Collection of Mainstream Articles Destroying Koei Tecmo's 'Hair Rental Service'

Free Step Dodge commits itself first to the players of Dead or Alive, and since the controversial launch of version 1.20 we have made it a top priority to let Koei Tecmo know that these 'hair rental' & DLC business practices are unacceptable and that enough is enough. The mainstream press is hearing the community and responding to KT with questions and concerns of their own! Keep in mind that Free Step Dodge will still cover the offline players that make DOA what it is today and our latest post supports the efforts made by the community at Reversal in Philadelphia.

It's sort of hysterical that the mainstream media is covering this as most of them are not fighting game fans, certainly not players of the often times underrated Dead or Alive franchise, but this hair rental controversy is a rare exception outside of new games & character DLCs. All of this started with our articles here at FSD, but then the dispute slowly trickled into other big news sources. Top Tier almost immediately questioned Koei Tecmo's business practices, and because of community complaints more and more started focusing directly on the hair rental itself.

Polygon noted our article and labeled it as a scathing news piece to complement and prove their own arguments. Because of Polygon's effect on video game journalism more and more different mediums started to notice and responded with voices of their own. Probably the most notable YouTube video was released by Jim Sterling, a famous video game critic, who outright defended supporters of the game and verbally destroyed and humiliated KT for their efforts to milk their own dedicated players dry with this radical update.

As of the second of March game news conglomerates Kotaku & Gamespot have joined the fight against KT with woven story pieces of their own. A lot of these news outlets have mentioned our articles at FSD plenty of times, but Gamespot really seems to be behind our community and mentioned our desires to change the future of this game at several points in the course of their news story. Eurogamer's story backed Emery Reigns as a reference with his onslaught of KT on his successful YouTube channel.

Moments after I initially wrote this article YongYea released a justifiable rant that lasted over 13 minutes. Shortly after 1.20 was released nearly the entire community came out to Facebook or Twitter to chant this topical YouTuber's name to come to their rescue. This well-crafted video doesn't just bury KT for their hair rental service, but also takes time to mention their two thousand dollars worth of DOA6 DLC & expensive season passes.

Siliconera & Event Hubs are two news outlets that report for Dead or Alive consistently and have also taken shots at KT recently and have received no response from them despite their efforts for the series while also encouraging players to try DOA6 out. Many fighters are at this point where they wonder how much information and evidence KT needs to admit that this was not a good idea.

To further prove the point we are trying to make we created a Twitter poll which shows an overwhelmingly negative response to the hair rental service. With over 500 votes only 17 percent of Dead or Alive's active player base is not bothered by these despicable transactions:

 
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Siliconera is spelt like "Siliconera" (and otherwise EventHubs is like so) but otherwise a good piece and a really promising and surprising turnabout to see a (not quite, but sorta) niche base actually get signal boosted. I have no doubt this was partly due to the reputation the series has drawing more eyes, but if it makes DOA great again and stop abusing fans. Cool.

... In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have voted because I can't consider myself an active player but I'm interested in all sorts of fighting games and the DLC model kept me away from DOA5 & 6. Dimensions had a somewhat different problem with Spotpass which is free, but gone forever.
 
Siliconera is spelt like "Siliconera" (and otherwise EventHubs is like so) but otherwise a good piece and a really promising and surprising turnabout to see a (not quite, but sorta) niche base actually get signal boosted. I have no doubt this was partly due to the reputation the series has drawing more eyes, but if it makes DOA great again and stop abusing fans. Cool.

... In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have voted because I can't consider myself an active player but I'm interested in all sorts of fighting games and the DLC model kept me away from DOA5 & 6. Dimensions had a somewhat different problem with Spotpass which is free, but gone forever.

Agreed and thank you for the slipped correction. XD
 
Good to see more people outside our small community noticing this. But to be honest, I think it's too late for this game. DOA6's problem is not only with the "hair rental" controversy, that was just the last straw that made gamers say enough is enough. Since day one, this game has had a lot of problems and controversial decisions whether with content or gameplay changes. If anything, the hair color thing is just scaring away the few people that were still interested in DOA6 as a fighting game.

I, for one, made the decision to uninstall it and at least for now, stop playing it altogether. Dead or Alive 6 hyped me up a lot but simply didn't end up being the game I wanted. It's just a storefront for otaku to dress up the girls with a mediocre fighting game attached to it. Say what you want about DOA4 and its many problems, but at least that game was beautiful as fuck and never took away fan-favorite characters.

The lack of lobbies in the beginning, subpar netcode, terrible stage design, Tag being missing; Leon, Ein and Fu being still missing, atrocious story mode, HUGE performance problems on consoles, the absurd focus on close hit juggles that simplified DOA5's great combo options, the lack of proper guaranteed situations thanks to break holds being available almost every time, break blows that parry everything and don't need to be charged, reselling of DOA5 DLC, absurdly priced season passes, etc, etc, etc. DOA6 is just a huge pile of problems that Team NINJA doesn't seem to want to fix. I understand that KT is mostly to blame for the DLC situation but we have to blame TN as well for the complete lack of overall quality the game offers.

