We have some sad news today. This past weekend, From Soy Sauce Cancelled the funding campaign for Touhou Super Smash Battles. This is after they were fully funded in the first weekend and doubled their funding goal in a little over a week.
However, the news is not all bad. From Soy Sauce will still be developing the game, they just won’t be running a crowdfunding campaign for the game. They have also provided their reasons for the cancellation if you care to read it.
In short, the reason why they cancelled the funding is because of conflicts with the ideals of Touhou creator ZUN.
The slightly less good news is that ZUN does not believe in collecting funds at the beginning of a project.
From that point we developed Touhou Smash until it looked presentable and towards mid-December we sent an email to ZUN asking him about his stance on crowd funding. We waited about 2 weeks for a response as to “Yes, or No”. On his guidelines he states “…*whole quote…you are free so I will leave it to circle like judgment, please consult me if judgment does not stick. In addition, if you find a secondary condition that does not seem to be here that does not meet the above conditions, in the decision, you may be asked to stop distribution please note”… So it has been two weeks, we followed protocol using our own best judgment and took an extra measure in our email asking to discuss kickstarter and other crowd funding avenues with ZUN since he asked to “consult if judgment does not stick”. After almost 3 weeks, we assumed that it has been a reasonable amount of time to view an email and that if he did not approve of a crowd-funding campaign he would have let us know.
We then tweeted the article to ZUN and a few of his friends. Ironically enough, a few days later on January 16 at 6pm we finally got an email after all instead of a tweet from Shanghai Alice’s Copyright representative Fumio Oyamada.
Though it is not technically written in policy, he explained, crowd funding is not recognized as a valid means to support a project because it is an investment and those investment methods are not tolerated.
It is a shame that it took that long to get communication rolling between ZUN and FSS. Yet, they are not upset in the slightest. They knew such a scenario was possible.
However, FSS will still be able to make TSSB. The project has been approved and it will eventually be offered for sale.
And that leads us to today. So for those wondering whether or not The Project has been approved, yes Team Shanghai Alice themselves have told us to please use everything within our own abilities, except the Wii-U, crowd-funding, Amazon, Steam, and any site primarily used by foreigners to finish the game by ourselves. And that is exactly what we plan to do. That is a lot of “no’s” But the biggest and most important “Yes” Is the project is good to fly and continue to be developed!
Finally, FSS has taken it upon themselves to initiate refunds for all those who made a contribution through Indiegogo. In the spirit of adhering to ZUN’s wishes, FSS is assuming that everyone that made a contribution wants a refund, unless they specifically state they want the funds to go to development.
Our first priority is “YOU WILL GET YOUR MONEY BACK”.
What we can do is change the title of the campaign letting everyone viewing know that it has been discontinued and is no longer accepting donations. Simultaneously all of the contributors will be emailed and informed of the campaigns status. There we will say the campaign has been discontinued and all donations will be reimbursed when indigogo gives us access to the funds 15 days after the campaign is over.
A number of you have expressed that regardless of the campaigns status you would like to reject the reimbursment and keep your perk. FSS is legally bound by indigogo to begin providing the service promised in exchange for money. That being said, any Donor can has legal authority to reject their reimbursement and force FSS to provide the service we promised in exchange. We have been extremely blessed to have received the amount of support and enthusiasm from all our supporters. It was very heart warming to read just how excited you all are for the game. And we still vow to deliver that excitement. For those of you that wish to maintain your perk, simply respond to the email we send tomorrow, let us know, and it will be so. If you do not respond to the email by the end of the campaign, then we will assume you wish to be reimbursed. Let me repeat that, we are assuming that you do not want to keep your perk and want to be reimbursed unless you specifically notify us otherwise!
With all that, we see an end to the crowdfunding of Touhou which will still go down as the fastest growing campaign and the campaign that raised the most funds in Oklahoma. However, because they had to cancel the funding, there will always be an asterisk next to that record.
So in the end, the game will be released. Towards the end of the news, they announce what that game will contain. There will be plenty of characters and a story mode to play. However, the game will not be as big and expansive as they had hoped to make.
We wish From Soy Sauce the best of luck in completing this project. They are doing a great job with development and we can’t wait to see the completed project.
