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The story
The popular Xbox racing game ‘Forza Horizon 6’ has become a hot topic on 5ch’s hardware/industry (“geha”) board after its Japanese-language Steam reviews dropped to a ‘Mixed’ rating. While the overall review score across all languages remains ‘Very Positive’ out of 87,230 reviews, the 3,802 most recent Japanese-language reviews have fallen to ‘Mixed.’ Players pointed to the developer’s habit of banning “itasha” (custom cars covered in anime/game character graphics) paint jobs one after another — even ones that were never shared publicly or still works in progress — as well as complaints about the matchmaking playlists. Meanwhile, the thread was also awash with thin, unsubstantiated speculation about harassment targeting a specific country or sabotage by Sony.
What people said
I haven't even played it so I don't get it, someone explain.
Complaints about the playlists
And the itasha ban frenzy
87,230
(Very Positive)
Recent reviews in Japanese:
3,802
(Mixed)
Guess the weirdos are kicking up a fuss again lol
Itasha, huh… guess getting banned for that is kind of understandable.
No, they're banning stuff that isn't even shared — unfinished, half-made designs too.
The devs are absolute garbage.
In real life the car belongs to the owner, but in-game it's Microsoft's data under license from the manufacturer.
If the license doesn't get approved, that's a problem for them.
But they used to say it was fine because it's just a bunch of symbols?
The devs are just mechanically banning stuff without actually doing their jobs.
The playerbase's manners are pretty bad.
And on top of that the devs are a mess too — I think anyone giving this game a thumbs up is at least partly just being nice.
isn't there any more map or DLC content coming?
Apparently the first one's coming before year's end — usually they drop two, that's the pattern.
Just taking the photo seems to be fine.
Saving or sharing it is apparently what gets you banned.
Reading the replies, is this about some country griping over custom itasha designs and the Rising Sun flag or whatever? It's a genuinely good game.
FE and FH6 are genuinely fun games,
but negative news keeps spreading about them like crazy.
It's really strange.
That's assuming Sony isn't behind some kind of interference, though.
Aside from that, the score was already dropping from complaints about the playlists too.
so after launch it didn't get smeared with negative campaigns at all.
But then the whole Kojima Productions departure incident broke out,
and suddenly negative news about it started spreading all at once.
Seriously? lol, Kojima's the worst.
is that your Xbox account gives you away, and people can't just prepare thousands of Xbox accounts and consoles.
With the Steam version, one single PC can be used to file thousands of reports.
You'd think the reports should really be piling up
on the Xbox version instead, since it has way more players.
Hey buddy who hasn't even played it, this game has cross-play.
Anything that exists on Xbox
but not on PlayStation
is absolutely going to become a target for smear campaigns.
That's all there is to it.
Quit flip-flopping.
Background and Key Points
Steam’s review ratings are tallied separately for “all-time, all languages” and “recent reviews by language,” and it’s this distinction that sparked the discussion this time. Overall, the game maintains a “Very Positive” rating across 87,230 reviews, but the 3,802 most recent reviews from Japanese-language users alone have sunk to “Mixed.” The itasha bans raised in the thread are widely believed to stem from the developer mechanically removing paint jobs modeled on real cars because they exceed the scope of the automakers’ licensing agreements, though no official explanation has been given. Posts alleging sabotage by Sony or harassment targeting a specific nationality also appeared, but these remain unconfirmed speculation with no evidence behind them.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (“Geha”)) thread “[Sad News] Forza Horizon 6’s Devs Are So Terrible Its Steam Reviews Have Finally Turned ‘Mixed’ 😇“.
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