Not even this Tamaki girl excite me. I'm happy for you if you like her and want to play as her but I just want DOA to stop inviting characters from other games. TN should just bring the missing boys back and create new fighters from scratch. I honestly believe they made an excellent job in DOA5 with Mila, Rig, Honks and Marie, and in DOA6, while generic, Diego is cool. Bring a sumo wrestler, a judoka, an actual boxer, a girl that does aikido (as in the real aikido a-la Aoi from VF, not Momiji).

What DOA6 needs is a complete rework like Square did with FFXIV. The entire meter system is shit in my opinion. If they're lazy about creating new good stages, bring back the old DOA2, 3 and 4 ones that people liked. Kill the bound-into-close hit system, it turned fascinating characters like Christie and Leifang into boring messes. For the love of God add more moves, stances and throws to Raidou. Nobody plays him because he's boring and the only cool thing he has requires absurd execution. Rework the sidestep system completely even if you have to copy Virtua Fighter. Rework guard breaks. It still baffles me that DOA has unsafe guard breaks, etc, etc.
 
Seems like this is actually going places wow
Still hilarious that it took hair colors for people to finally speak up but ya love to see it.

This can either
A) make DOA6 the final fg in the series
B) push KT/TN to improve the game and actually do something great with a sequel in 7 or so years
C) do nothing and DOA7 does the same shit
D) somehow give us the long awaited DOA movie sequel with Scarlett Johansson as Kasumi

The silver lining to hitting rock bottom is that you can only really go up so who knows? Regardless of how people feel about DOA4 I definitely consider 6 the first true fuck up in DOA on the basis that no one is happy with it. With that being said we've never seen the series this low so it's hard to say if it can afford to take this kind of damage. SFV could because it's Street Fighter, name recognition alone will make that game invincible. Realistically the future is looking pretty sad for the game as long as KT has the rights.
 
Credit to @EmeryReigns :
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I don't think there's much more we can do on this end, though we should continue to try where we can. Some of the biggest gaming news outlets and personalities have come out against KT. It is now a question of whether they even bother to respond at all. They have been silent on twitter for a little while now, since the 28th on both eng and jp accounts, so it's possible they're weighing their next move carefully. But even if we win a battle on this, I doubt they'll reverse on their stance towards doa in general; where they clearly view it is a web to snare whales and nothing more. We'll have to just wait and see. Maybe they'll put out another T&A teaser for Tamaki.
 

He's sadly right that we shouldn't get too hopeful for a proper response from KT on this. Even with all this growing coverage, I highly doubt anything will actually change with this hair change charging.

I'm really hoping that they at least do something less greedy moving forward but it's really looking like KT is content with exploiting the game to death :(.
 
I don't think their social medias have even posted about DOA6's 1 year anniversary. I have a feeling that's directly a result of this backlash. DOATEC on twitter, especiially, doesn't seem to ever go this many days without a post, and how could they resist not posting about DOA6's 1 year? I guess there's not much more to do but stay vigilant for a response. If they update any social media just promoting their crap as usual, make sure most of the responses are showing them how we feel.

Also, I think it deserves to be pointed out that Siliconera was, correct me if I'm wrong, the first on the scene to put up a story about this
(actually, now I think toptier put theirs up first), and the writter was the first to point out that hair colour is tied to your save data.


oh the irony, lol
 
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Some more sites covering this, including Gamespot:
 
Polygon and Siliconera are mainstream media? Are they covering the rise of nazism and white supremacy?

Lol, probably it's obvious without having to get specific that this is all gaming media, so we're referring to the mainstreme GAMING media. Although, Siliconera is more a popular niche gaming or Japanese gaming news site (it's been alive since 2003 and has readers that came onto it since the legendary andriasang Japanese gaming site died), while Polygon, Gamespot, and Kotaku are more like mainstreme gaming media.
 
"This new DLC adds to the long list of DLC that is now available to purchase for Dead or Alive 6, which at its smallest cost when bought on Steam as season passes totals to about $343 / £280. If you were to buy each DLC individually, and therefore at the highest cost, you're looking at a grand total of around $900 / £776.” (IGN) Some people on other sites were complaining about people like Yong only quoting the full price at the bottom on Steam. However they don't seem to realize that even when you don't quote the full number that includes redundant purchases, DOA6 is by far the worst for DLC among the current batch of fighters (MK, SC, Tekken). I appreciate them taking the time to give a more accurate number at least. Not many major gaming outlets left. Like I said, it's up to KT now.
 
Just make DOA6U/DOA6LR already. It's already confirmed that the vanilla state of DOA6 is ass. Only way I can see this making a strong return for the 6th one is to completely overhaul the entire game along with it's content, and then start from scratch with the 6th entry on the upgrade.
Just do what SFV did in which the seasons are focused on new characters and new mechanics. SFV seasons 1&2 were poorly received, season 3 (AE) started turning things around and by season 4 (CE) the player base is rather content where the game is.

It's laughable that KT will offer a max of 2 characters per season pass and make the bulk of the content "seasonal" costumes. They can add as many costumes as they want but don't make them take center stage. Focus on fixing the netcode and the stages and people will buy the optional content on their own, just like with Chun-Li costumes.
 
ALL DOA6 DOA5 DOA4 DOA3 DOA2U DOAD
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