Re:Sharin no Kuni Project, le kickstarter lancé en décembre 2016 avait très bien réussi avec un financement de 188 176 $ pour 80 000$ demandés. Le jeu avait en effet beaucoup intéressé les derniers collectionneurs de PS Vita avec une sortie physique du jeu. Le jeu devait d’abord sortir dans une version physique chez LRG mais avec la lenteur des développeurs ainsi que la fermeture de la production des jeux en version physique en Amérique du Nord, il avait finalement regardé et trouvé un accord pour sortir la version physique du jeu en Asie avec Eastasiasoft.
Cependant le développement semblait de newsletter en newsletter de plus en plus chaotique et commençait vraiment à inquiéter une grande partie des participants au Kickstarter. Frontwing et Tokyo Otaku Mode Inc. se voulaient pourtant rassurants en martelant qu’ils ne voulaient pas laisser tomber le développement du jeu et surtout les fans qui avaient payé pour la version PS Vita.
Mais voilà, ce qu’on redoutait est arrivé, ils ont laissé tomber les joueurs et viennent d’annoncer l’annulation de la version PS Vita après 5 ans de Re:Sharin no Kuni Project! 5 ans pour une visual-novel qui était déjà sortie sur PS3 et PSP ? 5 ans pour juste traduire du texte et mettre les images à la bonne taille de la PS Vita… C’est juste honteux, nous connaissons des développeurs qui ont fait l’adaptation de jeux PS Vita seuls sur la console et même ajouté une traduction ! Sans parler de toutes les équipes de volontaires et fans qui font des traductions depuis des versions d’autres plateformes comme PC ou Switch pour ensuite sortir un patch gratuit pour les jeux PS Vita.
Quand on est pas capable de sortir un traduction de livre et de redimensionner des images sur Photoshop pour 200 000$ , il est peut-être temps de se poser la question: qu’est-ce qu’on fait dans ce média? Un conseil: laissez votre place à des moddeurs qui font mieux !
Voici le communiqué de Re:Sharin no Kuni Project :
Details about the cancellation of the VITA version
We believe that we should be as open as possible about the circumstances that led to the cancellation of the development of the VITA game version, and as such we will share with our backers the circumstances that led up to this point.
From the beginning, the VITA development schedule suffered the effects of the delays from the development of the PC game version, but here we will focus on the developments in the last year and a half after the change of the publisher.
In the July 2019 update, we announced that our publisher agreement with Limited Run Games (LRG) had been dissolved and that we would be working from that moment on with the Hong Kong-based publisher Eastasiasoft Limited (EAS). The reason for this change was to avoid the issue of the VITA manufacturing ending in North America within that same year. The project team knew that by changing the publisher to a different region, the manufacturing deadline would also change, so we outsourced the pre-production and game development of the VITA version to a certain development company that has a license to develop VITA games, and rearranged the schedule in order to meet the deadline.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes it brought to workplaces all over the world affected that schedule, the completed master data of the game was scheduled to be delivered by October 2020 at the latest.
However, at the last minute, that date was changed and the game was not delivered to us in October due to circumstances with the development company, and the project team was not able to confirm the actual product until November. Even more problematic than that was the fact that the game was confirmed to have many bugs, including fatal flaws, at that stage, and additional development time was inevitable.
However, even at this stage and during all this time, we had repeatedly asked the development company for a clear deadline for the mastering of the VITA version in order to manufacture the cartridges by the end of the year. We set a manufacturing schedule for production through discussions with Eastasiasoft, shared this information with the development company, and the development company responded that they expected to meet this deadline.
Until the very last moment, the project team still believed that the game production was going to finish and enter the manufacturing stage, but in the end the multiple issues that kept appearing during development and the additional time required to fix every one of them resulted in the developer not being able to meet the deadline discussed with EAS. We are currently in negotiations about the liability issues derived from the failure of the development contractor to meet the delivery date.
Even after last year’s delivery date had passed, throughout the month of January the project team had been studying and searching for alternative methods through various channels, including EAS, but in February it became clear that we would have to abandon the production of the VITA version, and this is why we are making this announcement.
One thing we would like to make clear is that the schedule and development estimates that we have reported in updates and comments until now were never false: they were always based on the information that was shared with us in our meetings with the development company that we outsourced the project to. We believed that we would be able to deliver the VITA game version to everyone until the very end.
As you can see, the direct cause of the cancellation of the development of the VITA game version was the overdue delivery date of the development contractor, but the final responsibility for the situation, including the management of the contractor, lies with the project team, or to be more precise, Frontwing, who is the main organizer of the project and in charge of the development management.
We would like to make clear that AKABEi SOFT2, Eastasiasoft Limited, Limited Run Games, and Tokyo Otaku Mode Inc., which have been mentioned before as project members, have no role or responsibility in the delay or cancellation of the game, including the VITA version. Please refrain from contacting these companies individually with any complaints or inquiries.
Please refer to our update from last November for more details on the responsibilities and roles of the different companies involved in this project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tokyootakumode/re-sharin-no-kuni-project/posts/2984518
Heureusement, dans notre malheur ils proposent un remboursement, cependant il faut avoir garder la même carte bancaire ou le même compte PayPal. Vu le nombre de gens qui se plaignent, beaucoup en 5 ans ont changé de banque ou encore de compte PayPal et se verront donc le remboursement refusé et devront se rabattre sur une version PC au rabais.
La PS Vita aura bien souffert de ces développeurs au rabais qui pullulent sur les Kickstarter entre Sekai Project, PQube et eux. Ça fait beaucoup d’excellentes Visual Novel qui auraient dû sortir sur cette console lui offrant un catalogue encore plus large mais qui dû à l’incompétence, le laxisme, le non-sérieux et une fainéantise sans bornes des développeurs, ont juste fait couler des franchises. Ces magnifiques jeux qui n’auront jamais atteints le public. Jeux qui auraient dû et surtout pu avoir une marque dans l’histoire du jeu vidéo avec une sortie physique si rare au 21ème siècle dans ce média où le numérique écrase jeu après jeu tel un tas de bouses qui s’empilent de plus en plus, recouvrant les pépites cachées dans cet océan de merde.
