New fax from the EOCS with schedule
A new fax from the EOCS has been sent out and as with previous faxes companies are still not allowed to release any of the information for some reason. But the same guy that leaked info on the previous fax had appeared in 2ch again with some of the new details.
New judging criteria will start from October, all sales of older rape games will also have to stop, no matter if they’re downloadable games or physical package games.*
The period from 5th June to 31st September will be the changeover period where rape games will still be allowed to a certain extent, and the new restrictions will go full force starting from October. Games released sometime by the end of the year will most likely still be okay as games go through the judging process earlier before the actual release.
Shoujo (girl) and school council keywords managed to escape from the list of NG words.
Normally big decisions like this would need to be done through official meetings where companies can show their disapproval, but the EOCS is really forcing it in this time, and the person leaking the info suspects the EOCS is under huge pressure for them to be doing something like that. However he does not know if there are any other entities pressuring the EOCS other than the politicians.
CSA’s regulations will be released next week apparently so some are waiting to see how that goes.
The person who leaked the info says he thought they might be able to do something if he gathers 30 companies that he knows personally, but he contacted 5 companies and they were all talking about quitting the industry.
Via: エロゲ表現規制対策本部 104
Eroge programmer Kenji Kakera also mentions on his blog that they received the fax too. He can’t release any of the information in the fax, but he wonders what is the point of the EOCS existing anyway, and comments that this is all so stupid that it’s meaningless to even think about it.
Also it was mentioned a few times in the comments, but that certain Japanese site getting a lot of attention right now has too many Japanese comments in that post that is bashing a certain site that I don’t want to mention and don’t want to get involved with, so I’m not going to make a post about it.
Edit: * The date for the new restrictions are written in the fax, but the actual date to stop sale of all older rape games was not detailed, so it’s assumed the stop of sale not going to happen yet
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July 1st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Reading your blog has become quite unpleasant as of late (not your fault, of course).
I hope they find a way around it. I don’t play eroge, but fiction censorship creeps the hell out of me.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:36 pm
why they do dis?
;_;
July 1st, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Looks like New Komeito was super effective against eroge companies:
http://www.komei.or.jp/en/news/2009/0530.html
(old link back from May 30th)
>Japanese comments in that post that is bashing a certain site
That “certain site” is like a nijikon Wai Wai news.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I wonder… Can we refocus the apparently super-effective letter-writing campaigns of Equality Now towards other political pressures? Maybe we’ve just been using the wrong method of persuasion with N. Korea.
July 1st, 2009 at 2:59 pm
wow, those comments that you’re not talking about about that site you’re not talking about are some harsh
July 1st, 2009 at 3:43 pm
So from now on there will be no more Rape or sexual assault or whatever in ANY games that are going to come out in Japan?
July 1st, 2009 at 3:52 pm
The apparent restriction on downloads suggests that organizations who are a member of the trade group must pass all of their works through the regulatory body before being published in any form. So, as the programmer suggests, the purpose of the EOCS has now ended for these companies, since obviously their content is no longer welcome. So I guess that’s sort of common sense. I guess they’ll just be left to fend for themselves in the market, but given the apparent backlash, I wonder if some might be able to survive that way (despite all the doom and gloom at the moment).
July 1st, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I don’t thnik this was ever brought up here. What companies are part of EOCS? Liar-Soft, Nitroplus, Alicesoft, Key or others?
Sorry, I’d really like to know.
July 1st, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Nitroplus is with CSA.
Those rest are most likely with EOCS and aside from Alicesoft won’t probably have any problems with the regulations.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I’m actually not very knowledgeable about these entities, but wouldn’t running their programs through a ratings organization like CERO pretty much solve the whole mess, assuming they don’t already? Obviously a ‘Z’ ranked game is targetted towards people old enough to know what they’re getting, similar to how X-rated (or equivalent) movies are treated.
Was that an ignorant statement to make? I’m trying to understand what the purposes of the EOCS and CSA are if there are potential alternatives.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:33 pm
CERO won’t rate/approve explicit games. I don’t see how another alternative might help either since any group would be subject to the same pressure from retailers and politicians.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:34 pm
@LegoTechnic:
In a manner of speaking, EOCS and CSA serve as ratings boards for the Adult Game industry. Most retailers will only sell games that have been “approved” by one of these two groups. But unlike CERO with “age tiers”, here it’s either passed or it isn’t, and what they’re doing in this case is setting tighter limits on what they will allow. Since many stores won’t sell games unless they come with the requisite stamp of approval, some consider this a death knell (because some of them were barely making enough money as it was). The only alternative, as I alluded to above, would be for companies to “go rogue” and try to sell games with the “blessing” of the ratings groups, which probably means no access to regular retail.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:35 pm
(That should have been “*without* the “blessing” of the ratings groups”, obviously.)
July 1st, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Seeing “Shoujo (girl) and school council” escape the ban list will at least allow light-hearted romance eroges to survive, as long as the featuring chars aint too loli.
