General
Snowbreak : Containment Zone is online. However, players report that the arts are censored and the "switch" that could uncensor them is removed.
It's not just outfits being censored, menu animations are gone, lobby animations are gone, gacha animations are gone, interactive scenes that people paid for can't be played anymore.
It'd bad, the game is literally neutered. Unless there's some secret uncensoring trick it's basically guaranteed EOS.
It's not just outfits being censored, menu animations are gone, lobby animations are gone, gacha animations are gone, interactive scenes that people paid for can't be played anymore.
It's got its life force sucked out of it. This ain't your regular censorship, this is straight up sabotage.
Elysia Christ, I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.
they better be or the game's as good as EoS at this point, losing the good will and faith of it's remaining playerbase, not that it will have any if they didn't have any clear explanation or workaround for the current situation anyway
SeaSun have been having it rough this year lol, Snowbreak got neutered and MechaBreak is on its last lifeline (unless the current new dev team managed to bring it back up)
Know what's the biggest shame is? Both are pretty good in some form, Snowbreak with its boldness (basically on LADS level of goon), and Mecha Break is a solid Mech game, but with how both game are ended up right now, it seems to be something wrong within Seasun
the game had sort of identity crisis, basically couldnt get an intended audience, no community to stick with. most of competitive PVP players are gone, the game couldnt maintain casual playerbase either. The core gameplay design is good, but it lacked contents. the game was plagued with poor PVP balance, really bad matchmaking with bots mixed in, terrible extraction mode, horrible progression, annoying in game market. the dev attempted to fix alot of these, but most of those are just bandaids as the game were rapidly bleeding players after launch
First impression in beta was huge but then when people play it, they were confused if it just wants to be a competitive hero shooter? or is it armored core-like shooter with mech customization? is there PVE contents? what happened is all of those interests are spreaded out with half assed efforts, every modes and contents on launch were half baked.
Mecha stuff is fairly niche, yet the dev wanted it to be esport even, confusing as hell when they couldn't maintain the casual player base to begin with.
couldn't have said it better myself, right now the new Dev Team decided to lean more into the PvE aspect while using a Game Lab with experimental buffs to get some more data and player feedbacks regarding the PvP, however it seems most player reported that even in the Game Lab mode it is still plagued with bots which in theory, will invalidates most of the intent in the first place (they even used it as a test for the Surrender option but in my own personal experience nobody seems to notice or use it so far)
Stopped playing after 2months because theres no rank down. People that shouldn't be in that rank are stuck in it, so they are forced to play against really good players. Its demotivating if I'm up against someone way above my skill level.
But that aside, isn't that going to bleed more players? Pretty most guys that stuck with it till today are pvp players. Adding PvE now is really too late, and wouldn't it just divide the playerbase at this point?
It is, but the issue is as stated by the user above me, is Identity Crisis, imo majority of the players are in favor of the game going full PvE (they have that epic beginning tutorial mission too with some lore in it) since in my own opinion and the new team kinda admitted it is impossible to keep the original idea of an esport worthy approach at this point
not to mention how they never fixed the PvP issue with one being what you explained
It feel like too many developers jump the gun trying to make a game an esports title from the very start, without putting in the effort to cultivate any sort of grassroots support from the playerbase that desires such a level of prestige.
Famous esports titles like Dota, CS, SF, etc, all these games started long ago without being designed explicitly for competitive gaming in the beginning. It was their own playerbase and community that naturally developed the scene, with small scale stuff like internet cafe/LAN tournaments, community streamers, etc, before the developers themselves acknowledged the drive for it and gave the mode support, which together with the established playerbase, meant that the community genuinely wanted it. Meanwhile, new games design their games from the very start to be esport ready and try to artificially build support for it by sponsoring big tournaments in the beginning, but as there's no genuine desire from the playerbase, it eventually dies out as the developers stop funding big tournaments and advertisements.
