Konami releases Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance on GOG but bizarrely stops the Japanese game being sold in Japan

pcgamer.com:

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a straight-up belter. It had a slightly troubled development, as a longtime Kojima Productions joint that was eventually outsourced to co-developer PlatinumGames to put the action in, but what arrived in 2013 was one of the best and most OTT hack-and-slash romps ever made. Seriously: if you haven't bodyslammed a Metal Gear then ran up it and sliced the whole damn thing in half with a magic cybersword, you missed out.

Publisher Konami is currently engaged in its own Metal Gear salvage project, the first step of which was the re-release of many classic games as MGS: The Master Collection Volume 1, and the next being the upcoming MGS3 remake, MGS Delta: Snake Eater. A minor beat in this has been the release of MGR: Revengeance on the DRM-free storefront GOG: the game was made available on July 4 (it has been available on Steam since early 2014).

This announcement was particularly noted by Japanese players and with good reason. MGR: Revengeance has only ever been available on PS3 in Japan, the original target platform, though worldwide has also been released on Xbox 360 and PC. The Steam version has never been available for purchase in Japan. But the GOG version was!

For almost one hour, anyway. The GOG version of MGR: Revengeance launched on July 4 and was available for purchase in Japan, but removed shortly afterwards. Konami subsequently issued a statement to Japanese outlet Game*Spark saying: «There was a setting error on the GOG side, so the game was temporarily available for purchase in some Asian regions. We apologize for any confusion.»

Which doesn't really address the reasons why, though I would guess one factor may be an old PlayStation exclusivity clause. Metal Gear was for a time the biggest PlayStation exclusive around and, even though most of those games have subsequently found their way to other platforms, some major parts of the series remain locked to PlayStation platforms. Most notably, Sony went all-in on Metal Gear