Gal Gun: Double Peace and Senran Kagura Estival Versus have been removed from EB Games Australia’s website after an article by Kotaku yesterday highlighted over-sexualised elements of the games’ genre.
Gal Gun, available at the start of next month, features a bunch of suggestive touching, love-starved schoolgirls and other sexualised hijinks.
“Build up that combo meter and you can enter touch mode, which basically turns whichever targets you stroke to completion into orgasm bombs,” Kotaku’s Mike Fahey said of Gal Gun in a post deemed not safe for work (NSFW) yesterday. “That sentence goes into the scrapbook.”
“Others are wondering how a game like this gets approved for Western release,” Fahey continues. “According to publisher PCube, it was surprisingly easy. They expected a fight, and it just breezed right through. Having enjoyed that success, the publisher is also bringing Valkyrie Drive, the game about girls making out to turn each other into weapons, to the West later this year. Apparently all they had to do was ask.”
Gal Gun received an R18+ classification from the Australian Classification Board, which cites strong impact themes, high impact sex and mild impact violence.
Senran Kagura Estival Versus is quite similar, featuring sexy girl heroines and a revealing costume destruction system.
Google’s caching feature shows that both titles were still available on EB Games’ website yesterday as late at 5.00 pm AEST. The pages are now listed as “page not available”.
A tweet from PCube’s Geraint Evans, Head of Marketing at the publisher, seems to suggest the pull was intentional.
I believe so, although I don't have the full picture as yet. Hoping for clarification soon.
— Geraint Evans (@_geraintevans_) July 27, 2016
We’ve gone to EB Games Australia for comment around the circumstances of the removal, and to clarify that the games have also been removed from retail stores.
Senran Kagura Estival Versus is already available on PS4 and PS Vita, and Gal Gun: Double Peace will be released on 1 August for the same systems. The games are still available digitally.
Update: EB Games has responded in regards to this issue.
“Australians who are 18 years or older have the right to make their own choices about what video games they play,” an EB representative told Stevivor via statement.
“We assess our product range on a regular basis using a number of key business factors, including sales rates. In this instance we have made the decision to no longer stock these products.
“The extremely small number of customers who have an existing preorder are still able to collect their copy of these titles.”
The representative also confirmed that the games will not be available in retail stores, apart from the pre-orders mentioned above.
Thanks, Jonathan!
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