Kotaku.au recently published an article describing perhaps a rather concerning scenario: it appears the Share functionality that is part of the Playstation 4 is restricted, to a degree, with regards to Yakuza Zero. Sharing is one of the hallmark features of the Playstation 4 (and arguably, a symbol of the direction of modern gaming in general), allowing gamers to share screenshots or videos of a game they’re playing with friends, or even stream their gameplay on Twitch as the person is playing.
Those who play games on the Playstation 4 may already be familiar with the message “Gameplay recording paused because you entered a blocked scene.” White text, black box. Essentially, what is happening with Yakuza Zero is that this message pops up whenever someone enters into the main story of the game or views certain cutscenes. What results is that, broadly speaking, it would seem players only have Sharing capabilities when at the title screen/interlude screens or when playing minigames. As the article mentions, it’s worth noting that Yakuza Ishin is even more restricted: Sharing of personal media from Yakuza Ishin only works when playing in an arena in game or after playing a certain mode that is unlocked after clearing Ishin, per Kotaku.
That developers are able to select which elements of a game have Sharing functionality enabled on them is a condition that was established before, but is still sometimes glossed over. Considering that effectively a significant portion of the content in the Playstation 4 Yakuza games is restricted from Sharing, it’s a particular situation that becomes harder to gloss over.
Looking for gamer reception to the situation, Kotaku looked at prominent Japanese textboard 2ch, and the impressions they gleaned seem quite disappointed with the restricted Sharing. So far as we know, there’s been no official comment from Sega on the rationale behind the restricted social functionality for Yakuza games on Playstation 4. The obvious conclusion is that Sega is concerned about the leaking of spoilers, considering that the Yakuza franchise is so story-heavy. But I would argue that with gaming forums and fan communication being as sophisticated and networked as they are nowadays, it’s not a logic that carries much weight. Besides, this won’t do much against gamers with their own game capturing hardware, disregarding the fact that such a group is a significant minority compared to gamers writ large. In any case, it would be interesting to see a dialog started between Sega and gamers interested in this issue.
What do you think?
Credit goes to the above-linked Kotaku.au article for the second image featured in this article.