The devs guessed wrong what people actually wanted from a mecha game or anything related to mecha. It's not the JUST the mecha that people want, it's the story with the mecha.
So they released a game focused on the mecha and the only mode this catered to is PvP. Those that came expecting something along like Armored Core/Gundam were disappointed. While the PvP isn't all that bad, the devs monetization pretty much screwed it up.
So now not only a lot of players left...but also a lot of the original team. The "new" team wanted to fix it by making it more PvE but...well...
Again, mecha lovers are not like what outsiders think, that we are this dumb people that easily got distracted by the "shiny key" of cool looking mecha.
Heck no. Cool robots doesn't matter if there isn't a cool pilot/story for it to shine. Why was the mecha made? What influenced its design? It's limitations as well as strengths? Just look at famous mecha franchises and see what made them popular and iconic. HALF of it is because of the story and characters.
Take Gundam for example. Do you think RX-78 would be famous if it was piloted by a no-faced no-named soldier? Heck no! Its pilot, Amuro Ray is just as famous as the robot he pilots!
Mechabreak could have been successful if it has a story and storymode content to make you care about the mech. But nope. All we get is a PvP mode that made it no different than any other hero shooter game.
yeah many mecha shows are about the story first, the mechas could be considered like a tool with meaning.
And it's not hard to understand if you replace it with your generic shonen.
Do you really just watch an anime/show because it has cool armor and fights ? or because the people in it are interesting and make and use these cool armor and do these cool fights for a purpose ? It doesn't need to the main focus but it needs to be there in the background for people to care a bit lol
Even fully focused pvp games like Valorant have a story in it.
Yeah, maybe it’s more of an internal issue. It seems like the people working there weren’t able to compromise or meet each other’s expectations, which eventually led to this mess.
Damn, RIP to Snowbreak. While this obviously sucks, I'm kinda glad I didn't gave in to my desire to buy Acacia's skin now.
Japanese games have been toning down their fanservice a lot, Chinese games are being censored by the government. I guess I can only pray for more Korean games now.
Unfortunately, many good r18 JP gachas are locked behind DMM/Fanza, which has IP checks against foreign connections. And forget about those getting any EN versions, the JP devs don't care about gaijins.
For an entire company and private citizens to emigrate and become naturalized citizens/able to work in another country? On top of the social cost of needing to convince the devs to leave their homes, families, friends, and lives?
It’s not easy. Even studios and companies have a hard time moving to a different location or country. Asset loss, changing servers, and restructuring data can be a real pain. On top of that, moving doesn’t mean everything will be transferred or set up exactly the same as in the previous location there are so many factors that can affect the process. One of the biggest hurdles is communication, and working remotely in this kind of setup can be hell of adjustment
quite difficult if you have any investment, close to impossible. so it depends if the studio is even legally able to at this point.
I did wonder for a while if they had been pushing something there, as even without the edit trick they where getting quite wild about when I quit. so I guess now we know.
Maybe but under CN law, you have to announce you are shuttering service for an online game 60 days in advance. Otherwise you get into even more trouble with the government.
Any unused currency is also required to be refunded.
At this point, I think the devs are also sick of this shit, so they made the best attempt at pissing the audience off to get some clapback going towards whomstever is behind this.
I bet they're sick of it, yeah, but what do they get for purposely making ugly designs to piss off the audience on purpose...just to get back at the CCP? The CCP doesn't care about it and the audience ain't gonna turn their anger to the CCP. Honestly, the devs were the ones who made the stupid choice of that collab of putting their game into public eyes knowing how bad censorship is in their own country. They should know that their game would be done the moment their government finds out they exist.
I feel the worst for the designers having to their designs butchered like that. Say what you will about the original designs, but they were still their original creations and seeing them compromised like that must be a bitter feeling.
TOS doesn't mean anything. It just useful to prevent petty lawsuit.
