A new update to the streaming Terms of Service for the visual novel series Danganronpa prevents Japanese players from sharing any footage past the first chapters of their games. However, there's uncertainty to just how extensive this restriction is and who it affects.
Originally posted by the Japanese Danganronpa Twitter account on April 19th, the post (helpfully translated by the Danganronpa wiki account) says that the first three main entries and Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, the first-person shooter spin-off, are subject to a new streaming ToS.
Under the new ToS, streamers, YouTubers, and other players can only share gameplay footage up to the end of Chapter 1 in each game. However, due to the tweet only being the Japanese account, there's some confusion about who exactly this affects. Is it only Japanese players who are affected by this change, or will this restrict other nationalities? Japan has different and more strict rules on what can be streamed compared to America, and even topics like game rentals differ between the two countries.
Danganronpa 1, 2, DRAE and V3 for Steam/iOS/Android have been given updated streaming ToS by Spike, indicating that game videos cannot be shared past Chapter 1. It's not clear if this applies to existing video or is henceforth, or if this will effect English LPs/streamers. https://t.co/0Y5TGAfabA
— Danganronpa Wiki (@danganronpawiki) April 19, 2021
Spike Chunsoft has pushed this sort of streaming limit at points in the past, as a tweet from 2017 shows, although they had since backed down from that original tweet. Other Japanese companies have also pushed strict rules on streaming. Atlus in particular has had a few news stories related to limits on what games could be streamed and what spoilers could be revealed. Around the time of this article, SEGA posted their own streaming guidelines in Japan, saying that people are free to stream what they want of SEGA's content. However, they've also been very strict on Let's Plays in the past, such as when they DMCA'd TotalBiscuit's Shining Force 3 LP, resulting in him refusing to cover SEGA for a long time. That has obviously changed with their new policy as the company has come around to open creation and probably will push that onto Atlus as well.
Further adding to the uncertainty is how this affects older videos. The first Danganronpa game released in Japan back in 2010, with the English translation landing on the Vita in 2014. 6-11 years is plenty of time for people to make Let's Plays, reviews, and other bits of media that go past the first Chapters. Would all of those older videos be affected by this change? Enforcing this update on years of older videos and streams would be a daunting task, and it's left many concerned. We've reached out to Spike Chunsoft for more details on Monday, but we haven't received any response from them.
The Danganronpa games are available on various platforms and consoles. If you're looking for the first one, Trigger Happy Havoc, you can find it here on Steam.
