The end of eroge sharing in japan?

[Hawat]

This looks like the start of the end of eroge sharing in japan.
According to this page
http://www.sofurin.org/htm/copyright/77.htm
It seems that one of the main sharer of eroge known as 喫茶東洋 on share, who was probably uploading about 50-70 % of the games recently, was just arrested at the end of april.

That is probably going to stop the few other japanese uploaders that were still in activity.

Since most of the games being shared on animesharing were first downloaded from those uploaders, we might see a sudden stop in game sharing here as well until some non japanese actually buy games and share them.

 

[Animaksiat]

same old story... the very same case was happened back in 2008, and yet we still survive!

don't worry... like ian malcolm says "life...*ahem* i mean... piracy will find a way"

 

[Hawat]

I don't think the situation is the same, back in 2008 there was a bunch of big uploaders, if one went missing, others could fill missing games without problem.
Now the last big uploader is gone so I think we can prepare to see a lot of missing game at the end of the month unless a new one shows up.

 

[987987987]

same old story... the very same case was happened back in 2008, and yet we still survive!

don't worry... like ian malcolm says "life...*ahem* i mean... piracy will find a way"

This is a very naive way to think about the situation. If I'm not mistaken, the 2008 arrests were mostly about unauthorized distribution of TV anime recordings (I think this is the first time someone got arrested for uploading eroge). Since then, the number of active uploaders has decreased and now that J22vl0TKF0 has quit, there's no uploader doing all shows anymore while during the good old days you had about ten of them. That's not a big loss of course, because everything gets distributed first through bittorrent anyway.

You also need to realize that eroge costs money, while for capturing TV broadcasts you only need to spend money on the equipment which is a one-time expense (I'm not talking about paid satellite channels of course). You could have the most secure network in the world, but what is it good for when there's nobody willing to spend money on stuff to upload?

There was a similar case back in 2012 when 3KW5pcWab58o, the man who uploaded 70% of anime Blu-ray discs (which are even more expensive than eroge) got arrested and all other uploaders quit immediately, so we can expect the same thing to happen now. Only because foreigners took up the task of uploading the discs we still get them, and there's still few titles missing every season.

I'm not writing this post to cause panic, because only time will tell whether the uploads are going to stop or not. I just wanted to make people aware that they can't rely on Japanese uploaders forever, especially in the light of recent developments regarding copyright law in Japan.

On a side note, I kind of wonder if all big uploaders use any kind of VPNs. 3KW5pcWab58o has been active since 2010, so if he wasn't using any kind of protection they could've caught him sooner. Here's hoping that more Japanese start using foreign file hosting services.

 

[motherofass]

I had just noticed I have like 6 games on my wanted list from April that haven't been shared yet and 3 from March which is unprecedented. This is really bad. And I think a lot of it has to do with these asshats uploading everything to 20 sites and profiting from others' work. No doubt that made the companies and government start taking piracy much more seriously.

 

[Nacht]

I don't think the situation is the same, back in 2008 there was a bunch of big uploaders, if one went missing, others could fill missing games without problem.
Now the last big uploader is gone so I think we can prepare to see a lot of missing game at the end of the month unless a new one shows up.

So, how do you know he was the "Last" Big Uploader?
And as you wrote, "Probably" Uploading 50-70% Eroge

Only time will tell though, we should wait till 3rd week of this month

 

[Hawat]

Just by looking at the share list of game released since december and you can easily notice that more than half of those game were uploaded by that guy. And when he wasn't uploading a missed game almost nobody else did.

 

[Nacht]

Just by looking at the share list of game released since december and you can easily notice that more than half of those game were uploaded by that guy. And when he wasn't uploading a missed game almost nobody else did.

Guess we should wait to see what happened next
Btw, to be able to buy that many eroge that guy must be have at least a decent income

 

[motherofass]

You really don't have to wait a few weeks to find out what will happen... in April there were 16 games on my wanted/try list and only 10 of them were shared. One was made by Anim, who also released a game in March that's yet to be shared.

So I think the games most affected by this will be the more expensive, maniac-type stuff. Moe crap will probably still find its way online in due time since it's more popular. That's my 2 cents anyway

Edit: Just to give you some background, generally at this point there's no more than 1 game from the previous month that hasn't been shared. Rarely 2 games. It's been that way for me for years. But in March it was 3, and in April it was 6.

What's probably gonna have to happen is non-Japanese have to start piling their money together and paying a guy in Japan to ship it to them so they can share with the community. I know this is done with JAV and probably anime.

 

[Hawat]

You really don't have to wait a few weeks to find out what will happen... in April there were 16 games on my wanted/try list and only 10 of them were shared. One was made by Anim, who also released a game in March that's yet to be shared.

So I think the games most affected by this will be the more expensive, maniac-type stuff. Moe crap will probably still find its way online in due time since it's more popular. That's my 2 cents anyway

Edit: Just to give you some background, generally at this point there's no more than 1 game from the previous month that hasn't been shared. Rarely 2 games. It's been that way for me for years. But in March it was 3, and in April it was 6.

What's probably gonna have to happen is non-Japanese have to start piling their money together and paying a guy in Japan to ship it to them so they can share with the community. I know this is done with JAV and probably anime.

The last games from anim teams, fulltime, blackrainbow etc.. require online activation or account login and since 喫茶東洋 didnt want to touch games with activation or internet connection, most of those didnt get uploaded. Before that most games including those with activation were uploaded by another guy but he retired around december.

