The new GOG versions of the Yakuza games omit multiple developers and even entire support studios from their credits

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The credits in the GOG version of the Yakuza games are a lot leaner than their Steam equivalents, and it's not clear why.

The full list of changes is too extensive to get into here, but right off the jump, Yakuza 0 director Kazuki Hosokawa, art supervisor Saizo Nagai, and game design supervisor Koji Yoshida are all missing from the GOG credits, and practically every department at RGG has missing names. Comparing the Steam and GOG credits side-by-side, the two sequences broadly line up, but it's almost as if the GOG one has been redacted.

Game studios will sometimes reduce or remove the credit of a developer who left the company partway through a game's development. It's an unfair practice, and one that may have been stretched to an logical conclusion here, with developers who left RGG Studios since the games' initial launch removed from the credits of these"new" versions.

Equally unfair, but far more confusing, is the omission of support studios Lab42 and QLOC. In the initial Steam release, Lab42 is credited as the PC porting studio for Yakuza 0 and Kiwami, while QLOC did the job on Kiwami 2 and Yakuzas 3-6. The GOG games seem to be based on the two companies' porting work and, as Timo653 demonstrates in their initial post, Kiwami 2 appears to have been modified so that a QLOC logo that appears in the opening credits of the Steam version is gone for GOG. I have reached out to Sega, QLOC, and Lab42 for comment, and will update this story if I hear back.

With the increased visibility of labor issues in the videogame industry, fairness in crediting has gotten greater attention from the public at large. The excellent Metroid Prime Remaster earlier this year drew ire forfrom its credits, merely giving a blanket"Based on the work of Metroid Prime, original Nintendo Gamecube and Wii version development staff.

 

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