On another note, I really wonder what established rape-game labels like black lilith, lune, black package try, liquid are going to do from now on.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Well, they will probably just quit the business as the article said. It’s a sad day for us eroge fans. I really wish there is something more we can do. But at last, politicians and money wins. Just like they bought out the Pirate Bay.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:27 pm
The Pirate Bay were financed by some crazy right-wing millionaire to begin with, I heard… it’s not really a surprise that they took the money and ran as soon as things started looking shaky. Many people’s commitment to principles dry up real fast when faced with actual consequences.
Probably the best outcome for most people involved at the moment is for a lot of companies to go defunct, let the politicians think they’ve won without needing to pass any actual LAWS… then in a while when the heat has died down, create a new agency outside the EOCS to handle rape games.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:14 pm
It’ll actually be better if they tried to pass laws, then it would draw a lot more opposition from free speech groups, the eroge makers will have a lot more support. Just like the Child Porn debate that went on last week, there are actual meaningful opposition of the ruling party.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Japan should stop producing porn, period. ALL KINDS; destroy all current existing porn, and ban all porn websites, foreign or local. Let’s see if things in society are better, moral and healthy afterwards.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Rate of unemployment related suicides will increase.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:49 pm
This is so funny. Live action pornography is going have less restrictions than eroges.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:33 pm
>>This is so funny. Live action pornography is going have less restrictions than eroges.
That’s the irony. Considering most of those pornography are filled with more fetishes that eroge could produce.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I came here looking for crying 4channers and was sorely disappointed. I guess I should try Sankaku Complex.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:58 pm
If I’m not mistaken, lots of live action porn is released under the CSA, and it seems like they’ll be increasing their restrictions as well…
July 1st, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Looks like New Komeito was super effective against eroge companies
Ahaahaha. You mean Souka Gakkai is behind this whole thing? That’s hilarious
July 1st, 2009 at 9:09 pm
My God the comments aren’t so extreme or loud anymore
Cool
July 1st, 2009 at 9:15 pm
>My God the comments aren’t so extreme or loud anymore
dont make me
July 1st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Why stop at games and porn? let’s ban or take out all mentions of rape or other fetishes out of literature. Also, nudity is a no-no, even in art, so down with the statue of Michelangelo!
Now in all seriousness, I wonder what’ll happen to doujinshi. Doujinshi is fan made, but a lot of anime stores sell it, so will it be regulated too?
July 1st, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Hey Zepy, thanks for trying to stay above the fray and simply keeping us informed of how this is playing out. Lord only knows it’s your blog, you could go off whenever you wanted on whomever you wanted but it takes nerve to keep yourself out of it and simply report.
Thanks for all you’ve brought to the table so far.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:12 pm
that post’s comments is a riot. i tried to read it but it’s like unfunny /b/.
July 1st, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Although it’s probably too late to matter much, I’ve posted a statement regarding this whole affair up on renpy.org.
http://www.renpy.org/wiki/Censorship
July 1st, 2009 at 10:32 pm
thanks for the information too…
My dream is to become eroge programmer (in August/Leaf/GIGA/Alicesoft) since I was still in high school, because it’s in the eroge i can find a lot of fun things in this world, rather than watching television full of murder/rapist/gossip/destruction and such..
But.. why is this thing have to happen…?
http://chainfront.blogspot.com/2009/01/eroge-frenzy.html << … I won’t stop here.. if eroge will be no more, then I will make it myself..
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:30 am
“Shoujo (girl) and school council keywords managed to escape from the list of NG words.”
Thank god for this at least.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:44 am
Steeplejacking: It ain’t limited to Christians and Catholics anymore.
July 2nd, 2009 at 6:03 am
At least they weren’t retarded enough to ban stuff like school councils. Though the industry will probably be flooded with pure love eroges….. Wonder if Innocent Grey can survive…
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:51 am
Great.
The part time propaganda organ of the LDP, The Daily Yomiuri Online:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090701TDY04301.htm
Surprise, surprise. No mention of the idiotic arguments made by procensorship forces.
Oh yeah, they mention a certain rape eroge on the bottom too.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:45 am
so those ugly feminists negroes won?
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:17 am
That Yomiuri article, propaganda or not, does seem to reflect a lot of the Japanese reactions we’ve seen in general. In particular, this large sensitivity to international criticism and sort of “we need to do this to not be an embarrassment on the world stage” attitude. It is sort of curious as to how the article transitions from child porn to the rape game being sold online, but the “they’re pointing fingers at us” fear is what ties it all together. This also explains the sense of resentment of “foreigners” among the eroge community (fans and developers), as this “we must conform to global expectations!” idealogy appears to have taken over, even though this is actually just as much about appealing to certain domestic ideologies as well.
