Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

[Malacite]

Nintendo Co. Ltd. removes same-sex “bug” from 3DS Tomodachi game | Post Arcade | FP Tech Desk | Financial Post

Nintendo Co. Ltd. has removed a “bug” from the Nintendo 3DS title, Tomodachi Collection: New Life, which allowed players to create same-sex couples in the game.Players noticed this was an option when they began to migrate their virtual Mii avatars from the Nintendo Wii U to the portable version of the game.
In a statement issued by Nintendo and translated by Kotaku, the Japanese company says the patch is meant to fix a number of problems in the game, among them “human relations that become strange.”
The patch also fixes the inability to boot up the game, a number of error messages, and the inability to save.
Website Pink News, reported that some users of the same are pledging not to download the patch to allow same-sex relationships to continue in the game.
Twitter users have already shown their disdain for Nintendo’s move to fix what many users had considered a feature of the game.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

It's a bug when it doesn't let women marry each other, too.

Unfortunately, Nintendo seems to be going the wrong way about this. The best we can hope for is that the backlash makes them aware of that.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

Bug fixing is bug fixing.

[Armando]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

Natsume did the same thing to Harvest Moon DS when they brought it over to the US, except in Japan it actually was a feature and not a mistake.

Disappointing.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

The longer explanation I've seen for the fix was the same-sex relationships between men actually did contain a very, game-breaking bug the made the game more difficult to load and progress and unable to save. The easiest way to fix the bug was to just prevent same sex marriage entirely rather than sort out the full problem from the finished code to keep it intact and then open the option to female couples.

Of course, leave it to US sites and Twitter users to sensationalize without fact-checking.

Perhaps Nintendo will learn from the response to include same-sex relationships in the next version of the game. As it stands, however, Japan is much further behind the curve on these matters than even America is. Its a soul-crushing fact for people that believe the animated version of Japan is the real Japan and more progressive than everywhere on earth.

[Mezlo]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

Of course, leave it to Mal to sensationalize without fact-checking.

ftfy

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

Goes without saying.

I just think its hilarious just how desperate people are to rake Nintendo over the coals for anything until they find something that sticks. People tried the fally the torches and pitchforks over no gay marriage option in Fire Emblem Awakening as well. Meanwhile Nathan Drake could make an amazing homosexual and no one dares suggest Sony or MS do anything remotely progressive with their IPs.

If you really, really want to rail on Nintendo about something, you could look into their deal with Youtube to redirect ad revenue from Mario-based Youtube Let's Plays to Nintendo. It isn't entirely illegal or new for this to be done and many publishers before them were already doing it, but hey, its Nintendo and you want a "problem" with them, right? At the very least it does raise the question of things like fair use and corporations looking for any free meal they can take.

Just be prepared to stick it to Blizzard, Activision, EA, Konami, Capcom and others when you start raging at Nintendo.

[Malacite]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

Lighten up, both of you.

[Icemage]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

The longer explanation I've seen for the fix was the same-sex relationships between men actually did contain a very, game-breaking bug the made the game more difficult to load and progress and unable to save. The easiest way to fix the bug was to just prevent same sex marriage entirely rather than sort out the full problem from the finished code to keep it intact and then open the option to female couples.

The cynical programmer in me knows better than to think something as simple as a gender flag would cause these sorts of errors.

In a more practical sense, it's possible that whatever is causing the corruption of game data in the first place is inadvertently allowing same-sex relationships, but that seems unlikely in this day and age of object oriented programming. You just don't get that sort of memory-overflow type of glitch in modern games unless you're running some sort of less strict scripting underneath (see: Skyrim).

If anything, this sounds more like a plausible cover story for Nintendo trying to undo their own mistakes. Most people just wouldn't have the technical understanding to realize that it's just a handy excuse, and it lets them do what they really want without ruffling as many feathers in the process.

Considering the extreme lengths to which Nintendo goes to in order to protect their brand, this is a much more likely scenario than one lone programmer screwing up a line or two of code that just so happens to upset the whole apple cart of game stability.


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

That, and the internet is full of drama queens - just look at the comments below the article @.@

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

I seriously doubt the fix would have been performed to a bug that was helping sell the game if there wasn't a bigger problem behind it. I think Nintendo's slowness in releasing Wii U games kind of highlights a lack of modern programming prowess.

They make great, polished games with brilliant art direction, but they've not made anything that's a technical marvel or graphic powerhouse in well over a decade.

[Icemage]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

I seriously doubt the fix would have been performed to a bug that was helping sell the game if there wasn't a bigger problem behind it, particularly in the wake of the bank they scored with Animal Crossing before this.

The bug - whatever its cause - can potentially damage Nintendo's brand image, which outweighs any additional sales it might earn the game.

SMT and FE are both T-rated games. They're also relatively niche games, and people sort of know what they're getting into with each series (maybe not so much with the cross-over, but that's the risk of crossovers). Tomadochi collection, however, is the equivalent of an E-rated game - i.e. supposedly safe for everyone, including children.

I don't know what Nintendo's doing regarding Let's Play ad revenue; while it might just be monetary, I sincerely doubt it. I doubt they're getting more from the redirected ad revenue than they spent on the lawyers to initiate the action in the first place.


Icemage

[Firewind]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

Given how sexist and patronising Nintendo's advertising was a few years ago in Europe, I'm actually inclined to agree with Icemage here. They are frankly backwards in that regard and are as bad as Sony and Microsoft were 10 years ago with how insulting some of their ads were (Implying that women and girls only care about and want to pay Animal Crossing? Nice one there Nintendo!).

[Armando]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

I gotta side with Icemage on this one. If they didn't remove it on purpose, they're writing really bad code.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Gay Marriage is a Bug? Say that again Nintendo?

Given how sexist and patronising Nintendo's advertising was a few years ago in Europe, I'm actually inclined to agree with Icemage here. They are frankly backwards in that regard and are as bad as Sony and Microsoft were 10 years ago with how insulting some of their ads were (Implying that women and girls only care about and want to pay Animal Crossing? Nice one there Nintendo!).

Oh, I'm sorry, I was looking at some insulting European billboards - you were saying...?