Querate’s 5th game, the best one yet, and the center of their biggest controvert/drama yet. It’s a lewd massage themed rhythm game with a dating sim thing tacked on, that sparked a few different issues. It’s also probably better known as Massage Freaks! Though I kind of like beat refle. refle stands for reflexology, which means massage studies, and beat is a word with a lot of meanings, two of which fit here. Masturbate and rhythm. Beating to the beat.

So when the game had it’s first real announcement a few people got loud, mainly about 2 things. The first is how massage is used to trick people into sexual related incidents, and the second is that the girls names where tied to real world idols in Japan. After a few days, the game was delayed indefinitely, only to be released under a different name two days before its original release date.

The released version had the name changes, a different name entirely, a warning about not repeating the actions in the game(even though the guy in the game never does anything sexual or romantic on purpose, he’s actually just a super dense nice guy), and the removal of two lewd mechanics. There was also a patch to change the game back to the original build except for the game’s name, so basically it has an 18+ patch like a huge number of other games, though this one doesn’t add porn. Considering how lewd the game actually is, it’s basically sold in streamer mode which it needed anyway.

How you feel about the whole situation is up to you, but I don’t consider this censorship winning, nor do I blame Querate for making changes. They weren’t the only company working on this, there was also a company in charge of the songs which may have forced Qureate’s hands via contract or continued support. Either way, without the entire story I find it hard to point fingers at what actually happened here. Adding to that, Qureate’s games vary fairly highly in the lewd department so I can’t just use their next game to decide if they are changing their approach.

Basically, for me, I don’t care about the name changes or whatever. Steam is a pain of a market place for pervy stuff nowadays, so I half expect every sexual themed game, porn or not, to be censored before hand and patched off site. It just makes sense considering how much money you lose out on otherwise. I’m not happy about that, but if that’s the way forward then so be it. On to the game itself.