No, on Steam it's published by Idea Factory International, on GOG by Retroism.
I would bet this restriction doesn't come from GOG, but from the publisher.

yes

our only hope would be some new EU-wide youth protection law that would override the one we have now.

Perhaps Retroism doesn't have the right to sell to Japan then.


Not sure that's likely to happen. Still, I hope that something changes for you, guys.
Perhaps flood GOG support with requests, and suggestions on how to handle age verification?

I would go so far as to bet that ALL GOG titles that are restricted in certain regions are so at the insistence of their respective publishers, due to the latter's fears (whether well-founded or not) of legal reprisal.

The why is another matter, the point is that they are locked.
There are games here not legally banned, and I'm sure others that are but aren't locked (yet).

Depends, if the purpose of the exercise is to demonstrate how arbitrary and unfair digital stores and publishers are, then I think this is very relevant.

I think in the vast majority of regionally locked games, it might have more to do with the stupidity of regional politics than store/publisher whims. I certainly wouldn't boycott a game world-wide because politicians in given countries decided to censor or ban it.

Maybe, but I just can't imagine a Western (I have to be specific here, because I know some areas of the world like Japan are funny that way) digital store or game publisher completely missing out on game sales in a region of the world for arbitrary reasons.

It's a bit more complicated than that. The publisher for the GOG release is a third party (Retroism, IIRC) not involved in the Steam releases. At the time of the GOG release, GOG was the only first party site people in Japan could buy Re;Birth 1 from. At that time, it was regionally restricted on Steam. Although we could still buy it from Bundle Stars and Humble.

Also at that time the publisher for the Steam release was Idea Factory International and they *did* refuse to release it in Japan stating they didn't have the rights to do so. When Idea Factory Japan were asked about it, they stated they had zero connection to the PC release and that it was 100% handled by Idea Factory International. That in part might explain why the third party publisher stepped in for the GOG release.

However, following the release of Megadimension Neptunia VII on Steam, Idea Factory Japan realised that Steam was a viable outlet for their games in Japan too (basing this on the rest of world sales of Megadimension Neptunia VII). In keeping with that, they finally released Re;Birth 1 on Steam in Japan on August 25th. At that time the Steam version for all regions was changed to allow for full Japanese language support.

I take it the GOG version remains English language only (except for Japanese audio).

So now there are two publishers for the Steam release: Idea Factory International and Idea Factory Japan. This is also why Re;Birth 1 Steam store page now shows both the English and Japanese titles. Incidentally, following its Japanese Steam release, Re;Birth 1 was the number 1 top seller on Steam in Japan for the entire duration of its launch discount. Even outselling Earth Defense Force 4.1, which has been hovering around second place for over a month now.

Re;Birth 2 and 3 will also likely get full Japanese support too on Steam in September and October respectively as Idea Factory Japan are timing these releases to match the PS Vita re-releases they are currently doing. With that in mind, I honestly don't see GOG getting any future entries.

Now in the case of Dying Light, this is all on GOG. They fucked up. And now it seems they are too bloody stubborn to speak to the publisher about their mistake. So we get buggered over as a result. Then again, it'd be cheaper to buy on Steam anyway...

Do note that in the past when GOG have had a rights issue with a region, they've pulled the game from sale worldwide. If this is a rights issue, it's the first time they've gone against their one-world principle. But given how they threw their one-price principle under the bus, it wouldn't surprise me. GOG are fast putting publishers first, customers last.

You are right it is quite complicated, so in the end it seems the only hope of ever having the remaining games (or have it available again in Japan) here would be for Gog to make a deal with either IFI or IFJ

thanks for the detailed information.
So I take it you are rather convinced that Idea Factory Japan won't embrace the idea of drm-free releases here on GOG?
Maybe it's time to stop resisting against buying the rest of the titles on Steam *sigh*

is it just my impression or are Japanese publisher even more attached to DRM schemes than publishers elsewhere?

That's pretty complicated indeed.

Could you elaborate on this?

Only if you want to send the message that you're perfectly fine with them doing this and they'll have no trouble if they'll keep doing it in the future either.

I know, i know ... which is why I only bought part 1 so far.
on the other hand, every Japanese publisher that turns away from their "we don't give a shit about the PC platform"-attitude and properly supports the PC release is a good thing that alone is almost worthy enough to support.

but yeah, i don't know
i should spend the money on something else to get out of that dilemma :p

There we go, with the effects of the Brazilian storefront. They claim temporary, but we'll see.

Not just Brazil, as it seems South Africa and South Korea don't get to play with green plastic soldiers either, with the possibility of more affected countries.

We'll know for sure on Saturday... if GOG fixes that damn Cannon Fodder bug. Will they be able to squash it in time? What a suspense!

As is very common with new releases in Japan, Japan had a different release date to everyone else. GOG originally had it available on the wrong release date (that is, they sold it in Japan at the same time as the rest of the world) and then pulled it from sale a couple of days later. They never put it back up for sale once the correctly release date came round. And they won't even acknowledge that they made this mistake nor correct it.