Since July, visual novel online retailer Mangagamer has been having problems with their payment processor (still true as of September 12th). As a result, Mangagamer has been unable to process sales through their main site other than using their rewards currency, MG points. A partner of J-List, Mangagamer has been selling visual novels since 2008.
This dispute with their payment processor impacted their summer sale, resulting in a lot of unhappy customers at the time, but confusion continues as they have been making changes to resolve the issue. Looking through the comments on their announcement page it’s clear that people are still uncertain about subjects like if Mangagamer is even still carrying adult content. Let’s clarify a few of these concerns.
First, Mangagamer has not removed its adult content. If you just type in the domain though, you’ll have trouble finding any of it. By default the website only has all-ages content on it, and since the two types of game have been integrated for a long time, it’s understandable that people might not look any further once they recognize that. However, there’s actually a hint on the website. A while back Mangagamer’s mascot got updated to the above babe. However, now when you go to their website you don’t see her at the top.
You see her cutesy sister instead. But just under the account button on the right of the website, above the weekly ranking, there’s a button for the adult section, where the top banner showcases the modern mascot again.
The adults-only content still existing is a relief, but even this section of the site hasn’t remained unchanged. Mangagamer has been going through all its games and censoring their associated images with “Naughty Bits Blocker[s]”, presumably to meet the requirements of their payment processor. While censored images are always a bit disappointing to me, I’d much rather Mangagamer exist than go out of business, so it seems like a sensible compromise with the payment processor. Here’s an example page with censored images (still not safe for work). Games with mosaic censoring seem to be avoiding the new blockers.
When confronted by payment processor issues (including having an unsupported credit card) there are still ways to buy Mangagamer games. Steam carries a number of their titles, though depending on the game you may need a patch to uncensor them. You can also pick up hard copies of a number of titles from our website, like for Evenicle, an enjoyable fantasy-RPG romp filled with vanilla sex. If you contact Mangagamer directly, like using their contact page on the blog, they might be able to directly transfer MG points to your account. I did this once when my card was having an issue with their processor a couple years ago, and while it involved jumping through some hoops, it got me the game I wanted.
We still don’t know how long it’s going to take for these issues with the payment processor to be resolved. Mangagamer clearly hopes soon, as their twitter update on release dates has moved back a couple games to September 19th, which is coming up fast. Their most recent tweet says they “are very close to resolving our payment processor issues”, and that pre-orders will resume as soon as it’s resolved. It seems like their release dates won’t need to be pushed back any further. For updates on that, or their payment processor issue in general, you can find their twitter feed here.
This months-long delay has had an impact on game releases unfortunately. Despite being finished, games with a release build ready aren’t getting release dates yet, and there are four other titles that are in the process of finalizing. By resolving the payment processor problem this month, hopefully only a few games will have had their release dates set back, although it’s possible the games nearing finalization will be released a little later than they would have under normal circumstances.
Hopefully all that happens after these delays is a quick release of a cluster of awaited titles. And a bunch of fans buying everything they wanted during the summer.