But class action where thousands is affected? Court would not side with TOS since it's not a legally binding documents
Class action overseas might be a thing. The term class action itself pretty much does not exist in China. It took me quite some time to explain what does it mean to a one of my Chinese colleagues who has been living in the US for quite a few years
The game was kept alive by the gooner community, i really don't know what their next move gonna be but if this continues to be like this then it likely gonna goes EOS in the near future.
Oh its over. Every skin in the game is censored in some way now, paid scenes have been removed, lobby animations have been removed, multiple story sections have been removed, only CN and JP voices available (that doesnt bother me as I play JP but its worth noting they JUST got EN back like a year ago), the compensation pulls are limited to this patch. The new character doesnt even have a gacha animation.
"the compensation pulls are limited to this patch"
They know that they game is dead, that's why.
They want to get as much money possible in the last few months
Girls frontline 2, Aether gazer (CN dev, GFL2 is hit or miss, AG getting more fanservice every update but not extreme as SB for now. most lewd rn in CN which is half year ahead of global), korean I know just horizon walker but the game and models are not it for me (is lewdest of them all though)
How does that even work as a censor? What does that even change? "Finally! I can play this in public!" said no one, it doesn't even make sense from a fashion perspective either.
Tbf the censorship was always half assed in this game. Even when a skin was so tacky you might as well pick the more tame version they would place some extra pieces of cloth so poorly it felt insulting.
this is genuinely impossible, they can;t fight back against the CCP. ML people will no longer support a game that bent its knees to publlic pressure anyway.
I remember when they first had to censor stuff and they promised that this will be an one time thing with no future censorships. Building on that trust, they even said with confidence they would rather stop developing the game than having another censorship wave. Well ...
Sucks to say, but at this point with all the stuff being censored there and apparently no easy way to uncensor it, they should really just EoS the game and at least give players an offline functionality to still play the game with the old state. An uncensored global option apparently isn't something they planned in the weeks of absent.
Given the very incomplete state of things in the game itself, the hopium here is that its a rushed release with the actual meat coming later. But that's a very big generous puff of hopium we're smoking here.
It's censored for everyone since the devs were adamant about only using one client and server for all versions. For a CN-based game it's one of the most stupid things someone can do imo.
If they didn't do it for global the Chinese community would call them out on it and say shit like "they are whoring out the characters for foreigners" and similar stuff.
Though I do think abandoning the Chinese market would be the move instead of doing this. Like yeah that is a massive chunk of revenue gone, but this will just EoS within the month anyway now.
For gacha, it is heavy if you got reported. If you managed to go under the radar, they'd gladly turn a blind eye to you.
SB's mistake was making themselves a target by doing a collaboration with a government body. Did they really think that people outside of their usual market that did not tolerate them would not notice?
This kind of government policy is not reliable. They should set clear rules from the start. One of my favorite novels, Reverend Insanity, was also taken down over there for a silly reason.
From what ive seen, its still complete radio silence aside from patch notes announcing the server reopening. Feels like the devs have resigned themselves to their fate and just kinda given up tbh. They know their audience isnt gonna tolerate this and that they cant just ignore the CCP either so they're kinda fucked. The censorship isnt even the "meh" kind that at least looks tasteful, they literally spent 2 months photo-shopping shitty looking modesty shorts and spats onto every character and every skin. Its my understanding the official Discord is on fire and will likely be locked soon.
UPDATE: the uncensored versions are in the game files and according to the aforementioned discord, the devs are working on separating CN and Global servers
They're almost definitely under a gag order. Government wouldn't want them saying "Hey guys the government forced us to censor the game, sorry!"
Censorship aside no gacha devs would ever shut down their game willingly for 2 months. The whole point of all the daily missions, login rewards, time gating, and whatnot gachas have is to keep people consistently logging in for player retention.
Yea, as expected you don't take game down for two months to make no changes or cosmetic ones . But Snowbros were willing to believe "leaks" that the devs will double down, if you check the thread from just yesterday ... uff .
