The post on the dev's ci-en literally says that KG told him to expect a release in the first half this year. Which is what I said.
I get why he's pissed, I'm sure he's never working with KG again after this, but in no way does it indicate the KG release is in "limbo". It just means it has taken way longer than he initially thought/hoped and he's pissed.
What the post actually says is:
It has been a year and a half since I handed over the game data to Kagura Games, and half a year has passed this month since I drew and handed over the illustrations for marketing purposes, and I have not heard from them at all.
then when he asked kg why was it taking more than a year and half the awnser they gave him was:
The answer was, "This is from the development team, we are working on localizing the game for release by the middle of 2023." That's all I heard.
So it looks like we need more than half a year from now.... (this as of decemnber 2022 when the ci-en post was made
)
Then I thought to myself. What have they been doing for a year and a half?
And if you actually do bother to look through the dev ci-en posts you will find one where it was stated by kg that the game would be localized by the start/mid of 2022. Same thing also happened with Country Girl Keiko.
So its not a "
taken way longer than he initially thought/hoped" but rather what he was first told more than a year and a half ago. (as he even said that he had already given kg the game data)
I'm not sure what you're referring to, because one of the big things about KG is they basically don't give expected deadlines and haven't done so in ages. Even this one wasn't meant to be public. And while Ota Guchi Field here criticizes their slowness, he never says they previously gave him another, closer expected release window.
And KG's upcoming releases list is hardly indicative of anything, games jump that queue all the time especially because these days KG mostly announces games "close" to their release to avoid a Demon Queen Melissa or Princess of Zeven situation. And I don't think they'd be petty enough to shelve a project because the dev criticized them.
While you are right that these deadlines are not supposed to be "public", most devs dont just hand over their games without actually dates set. So saying that kg doesnt give expected deadlines would be fake.
Honestly you only need ask some of the devs who work/worked with kg and they will tell u exactly what i said.
Simply by browsing any dev ci-en from time to time you can see that Ota Guchi Field is not the only dev with complaints.
Im sure you aware that at least 3 devs cut ties with kg at this point exactly because of kg giving expected deadlines and not go trough with them.
Some of those devs even decided that going on with other less english fluent companies was better than listening to fake promises as you probably know. (
no future as a recent example)
And no kg cant just shelve a project even if they wanted. But they can delay it indefinity.