So anyway, even if it isn’t bias-free, it certainly presents an interesting view of the issue.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
I think it is funny that Japanese people are very critical of their politicians (no prime minister since Koizumi has broken 30% approval rating), but they eat up whatever the media tells them. The Japanese media is almost as biased as that of a third world country, and we have seen from TBS’s role in this controversy that they regularly make stuff up.
Where are these “foreign interests” that are angered by rape games? They DON’T EXIST. Other countries have their own problems–there’s too much to deal with in the world right now to get concerned about what’s being sold on the 2F of some nasty little shop in Akihabara.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:08 pm
@Shii:
I think it’s not so much that they “don’t exist”, it’s that they’re mixing a whole bunch of different issues under the guise of “our porn industry is offending foreign sensibilities”. You have the Group of 8, the UN, and so on with the push against possession of Child Porn. You have Equality Now and this RapeLay incident pushing the agenda on violence against women. And then you have the domestic politicians with their own moral agendas. All these things got mushed together into this giant push to regulate the adult entertainment industries, videogames included. It’s just the confluence of different otherwise-unrelated issues that’s causing the situation to escalate. It’s like how having too many people yelling at someone at once can just cause them to shutdown. People aren’t able to just slow things down, be rational, and deal with things one at a time anymore.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Equality Now…Insanity Later
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:37 am
I> think it is funny that Japanese people are very critical of their politicians (no prime minister since Koizumi has broken 30% approval rating), but they eat up whatever the media tells them. The Japanese media is almost as biased as that of a third world country
This goes for all western dominated nations that are (forced to be) part of the Empire
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:49 am
Sorry for the off topic comment:
Minori has updated their message on their 403 message page.
This time in Japanese :P :P :P
I’m sure many of you are ok with moonspeak but posting my interpretation for your covenience.
Honestly this whole move is bullxxxx….why didn’t they post the English version of this…
Dear fans overseas
Thank you for your tremendous amount of comments.
We were never aware that there were so many fans of minori outside Japan.
We are very happy.
We did not know until now that minori’s products were sold outside Japan.
(The package of minori’s softwares are printed with words “Japan distribution only”)
minori’s softwares are created to comply with Japanese laws.
However we do not know whether minori’s softwares are compliant with your country’s laws.
It would be very saddening if our softwares give trouble to you.
From what we have gathered, it seems that concept of ethics is different from Japan and other countries where you all live in.
But cultures should be treated with respect between different countries.
So if you do wish to enjoy minori’s games, someone has to guarantee that minori’s softwares have no issues with laws in your country.
This is something which is extremely difficult for a small company like us.
minori is currently occupied with the development of our new title, and replies to your mails are getting delayed.
Also mails written in English or Chinese takes long time to read, and may get lost between large amount of spams we receive.
(We are a small company and usually use only Japanese. We are not good at Enlish or Chinese.)
So if you can send your mail in Japanese, we can understand better.
Let us think together the way to make both of us happy.
We hope we can meet again in the near future.
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:47 pm
the separate hiragana post made me laugh
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:41 pm
So?… Are the Japanese devs of eroge and such going to fight back? or are they to worried about what foreigners think? I would hope they would put up a fight, but it doesn’t look like that will be the case.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Just out of curiosity, as I have no intention of getting anyone in trouble or anything, but…
Have J-List, Peach-Princess, or G-Collections ever gotten in trouble for any of their translated releases? I find it a little ironic that while it’s foreign pressure inciting everything, the very same products in question are actually protected by US law (uncensored) as long as it’s properly rated. Granted you can’t usually find it in a physical store (many avoid selling such things), but it’s still possible to vend it with license to deal adult material, or to purchase it online.
July 4th, 2009 at 6:37 am
any news?
July 4th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
swimsuits got banned by law
July 4th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
>>LegoTechnic
what about those rape game company move their products distribution to US?using method like payed download since it’s digital
July 4th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Swimsuits were NOT banned by law. Read this
http://2chan.us/wordpress/2009/07/04/moe-defined-as-related-to-child-sex-abuse/
July 4th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
And so kids, this is how free speech in Japan was killed by Western influence. While grotesque and violent games centered around crime, gore and dismemberment are enjoying the mainstream lime light in the United States, apparently they would not allow the existence of other types of mature rated games outside of their own country. They think they rule all of the world’s morals!
July 4th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
In anonymouse brain:
Equality Now = The Entire Western World
July 4th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Anyhow, 2d in Japan has been under attack since 2002:
http://zepy.momotato.com/2007/06/16/supreme-court-of-japan-rules-that-eromanga-breaks-the-law/
July 5th, 2009 at 12:38 am
i do believe that the same regulation will happen by october as well so i cant be really that soon… yeah to an extent rape games wont be affected I MEAN LOOK AT RANCE <_< if rape was fully demolished theres our good ol char RANCE saying goodbye to history
July 11th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
“CSA’s regulations will be released next week apparently so some are waiting to see how that goes. ”
Any news on that CSA conference?