'I can't thank streamers enough': Palworld developer's CEO weighs in on Japanese visual novel discourse in the wake of streaming controversy

If your first response to that headline was "what are these words, and why are they being put in that order?" That's understandable—the present discourse taking place in the Japanese gaming community is, after all, centred around a genre we don't get to talk about too often over here: The visual novel.

Here's a quick run-down. Earlier this month, Takiya Iijima, the author and developer of a visual novel by the name of Apathy Murder Club, took to Twitter to announce he'd be taking legal action against a streamer who'd violated a request on its Steam page, imploring players not to stream the thing until August 8. We are here because that didn't happen.

While we're used to pretty lax attitudes from game companies regarding the livestreaming of their products—typically because it's free advertising—visual novels are another beast in Japan, with one violator being arrested and charged for posting clips online last year.

The crux of the problem, so it's argued, is that a visual novel is more akin to a book or a movie than a game. If you see someone playing a game, you're only getting one-to-two thirds of the experience—if you watch someone play a visual novel, though? You're basically getting the whole experience.

While I've got mixed feelings on the subject, I don't think it's entirely unfair for developers, especially smaller ones, to buy into that theory. An agreement, like the one on that Steam page, seems like a decent compromise—and it probably stings to have that trust betrayed even if it's entirely unsurprising that it was.

The conversation surrounding the author's initial tweets has grown big enough in Japan for the CEO of Pocketpair (developers of Palworld—a game that hit 2 million concurrent players, and still boasts an extremely respectable 50,000 24-hour peak at the time of writing) felt inclined to weigh in on Twitter, as reported (and translated) by Automaton.

Takuro Mizobe seems mostly sympathetic to Iijima, remarking that the whole debacle was "caused by an individual with poor manners … it is important for developers and players to respect each other and follow each other’s rules." However, Mizobe wants to note that "most game content creators do follow the rules, and that there are many developers who are happy to see their games being streamed."

Palworld's stratospheric popularity, in part, was due to the streaming presence it garnered—its edgy implications and Pokémon-like pals gelled nicely with it being a halfway-decent survival game. So it's not surprising when Mizobe adds that he "can’t thank streamers enough for making Pocketpair’s games enjoyable for so many people.

"I also believe that the culture of streaming games is a wonderful thing in itself, and I think that game content creators play a big role in lighting up the gaming industry."

Granted, Palworld is—April Fools jokes aside—not a visual novel, so you could argue that "streamers are good" is an easy stance for the studio to take, especially since it enjoyed so much success from them. I'm reminded of how, not too long ago, Warframe's developers said that big publishers gave up on their live service games too soon—the riches of one developer may be the ruin of another.