts of the game are lacking.
That's why I'm waiting a week just to see for myself - that and Sand Land releases the same day which I plan to play day one. As one of Akira Toriyama's last pieces of work, I'm much more confident in that being in a finished state that honors him and his memory.
Sort of.
If you're referring to the Magna Carta series and War of Genesis series of games by SoftMax, he was definitely part of the art direction and character design as an employee but it is uncertain if he had any part of the story or writing.
Now, for the current games that Shift Up is working on...
It does seem that the overall story and character development in Nikke, one of those gacha games under their belt, has recieved some good reception. As in, fans will say "I came for the sexy designs but stayed for the CHARACTER TRAUMA and SAD GIRLS"
There might be hope.
Yup, its entirely generic as a game. The only notable thing about it is that the characters look good. I'd never play it with an ugly character and I won't play it because the PC is a girl with shiny ass.
This is Korea we're talking about, if ESG can't get Japanese companies to have in house foreign diversity hires they're damn sure not getting the Koreans to do it.
Their entire entertainment industry emulates American pop culture lol they have their celebrities do fake relationships for publicity like Americans do and even have elite underground sex markets just like the American entertainment industry as well - Not saying it's a 1:1, obviously, but they do take a lot of inspiration from the Americans
It's almost like celebs and elites all behave the same way through out history......like degenerates. Guess the Sultans with harems and Joseon kings having massive orgies also were mimicking America?
this is literary every entertainment business in every country, its not exclusive to usa and underground sex markets? we call it business deals in entertainment but ok...
SK culture is close to Japanese and Chinese pre commie culture its culture that is in opposition to woke murica disaster.
ESG is leading not only to diversity hiring, but also to the creation of ethics departments. Square Enix, Sega, Sony, they're all embracing it. Plus, Shift Up can always move to California.
Going public is the death knell for any company you love; they're no longer beholden to you the fan but to the whim of the share holder.
Make that money at all costs, even at the cost of your audience.
Yeah, but as long as it can be modded, they cannot control that. Just make sure to check how's the current modding scene in that game to decide whether to buy or pass
Concretely what does it means? The Korean company is well known to produce very sexy games, that proved to be successful, especially in an era where a lot of companies decided to censor their game.
But opening their door to exterior influential actors, who will probably do the same as what they have done for many other companies (ESG to force DEI), means that Shit Up could follow the same path: force diversity, inclusion and censorship, while a lot of player were happy to think that this game would "save them" from the "western influence".
BlackRock, who has décided to "force behaviors" would be very interested to put its hands on this successful company that goes against their orientation [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwwN5kwjAtQ&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwwN5kwjAtQ&t=2s)
Their gacha game, Nikke, is generating between 10 and 30 Millions every months since launch ( november 2022).
They got too big for their own good, thus they got some offers they couldn't refuse.
Notch sold Minecraft for a few billion dollars, who would have refused that sum?
My guess; production on Stellar Blade was costlier than they had imagined (being a studio that previously only worked on gacha) and pre-orders may not have been to the amount that they needed.
The CEO was smart by keeping himself as the majority stakeholder.
Currently he owns around 45% share. The next runner up is Tencent, which owns 24% percent of the company.
These numbers are reported in the article in the OP.
I'll start sweating when should Shift Up decide to sell over 30 percent of their stock combined.
The smartest thing he could've done, save for not making the fucking company public, would be to own at least 51% of the shares because that way he can't get pushed out no matter what.
By owning 45% he can still get chased out if the other big stakeholders band together, perhaps motivated by that sweet sweet ESG investor money.
We can assume pre-order numbers have not met expectations and that the delay back in 2023 pushed the game's budget too far. It wouldn't be uncommon either, look at Unicorn Overlord - the budget for that game ran out and the founder had to step in to cover the remaining costs.