 

[osakc]

and now, according to this message
(文通) F22qpoThUlの独り言 (txt).rar F22qpoThUl 2,694 273e848161d0f6772db18d9d314a4a4d7cd4858a

F22qpoThUl, one of the main eroge uploader on share and formerly known as ROM☆, seems to quit sharing. In his message he just alludes to quitting at least on Share network, but suggests no alternative p2p or sharing systems.
Though no reaction from other uploaders yet, imho it's easy to imagine they follow him.

 

[Checkmate]

I do have a plan (or two) to address this issue though, this is getting serious.

 

[motherofass]

I suppose on the bright side this will give every pirate a chance to go through his huge backlog... but yes, it's looking gloomy. Unless they migrate to PD or DDL it's up to non-Japanese now

 

[Hawat]

PD doesn't seem safe either, there have been some arrest on it as well.
At the moment there is some discussion about using amoeba or freenet but it seems to be slow (24h for a 4gb file on a fiber connection according to the comments) so some people are against it.

 

[TougeSil80]

It'll probably take a hit in the short term, but in the long term I think I'll bounce back. Think about how many big movie scene groups or game release groups got busted, yet we still have games and movies. Eroge will be the same, the release groups will figure out a better way to implement their security (multi-hop VPN or TOR) so that they can release more anonymously.

 

[Hawat]

I think the problem is that there was no group uploading non translated eroge, it was mainly shared by rich individuals.
If we just look at the cost of those eroge and try to see how much it would cost to buy 50% of those game each month to share them, it would seem very hard for a normal person to sustain that for more than a few month.

Which is why I think arresting those big uploaders is much more effective than on the regular game scene where there are a bunch of groups than can replace each other, finding another rich guy or someone working at a shop willing to risk their real life or being shamed by the jp medias if arrested by sharing a bunch of game is probably going to be much more difficult.

Until then we will probably see some guys sharing the more popular game at release date and see a bunch of less popular genres not uploaded until a few months after their release by non japanese people.

On a sidenote it seems that some game were just released on freenet so that might be the next thing.

 

[nukinukinuki]

I agree with Hawat. I have been checking 2ch and the other uploaders have been trying the Freenet but it seems too slow in both uploading and downloading. The Freenet also seems to put lots of burden on HDD and some said their HDDs broke from running the Freenet for extended period of time so they are reluctant to introduce it and instead rely on someone importing files from the Freenet to torrent or Share.

Let's see how the titles of this month go. The major titiles like Grisaia might be shared right after the release date, but I am not sure the other titles not as major; they could be several weeks after or several months after (if a particular title has a DL edition that might be an option in case you want to purchase it).

I am being pessimistic as things look gloomy. As far as I know, the world of sharing Eroge basically is supported by 4 or 5 uploaders in Japan, yes it's a very fragile model. And some of them seem to seek for the use of the Freenet. If you want to play Eroge outside Japan, then you could use the Freenet or wait for someone to import them to torrent or share. The number of games shared may or may not decrease, but hope things are not as bad as I think they are.

 

[Albel]

Well, the thing I don't get is, why in gods name even do something stupid like releasing on p2p? I mean sure, it may be convenient and everything, but there's a reason scene groups go the one-click-hoster or xdcc route...

All of this wouldn't even be a problem if they followed suit, but as it stands now they seem to be like 10 years behind the west, in terms of file sharing. Makes it really hard to sympathize with the uploaders that were caught...

 

[TougeSil80]

Well, western releasers usually don't release directly to p2p, they release to topsites then it gets leaked. I guess Japanese releasers don't want users to wait for the leak. But still, they need some protection other that the built-in mechanism of Share.

 

[Hawat]

Probably because the uploaders, were just simple, isolated users (there doesn't seem to be any connection between the few of them) who happened to get a lot of games and upload them but were not experienced enough to use top site etc..

 

[Yukinero]

maybe they just don't wanna waste time on reuploading on top-sites i supposed.

 

[Checkmate]

Probably because the uploaders, were just simple, isolated users (there doesn't seem to be any connection between the few of them) who happened to get a lot of games and upload them but were not experienced enough to use top site etc..

I'm trying to reach out to a few heavy uploader to see what I can do to safely share the goods still.

 

[AlexSutter]

To be honest, I am totally ok with the end of sharing eroge. If I want to play it, I'll go to Japan and buy it, or import it like Rayun:
rayun.jp/‎

Eroge is not supposed to be sold out Japan and that's how it is. We were just fortunate but not anymore.

 

[nukinukinuki]

I think you can relax a bit, AlexSutter. An OST for the new Grisaia title has been released on the Freenet and I bet the game itself will also be released some time after (hopefully so do other games). Japanese folks have launched a new thread on sharing Eroge on the Freenet (in Japanese):
http://awabi.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/download/1369228272/

It is likely that we do not get our hands on games on the release dates as they are going for the Freenet where uploading and downloading is much slower. But hey, we live outside Japan anyway so the fact we obtain games on release dates or not does not matter much. I think it is just wait time gets longer than before.

 

[AlexSutter]

I don't know. Up until last month, at least several of big titles tended to be released by Friday morning in Japan time. But none of them have got released yet (besides girlcelly's 魔法少女カナタTS, that was a DL edition Eroge and we are talking about packaged Eroge sold only in Japan). This is a clear sign that arresting 喫茶東洋 impacted the world of sharing Eroge big time.