The recent release of the Yakuza series on GOG has been tempered by the notable removal of several developers and even entire studios from the games’ credits.
As Reddit user Timo653 first noted, the Yakuza Complete Series - which includes all seven numbered entries from prequel Yakuza 0 through Yakuza 6, but not spin-offs such as Like a Dragon - available via GOG misses out a number of individual developers and support studios from the credits at the end of each instalment.
Among the biggest names to be absent are series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi, Yakuza 0 director Kazuki Hosokawa and series producer Daisuke Sato, along with other key staff such as Yakuza 5 art supervisor Saizo Nagai and Yakuza 0 game design supervisor Koji Yoshida.
Nagoshi and Sato departed Yakuza publisher Sega and developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio in 2021, leaving the studio after more than a decade to found new outfit Nagoshi Studio under NetEase. They were joined by several other former Yakuza devs and Sega staff; whether there’s a connection between those excised from the GOG versions’ credits and Nagoshi Studio is unclear.
As well as individual devs, the credits also miss out the whole of support studios Lab42 and QLOC, which respectively worked on previous PC ports of Yakuza 0 and Kiwami - the remake of the original Yakuza - and Kiwami 2 and the remaining games. QLOC’s logo has also been removed from the game’s start-up screens by editing the game’s script file.
Timo653 pointed out that the severity of the changes means that the GOG credits end up being notably shorter than the credits for the Yakuza releases on Steam, despite using a bigger font and wider spacing. The Steam versions - on which the GOG versions are based - remain
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