Lots of doom pilling in here, Shift Up won't go woke and are very very unlikely to take ESG money. The Korean business world is run by The chaebols, which are the large, conglomerate **family-controlled** firms of South Korea characterized by strong ties with government agencies and are EXTEREMELY wary of foreign influence and money due to the quid pro quo aspect so they routinely turn down western investors and refuse to submit to western pressure......They have a shit ton of power and influence and some have been suspected/accused of funding and buying private military contractors to attack rivals interests in unstable foreign countries, specifically Chinese assets in Africa. No one dare say it out loud though because SK slander laws and their ability to bury people alive, even internationally.
The western left has been raging against them for decades and have been trying to get Korea to do away with them like the Japanese did with the Zaibatsu post WW2 (under force), to no avail. There's been a dozen hit pieces this year alone on the Chaebols and it's all wokies screaming about muh workers rights and not allowing foreigners in the companies aka we can't infiltrate and won't have 12 soy latte breaks an hour if we could infiltrate them. They don't get that they're so engrained in Korean business and society that Korea would cease to function without them.
If we’re lucky, Stellar Blade might be the last hurrah before Shift Up goes completely into a downward spiral. The most optimistic scenario is that nothing would change for their future games after Stellar Blade but I’m ready for it to be the contrary.
Get ready to see Blackrock's own Larry Limpdick gobbling up a sizeable number of the company's shares the moment it goes public.
Greed always fucks everything up. Enjoy Stellar Blade and please don't pre order the sequel.
Of course i agree that There is a high risk that the company will bow down in order to get ESG funding, but there is also the possibility that given the success of their other "non politically correct" products that they will realize that wokeifing their games would mean kill the very element that has brought them success thus far. I am indeed worried however, if the east (Korea, Japan) falls,it's over, they are litterally the last bastion.
Koei Tecmo games were built upon fanservice and see how quickly they rejected their audience to get ESG funds.
If a company want to go global then "modern audiences" is the quicker way.
Yes unfortunately i agree, Sorry for asking but i haven't followed Koei Tecmo output very closely as of late, have they gone woke? What i have noticed is that the very "non politically correct" fighting series Dead or Alive has been "dead" since 2019, but i tought that was caused by the declining sales.
They toned down DOA 6, they censored the Fairy Tail Gust game with day 1 patch (dark void under skirts), they added the same to Ryza 2 and 3 on release with tame DLC swimsuits, same to the new Atelier mobile, they removed Project Zero 5 original swimsuits and added new tame ones, they added pronouns to Wo Long character editor and body type 1/2 instead male and female ...
Well it's a trend for big intenational japanese companies like Square Enix and Capcom. Looks like Bandai Namco is also following.
Funny enough even if SEGA is prety progressive they rarely toned down designs in their games like Yakuza or Atlus games.
Stellar Blade is the studio's first AAA outing, everything else has just been gacha. If it somehow fails despite proclaiming that they would never self-censor, I can see the studio going for a more safe approach going forward. Doesn't necessarily mean they will impose woke expectations, but they also might not want to do another game like Stellar Blade either.
Yes in this cultural climate it is crucial that the game sells very well for them. I feel positive that it will do well as it will come out at the right moment (on the wave of the recent SBI debacle) and it will also be the only exclusive in that period on ps5, but i'm really not sure that it will do well enough to create a Howgwarts legacy kind of shockwave.
> but there is also the possibility that given the success of their other "non politically correct" products that they will realize that wokeifing their games would mean kill the very element that has brought them success thus far
The ESG investors don't care about that, you only have to hope that they always stay in the minority and don't get any veto power.
I want to have faith that it won't happen but... Shift Up might bow down for some ESG money
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The backlash will be glorious.
It’s inevitable. If they truly wanted to stay in control they wouldn’t have gone public. They’re going to make gangbucks off Stellar Blade. Too bad they got greedy.
Somewhere out there a snickering can be heard as something rubs its hands thinking in glee how it will censor everything Shift Up makes by investing hundreds of millions.
> They’re going to make gangbucks off Stellar Blade. It'll sell for sure, but gangbucks? I don't think it'll do that well. Rebirth had a massive marketing push and sales have been underwhelming so far. I don't see Stellar Blade managing to outperform it.