No game deserves to go down like this but this the reality of CN market. And this will no doubt have chilling effect on fanservice in CN gacha in general if not worse /cycle of revenge/. It's probably best to look for game from outside CN for your gooning needs.
RIP Snowbreak. Why did they even bring it back in this state? It's like telling someone you can bring their loved one back to life and then you give them the reanimated rotted corpse.
I assume this game wanted to compete with Browndust 2, but due to being made in China, it never could due to the nation's draconian censorship policies?
Seems all that’s left at this point is an early EOS.
All this because of stupid China Post card collab... if you want to make gooner game in CN then better keep your head low instead of collabing with official institutions
Its interesting that people thought Snowbreak would be able to come back untouched. The whole fiasco was big enough of an issue that devs had to shut down servers, has any other gacha had to shutdown servers for so long due to censorship? The game was logically not going to come back to its former state.
I myself am going to let it sit a bit since it just came back, I'm pretty sure animations and voicelines not being present is at the very least a bug since they seem to be having issues server side.
Was gooning all this game had going for it? Legitimate question; I never played it and now I see people saying it's gonna die because of the censorship.
Gooning is what it became
It was trying to basically be a softer core 3d nikke, cover shooting, girls in tactical yet semi servicy outfits, darker story with a component cast of men and women
Then it started to die and Seasun turned to the ML crowd for salvation. And while I'm no prude, I love both sides of fan service for men and women, they really flew too close to the sun because the ML crowd will always demand more
It eventually became so bad they deleted or killed all the male characters, every story event update would have all their character intelligence become cupsize increases instead as they were lobotomized and just.... It was SAD to watch
I had almost everything maxed, every unique gun and every girl, almost every skin up until the release of the vampire like chick. I quit because I was tired of "meet girl, girl simps, get married"
Yeah, pretty much. Story isn't good, characters have the depth of a cardboard cutout, and the gameplay was too easy. Practically everything was tailored to slock fan service. Live by the goon, die by the goon.
I tried it a few weeks before the shutdown out of morbid curiosity, and my take is... it's complicated.
The intro story was surprisingly solid, and the event going on at the time (the MC and some of his girlfriends fighting some evil woman who was apparently his rival) actually fucked - it had some of the better melee combat writing I've seen in a VN style game, very brutal, and a solid late Heaven's Feel vibe to it in some regards. But they also skipped chapters 1 through 13, so after the intro story you jump straight to chapter 14 (which I found to be pretty mid) and clearly missing a lot of context. The event story also assumed you knew what happened in 1-13, but explained enough that I was able to follow along.
Gameplay wise, it felt like a solid but not exceptional third person shooter. Each character was reasonably unique, variety of playstyles, surprising amount of coop available, but it wasn't great either. I'd call it about on par with some of the more 'alright' gameplay gachas out there, though I'm sure not everyone here would agree with some of those I put in that category lol.
Characters seemed to have good depth initially, but from what I could tell the main story tended to oversimplify them and their development. I didn't play enough of the main story to get a really strong sense of that though.
The MC was alright but I absolutely hated how he always had the mask on.
Overall, I thought it was surprisingly decent for a gooner game, but the gooning was definitely the thing that made it stand out, without that it would just be a pretty alright and somewhat unique action gacha. Maybe that makes me a fake fan? But I liked it enough to stick around for a bit and get attached to a few of the girls.
Even less surprising that they think the uncensor "trick" is coming back or would work after the severe attention the game has had from the people with actual power.
The recent history of Snowbreak has been extremely weird. There was that major controversy, which caused the core fanbase to go nuts. The developers was forced to make a livrstream apologizing and promising to make changes to Snowbreak. The game is back online and it seems it is all censored to hell.
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u/Arxade May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
It's not just outfits being censored, menu animations are gone, lobby animations are gone, gacha animations are gone, interactive scenes that people paid for can't be played anymore.
It'd bad, the game is literally neutered. Unless there's some secret uncensoring trick it's basically guaranteed EOS.