Japanese company「ILLUSION」dies. They are ceasing game development and publishing.
- Thread starter chrono1337
- Start date
- Sep 17, 2021
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Piracy is not the cause, rather, the consequence. ILLUSION is exactly like Nintendo when it comes to their games: too fucking expensive, and rarely, if ever, went on discounts.
If you want proof, i have both Koikatsu and Honey Select 2 wishlisted on my Steam account for years. NEVER had a chance to buy them because they are too darn expensive and barely lower their price...
As Gabe Newell would say, "piracy is a service problem"
How come they never monetized the hundreds of hentai games that used their assets as art. If they charged 5% like Unreal Engine did they could've made significant money.
Soon after the rapelay drama there was a point inwhich you could not even see their site with a non-japanese ip. Making very difficult for foreigners to buy their games. Games they didn't even wanted people to know they existed outside of Japan.
If piracy killed them, that was a death by suicide.
I think it's a labor shortage.Any official reason why they're shutting down?
It is said that their talented engineer was habitual to be head-hunted with big money by other industries.
Many Japanese hentai game industries are going bankrupt due to a labor shortage and piracy, not only ILLUSION.
I saw this on Japanese SNS communities.
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- Oct 9, 2022
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I am quite surprised. Indeed from my HPOV they had some nice technology running in their games, while totally lacking in other departments... I am really curious to know the real reasons behind this event.
That makes sense. If I were a code monkey with even minimal skills, why would I want to work at a, frankly, third rate porn game company where I might not even get to put it on my resume
All in all, I'm kinda disappointed to see them finally kick the bucket due to nostalgia, but I'm not shedding a tear because of all their glorified photoshoot simulators that they've been releasing for the past couple years.
- Dec 4, 2018
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And no, piracy didn't cause the closure. It's not lost sales when those people were never going to buy anyway. If anything, piracy helped them to be as popular as they were; which means MORE sales, not less.
- Oct 22, 2017
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This can't be happening, their games were good, but also I played old games. I thought honey select was selling like bread recent baked.
- Oct 1, 2017
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- Sep 17, 2021
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There's KISS software, but their games are nowhere as good as ILLUSION ones tho. And they've been real quiet lately.
- Jul 14, 2023
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They should have switched to Unreal Engine.
The learning curve initially seems hellish (it is) but you get a much, much better result.
It's going to be a shame, they were one of the few who made something good and not junk with rpgmaker.
It is not remotely the same. That's more of a tech demo than a game.
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I just found this out today. The consensus seems to be that their games weren't selling enough.
There is also the recent introduction of AI generated images and eventually videos.
Maybe hentai will be relegated to patreon independent content style distribution.
There is also the recent introduction of AI generated images and eventually videos.
Maybe hentai will be relegated to patreon independent content style distribution.
- Sep 17, 2021
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The worst thing about ILLUSION dying is that we're not even sure if there'll be someone else to replace them since the hentai industry in japan is in a dire situation nowadays (it's always been like that actually)
The cold, hard truth unfortunately, is that sex will forever be a taboo subject in society. VNs and small indie projects will always be the backbone of this industry because it's literally not allowed to be any bigger due to societal standards. Which is why Skyrim, Fallout and The Sims modding is such a huge thing for hentai, these are probably the closest we'll ever get to AAA hentai gaming for many years to come...
- Jul 14, 2023
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Based on what is currently being released... not even close.
And about taboo... classification systems such as CERO have become much more restrictive these days (black void pantyshots).
I have no idea of what's coming....
- Sep 17, 2021
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Whatever it's coming in the future, it certainly won't bea any good
The world is getting more and more boring by the day, especially now that PC culture is at an all-time high (PC as in politically correct)
Just look at Patreon and it's almost dictatorship-like control over sexual content in their platform, it's almost a miracle we still have hentai projects being hosted over there.
Steam is no good, either. While it's certainly more lax than Patreon, it still won't allow many things of the more niche nature.
I hear SubscribeStar is the better option for hentai, but if that's true, it's only because they are not as big as Patreon. If they get to grow as big one day, it'll certainly go down the same path.
We need to be extremely grateful Oblivion, Skyrim, The Sims, Fallout, Conan Exiles and Starbound are as mod-friendly as they are. I suspect they'll be our unofficial AAA hentai from now on since ILLUSION is gone. Here's hoping Starfield will become hentai paradise as well, since Todd Howard did say it'll be even more mod-friendly than Skyrim is.
I don't know if it's true or lie.
The Japanese anonymous said.
"I asked my friend who is working at ILLUSION. There was a lot of confusion among the core talented programmers.
It was happened around a development costs, and a serious piracy, and also a lack of human resources.
The most reason is some of them have been head-hunted by other companies."
Actually, there are only 26 employees on ILLUSION. They were not only looking for programmers, but a variety of the job titles, for example a senior management and a recruiter.
If we choose either a poorly paid and hard work porn company or a well paid non-porn one, we would choose the latter.
The Japanese anonymous said.
"I asked my friend who is working at ILLUSION. There was a lot of confusion among the core talented programmers.
It was happened around a development costs, and a serious piracy, and also a lack of human resources.
The most reason is some of them have been head-hunted by other companies."
Actually, there are only 26 employees on ILLUSION. They were not only looking for programmers, but a variety of the job titles, for example a senior management and a recruiter.
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If we choose either a poorly paid and hard work porn company or a well paid non-porn one, we would choose the latter.
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