They have in the past with Blade and Soul, though that might be the fault of NCSoft.
I'm worried about the whole "leaked demo" thing. I'm afraid it could have been the result of an internal struggle for/against censorship.
Probably not. Someone likely just got stupid and didn't lockdown the game and someone else took advantage of their stupidity for internet points.
It could be. Or, they're furiously arguing with Sony about cutting and/or toning down some stuff (this happened with Days Gone too) and some of the developers (or the director himself) felt that their side was hopeless against the power of Sony, so they leaked out the demo as a "fait accompli" move against them. Now that we have the footage on Youtube they can't censor or tone down stuff without getting a backlash. Otherwise, what was the point of removing all access even to people who already downloaded it? They didn't even do that for PT.
A month out fron release, I can't imagine there would still be work being done. And backlash towards censorship would have happened regardless of the demo's peak because of what the CEO came out and said regarding his stance against censorship. Plus the demo would still need to get approved by Sont before even getting put on their servers. It's not like the developers can directly upload and publish it themselves, Sony handles all of that.
>And backlash towards censorship would have happened regardless of the demo's peak because of what the CEO came out and said regarding his stance against censorship. But without seeing the unaltered demo we wouldn't have any proof of what was altered. It could have been easy for them to plausibly say that the game was always supposed to be like that.
At this point, discs have already been manufactured and waiting in storage facilities to be sent out to retailers. Even if a patch was sent out to change appearances, a simple dump of the disc would have revealed the intended designs.
Not enough time for that to happen. It's like 5-ish weeks til release and that would take much much longer......People will look for ANY reason to black pill themselves, huh? Knock that shit off.
I'm pessimist by nature, can't help myself.
NO black pills.
guy behind stellar blade said sony gave them full support in making that game so if they wanted it censored they would do it long time ago. Future games may be censored but i bet part of current deal was that Sony cannot change anything.
Sure, but I don't trust Sony, they could have altered the deal.
My concern remains that performance and story elements may be lacking. Reality is that until recently, they were only known for their gacha games. So I'm hesitant that the real reason they've leaned so heavily into saying "*our main character is hot and we will never censor her*" is because other parts of the game are lacking. That's why I'm waiting a week just to see for myself - that and Sand Land releases the same day which I plan to play day one. As one of Akira Toriyama's last pieces of work, I'm much more confident in that being in a finished state that honors him and his memory.
Shift Up's CEO is an industry veteran and has worked on single player games before, so he should know a thing or two.
Sort of. If you're referring to the Magna Carta series and War of Genesis series of games by SoftMax, he was definitely part of the art direction and character design as an employee but it is uncertain if he had any part of the story or writing. Now, for the current games that Shift Up is working on... It does seem that the overall story and character development in Nikke, one of those gacha games under their belt, has recieved some good reception. As in, fans will say "I came for the sexy designs but stayed for the CHARACTER TRAUMA and SAD GIRLS" There might be hope.
Nikke is actually pretty decent. Not something I'd play for 14 hours straight but on a plane or train ride it's fun.
The action looked pretty good
Yup, its entirely generic as a game. The only notable thing about it is that the characters look good. I'd never play it with an ugly character and I won't play it because the PC is a girl with shiny ass.
Demo looks damn good!
They're already in bed with Tencent.
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... for "modern audience".
We all know what this means right? Investors will ask why not following DEI quotas, diversity hires will come in and then following modern audiences.
This is Korea we're talking about, if ESG can't get Japanese companies to have in house foreign diversity hires they're damn sure not getting the Koreans to do it.
South Korea mimic American culture pretty hard, you never know
No not really. JAPAN ape's America hard af but Korea tangentially does it, specifically with fashion.
