Don’t get your hopes up, Marvelous is still very much a ghost company and there’s no chance of a revival for the Senran Kagura franchise, however future Rune Factory titles might avoid Western intervention and localization fixated on Woke ideology.
Marvelous and Xseed Games have announced strategic organizational changes to support their expansion into foreign markets. Marvelous Inc. is shifting “Marvelous USA” to focus on its flagship IPs and arcade business, while XSEED will continue to discover and publish third-party titles.
This move is part of their “holistic approach” to Western growth, aiming for “larger, more ambitious projects with bigger budgets.”
As part of their expansion, Marvelous USA will now handle the publishing of Marvelous game series such as Rune Factory and Story of Seasons. Once celebrated by niche audiences for its Senran Kagura franchise, known for its action-packed gameplay, busty anime characters, and fanservice, Marvelous was largely aligned with Sony at the time.
For those unaware, since 2016, Sony has imposed strict censorship policies on Asian developers, particularly regarding fanservice content on its PlayStation consoles.
This interference has led to widespread instances of day-one censorship patches for games like Fairy Tail and more recently Stellar Blade, among others.
Many titles have been noticeably altered on Sony’s consoles compared to other platforms, with Senran Kagura 7EVEN being the most notable casualty.
The development of “Senran Kagura 7EVEN” was effectively stopped due to Sony’s interference by demanding its content be censored, the resulting affair resulted in the series creator Kenichiro Takaki to depart Marvelous, effectively killing the franchise.
This move ultimately crippled the developer, which has since remained aligned with Sony’s censorship policies while complying with the demands of its Western publishing partner, XSEED Games.
Marvelous has experienced a significant decline since the demise of the Senran Kagura franchise in terms of large scale releases. The Japanese developers have shifted their focus entirely upon farming simulators, with Rune Factory 5 being particularly notorious for suffering substantial alterations due to XSEED Games’ requirements.
Rune Factory 5 was the first in the series to introduce same-sex relationships, with Marvelous, influenced by XSEED, pushing the inclusion of homosexuality despite a disastrous launch marred by performance issues and numerous game-breaking glitches on the Nintendo Switch.
Instead of addressing the many performance issues and bugs, a post-release update for Rune Factory 5 focused on adding same-sex marriage options.
Marvelous prioritized this feature, with XSEED proudly claiming credit for making the series more inclusive for Western audiences, a trend that has become increasingly common in modern game design.
The addition of same-sex marriage options sparked significant backlash from the core Japanese audience, who had remained loyal to Marvelous and the Rune Factory franchise up until this point.
Frustrated players voiced their discontent with the update on social media.
To further disappoint Rune Factory fans, datamining revealed that Marvelous had several other additions for Rune Factory 5 already prepared, including what would’ve been DLC that would have allowed players to pursue romantic relationships with additional characters like Livia and Radea.
Voice lines related to character confessions and marriage dialogue were found within the game files, suggesting plans for content that was never officially released.
This, coupled with the forced inclusion of same-sex relationships, a broken and buggy game ladled with the censorship of upskirts with a black void, has understandably left Marvelous’ core audience feeling betrayed.
Despite this betrayal, Rune Factory 5 was a commercial success, selling over 500,000 units as of March 2022, largely due to its status as a beloved farm simulation franchise.
This success benefited both Marvelous and their abusive localization partner, XSEED, who will continue to provide business and operational support for Marvelous’ arcade division, including the North American rollout of their new title, Naruto Emblem Battle, as part of the series’ anniversaries.
If Marvelous hopes to reinvent itself with the release of the next-generation Switch handheld, a platform they were initially hesitant to embrace, they will need to purge themselves of XSEED’s negative influence.
Only by doing so can they attempt to regain the trust of consumers, which they have lost due to arbitrary censorship, a reluctance to continue producing such content which made them popular in the first place, and the imposition of “woke” elements at the behest of XSEED.
What Marvelous plans to do with “Marvelous USA” now leading its publishing efforts outside of Japan is anyone’s guess. There’s some hope that Rune Factory 6 will return to basics and forego the inclusion of homosexual romance, but it’s also possible that Marvelous will continue to pursue Western ESG finances, resulting in more censorship and inclusivity.
After all, their focus now seems to be primarily on farming games. However, cutting out the progressive middleman, XSEED, is a welcome change, which could eventually benefit their remaining customers by providing more authentic translations from the Japanese language, unlike what happened with Rune Factory 3 Special.
This 2023 remaster of the original DS release unfortunately featured a localization that significantly deviated from the original game for no apparent reason.
XSEED Games will still handle the publishing for titles like Corpse Party II, Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana, Potionomics: Masterwork Edition, and The Big Catch.
This joint decision aims to give XSEED more freedom to alter games from smaller developers under its publishing arm, while Marvelous might gain a bit more autonomy. However, I wouldn’t count on them ever producing a meaningful large scale entry in the Senran Kagura franchise ever again.
