As the fight for deviancy continues two more H-game distributors have raised the drawbridges and filled the moats. Eroge outfits Yuzu Soft and VisualArt's have begun issuing blanket bans of foreign IP addresses from their websites. Visiting Yuzu Soft's official site simply returns a standard-issue "403 Forbidden" status code, leading me to think at first that the site was simply down. However, VisualArt's' blocking page contains a statement. It's somewhat like the one issued by Minori when it decided to batten down the hatches, though decidedly more curt:
"PLEASE PLAY THE GAME OF YOUR COUNTRY IF YOU PRAY FOR THE WORLD PEACE!:-)」"
Yuzu Soft are responsible for such eroge titles as E x E: Empty x Embryo and Bra-Ban! VisualArt's is more of a multimedia publisher, owning music labels in addition to a large list of eroge brands, chief among them Key, developer of Clannad, Kanon, and Air. It's worth noting that the websites of Key and other VisualArt's satellite brands have not been blocked off.
I might be reading too much into it (language barrier and all), but VisualArt's statement seems somewhat more hostile than Minori's, which basically read like a call for help in dealing with The Man. It's also interesting to note that it's publishers of comparatively tame titles that are behaving the most cautiously. Illusion Soft, which made Rapelay, hasn't blocked off its page, nor has Zyx, which made at least three titles with similarly objectionable content and is licensed in the US by G-Collections. Do you think this difference in attitude could indicate something?
[Via Canned Dogs]
See, none of this would have happened if it wasn't for the butthurt American people who raised hell over it, which then led to Japan media getting butthurt over something in their country years old, which caused their self regulatory committee to go butthurt ^ 7 power. So they are getting back by being butthurt themselves.
The lesson I think is, don't be a douchebag. I like the sound of that.