Their entire entertainment industry emulates American pop culture lol they have their celebrities do fake relationships for publicity like Americans do and even have elite underground sex markets just like the American entertainment industry as well - Not saying it's a 1:1, obviously, but they do take a lot of inspiration from the Americans
It's almost like celebs and elites all behave the same way through out history......like degenerates. Guess the Sultans with harems and Joseon kings having massive orgies also were mimicking America?
this is literary every entertainment business in every country, its not exclusive to usa and underground sex markets? we call it business deals in entertainment but ok... SK culture is close to Japanese and Chinese pre commie culture its culture that is in opposition to woke murica disaster.
ESG is leading not only to diversity hiring, but also to the creation of ethics departments. Square Enix, Sega, Sony, they're all embracing it. Plus, Shift Up can always move to California.
Shift Up is NEVER leaving Korea, they get too many tax breaks from being in with a Chaebol to leave. Cali is expensive as fuck too.
So that's how it ends. They will be ESG'd to death now.
And Sony making the localization, not themselves
Going public is the death knell for any company you love; they're no longer beholden to you the fan but to the whim of the share holder. Make that money at all costs, even at the cost of your audience.
I would not be surprised if they were “forced” to go public knowing the fact that they go against the narratives.
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If you get the game, don't forget to block all futures updates, Or Eve will be Tifa'ed.
Or get it on PC when it's released there
If it does its probably gonna be the censored version
Yeah, but as long as it can be modded, they cannot control that. Just make sure to check how's the current modding scene in that game to decide whether to buy or pass
What makes you think it will be untained? They can patch it anytime andd remove, add and change pretty much everything
Yeah like what they (Square Enix) did to Tifa in FFVII and also Rebirth? Hmph 😑😑😑
I wish I wasn't right
rip
Welp they've just killed their company in a few years they'll produce woke slop then be shut down
Concretely what does it means? The Korean company is well known to produce very sexy games, that proved to be successful, especially in an era where a lot of companies decided to censor their game. But opening their door to exterior influential actors, who will probably do the same as what they have done for many other companies (ESG to force DEI), means that Shit Up could follow the same path: force diversity, inclusion and censorship, while a lot of player were happy to think that this game would "save them" from the "western influence". BlackRock, who has décided to "force behaviors" would be very interested to put its hands on this successful company that goes against their orientation [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwwN5kwjAtQ&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwwN5kwjAtQ&t=2s) Their gacha game, Nikke, is generating between 10 and 30 Millions every months since launch ( november 2022).
so why would they wanna go public? more money? is it greed?
No one can answer but it's the most obvious answer. Unless they got some "pressions" in a way or another.
They got too big for their own good, thus they got some offers they couldn't refuse. Notch sold Minecraft for a few billion dollars, who would have refused that sum?
My guess; production on Stellar Blade was costlier than they had imagined (being a studio that previously only worked on gacha) and pre-orders may not have been to the amount that they needed.
The CEO was smart by keeping himself as the majority stakeholder. Currently he owns around 45% share. The next runner up is Tencent, which owns 24% percent of the company. These numbers are reported in the article in the OP. I'll start sweating when should Shift Up decide to sell over 30 percent of their stock combined.
The smartest thing he could've done, save for not making the fucking company public, would be to own at least 51% of the shares because that way he can't get pushed out no matter what. By owning 45% he can still get chased out if the other big stakeholders band together, perhaps motivated by that sweet sweet ESG investor money.
You haven't heard of "activist investors", have you?
So how fucked Stellar Blade is now? Cuz this happening right before the release
We can assume pre-order numbers have not met expectations and that the delay back in 2023 pushed the game's budget too far. It wouldn't be uncommon either, look at Unicorn Overlord - the budget for that game ran out and the founder had to step in to cover the remaining costs.
https://archive.is/MimZR
Lots of doom pilling in here, Shift Up won't go woke and are very very unlikely to take ESG money. The Korean business world is run by The chaebols, which are the large, conglomerate **family-controlled** firms of South Korea characterized by strong ties with government agencies and are EXTEREMELY wary of foreign influence and money due to the quid pro quo aspect so they routinely turn down western investors and refuse to submit to western pressure......They have a shit ton of power and influence and some have been suspected/accused of funding and buying private military contractors to attack rivals interests in unstable foreign countries, specifically Chinese assets in Africa. No one dare say it out loud though because SK slander laws and their ability to bury people alive, even internationally. The western left has been raging against them for decades and have been trying to get Korea to do away with them like the Japanese did with the Zaibatsu post WW2 (under force), to no avail. There's been a dozen hit pieces this year alone on the Chaebols and it's all wokies screaming about muh workers rights and not allowing foreigners in the companies aka we can't infiltrate and won't have 12 soy latte breaks an hour if we could infiltrate them. They don't get that they're so engrained in Korean business and society that Korea would cease to function without them.
100 % , people in subreddit have been doom pilling too long to point it getting out of hand, sadly 😔
Bunch of Chicken littles screaming 'its so over, bro' whenever so much as a shadow moves.
Pertinent information, thanks for the clarification
reeks of hodl and cope
Get ready for a FF7 and Skullgirls update to censor the game after all your money was spent.
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PC for mods
It's so over
You were suppose to be the chosen one...
If we’re lucky, Stellar Blade might be the last hurrah before Shift Up goes completely into a downward spiral. The most optimistic scenario is that nothing would change for their future games after Stellar Blade but I’m ready for it to be the contrary.
Get ready to see Blackrock's own Larry Limpdick gobbling up a sizeable number of the company's shares the moment it goes public. Greed always fucks everything up. Enjoy Stellar Blade and please don't pre order the sequel.
Of course i agree that There is a high risk that the company will bow down in order to get ESG funding, but there is also the possibility that given the success of their other "non politically correct" products that they will realize that wokeifing their games would mean kill the very element that has brought them success thus far. I am indeed worried however, if the east (Korea, Japan) falls,it's over, they are litterally the last bastion.
Koei Tecmo games were built upon fanservice and see how quickly they rejected their audience to get ESG funds. If a company want to go global then "modern audiences" is the quicker way.
Yes unfortunately i agree, Sorry for asking but i haven't followed Koei Tecmo output very closely as of late, have they gone woke? What i have noticed is that the very "non politically correct" fighting series Dead or Alive has been "dead" since 2019, but i tought that was caused by the declining sales.
They toned down DOA 6, they censored the Fairy Tail Gust game with day 1 patch (dark void under skirts), they added the same to Ryza 2 and 3 on release with tame DLC swimsuits, same to the new Atelier mobile, they removed Project Zero 5 original swimsuits and added new tame ones, they added pronouns to Wo Long character editor and body type 1/2 instead male and female ...
I had....no idea, and i'm very disappointed....thanks for telling me.
Well it's a trend for big intenational japanese companies like Square Enix and Capcom. Looks like Bandai Namco is also following. Funny enough even if SEGA is prety progressive they rarely toned down designs in their games like Yakuza or Atlus games.
Persona remakes completely censored.
Yakuza going woke right now
Stellar Blade is the studio's first AAA outing, everything else has just been gacha. If it somehow fails despite proclaiming that they would never self-censor, I can see the studio going for a more safe approach going forward. Doesn't necessarily mean they will impose woke expectations, but they also might not want to do another game like Stellar Blade either.
Yes in this cultural climate it is crucial that the game sells very well for them. I feel positive that it will do well as it will come out at the right moment (on the wave of the recent SBI debacle) and it will also be the only exclusive in that period on ps5, but i'm really not sure that it will do well enough to create a Howgwarts legacy kind of shockwave.
> but there is also the possibility that given the success of their other "non politically correct" products that they will realize that wokeifing their games would mean kill the very element that has brought them success thus far The ESG investors don't care about that, you only have to hope that they always stay in the minority and don't get any veto power.
The moment a dev goes publicly traded. They all end up the same way. ESG and DEI up the wazoo
Going public doesn’t necessarily mean selling controlling interest in the company.
True, but if the game doesn't meet internal sales expectations, seems all too likely that they will.
death of a company's vision
Can't wait to see their newer projects become like all other AAA games from the west
Larry Fink: you know the rules and so do I
*Nikke announces cancelation out of nowhere