Hi fellow Kagikko,
First of all, we would like to apologise for the lack of news regarding our visual novel projects, but we are very pleased to finally reveal that Tomoyo After and Little Busters! have been picked up by VisualArt’s to be officially released in English on Steam!
As many of you may know, Doki staffers were involved in both the fan translation projects of Tomoyo After and Little Busters! visual novels, and we are very happy to say that we will provide VisualArt’s and the companies involved in the English releases our support. For Tomoyo After, we are transferring the portions of the translation that originated from Doki to Waku Productions, as well as providing translation support to help retranslate from scratch the material that we are not transferring over. For Little Busters!, we are pleased to say that the full fan translation has been transferred to Fruitbat Factory, which will finish work on the project.
With the announcement of these projects, we will stop offering download links for these projects’ fan translations. Please look forward to and support the upcoming official releases of Clannad, Tomoyo After, and Little Busters!.
For more information, please read the official announcement by VisualArt’s:
For a statement by the Little Busters! team on TLWiki:
Saturday 31st October 2015 
3:10 PM 
Gay
Will there be a patch for the 18+ content or only all ages for US ?
It’s an awesome time to be a Key fan. Bravo! =D
Just saw the news on ANN. Just wanted to thank you for the fan translation (didn’t have an account back then). And congratulations for this, it’s really awesome.
In less than two years, we went from 0 officially localised Key VN to 5 (Planetarium, Clannad, their new VN to be released first in the west, Tomoyo After and Little Busters).
Awesome.
Huge thanks to the whole Doki and fan translations teams, Key/VN and the localisation companies.
While it’s great to see that Little Busters! will get an official release in english im still really sad to see that this will be in “all ages” only.
I mean according to the spreadsheet the H-scenes have already been translated for quite some time now and for those of us who have been waiting patiently for almost 3 years it feels like a huge slap across the face to be told that these will be discarded.
I had a feeling this was coming, but it’s amazing to this dream finally realised. I am super emotional right now… We finally got this far!
http://kazamatsuri.org/tomoyo-after-and-little-busters-to-be-officially-released-in-english/ As you can see here, Kazamatsuri is pretty much going crazy for the news. We exist for this moment.
What does this mean for EX?
Great news! Even better if Sekai Project isn’t involved (I hope this is the case…). Thank you Doki Team!
If it’s alright to ask, who is Waku Productions? I tried Googling them, but I couldn’t find any results. Do they have a website or a PR social media account (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc) available?
Just curious, who are Waku Productions? None of my googling is providing me with any relevant results.
hooray~! another great step towards english localization! 😀
does it mean that you guys (Doki’s translation team) will be involved directly in the official translation?
No
Yes, some of the existing Tomoyo After team’s members will continue to work on the project.
According to the facebook link above looks like any sort of questions even for the 18+ version will get no reply to them whatsoever. This news is meh and a slap to the face until it can get an answer. Also, if Sekai project is not involved the better.
Well this news is rather upsetting. I avoid steam it is destroying Big name visual novels as only the all ages versions get released and it is a hit and miss if an 18+ version is done.
I held off reading this Visual Novel waiting for EX to be released and kept waiting now it looks like I will never read this as I rather read uncut versions not steam friendly.
To be fair, Key are terrible at sex scenes so it’s not really a loss.
Your not wrong there but its the principle of it all. Once a team releases one game in an all ages version and not the other they don’t stop releasing them this way.
projects like this need to do a JAST and release the patch elsewhere, becasue lets me honest Steam version will be cracked and turned into a standard download within the first day.
If it was DRM free or physical I would support it and pay for it I have brought so many visual novels now but due to it being all ages and on steam I will give it a miss. Might download it if a restoration patch is released but won’t be supporting it.
Yes my hate for Steam is over the top blame teams like Sekai Project for a large amount of this hate for Steam (And I like physical versions)
And yet supporting official releases is the only way you can show your support for companies that are willing to take on the task of releasing a VN.
Without that support there is no incentive for other companies to take a look at the VN market and release the adult versions you so desire. If there was more of a market for it more companies could/would follow the Huniepop example of all ages on Steam and adult off Steam.
It’s up to us as consumers to throw that money into the ring and show that people do want this stuff and are prepared to pay for it.
People supported Sekai Project and what happened they keep saying more titles on Steam to come and release 1 out of every 4 or so on Denpasoft without a release date and then months after just go oh look we have the 18+ version ready to go.
I understand what your trying to say and as mentioned I have brought a massive range of visual novels both physical and download but if a game is made with sexual content and a western team picks it up it should be up to them to release both versions to keep both sets of fans happy not just the All Ages and then move on.
Yes steam is an easier way to release games and brings in more fans but it hurts the fans that know and enjoy Visual Novels already.
I will end my rants but while I am just a single user I am disappointed on how the Little Busters! EX project was ran and managed It may not have been Doki’s fault but Doki did sign up for the task.
Either way not going to abandon the site or the seedbox donations I was using Doki long before this project was on here I just got excited when I started seeing Visual Novel updates on here 🙂
I got almost every game from Fruitbat Factory on Steam. It surprises me they start with VNs now. Usually they only do Indie games (e.g. 100% Orange Juice)
I don’t feel happy about getting those censored :-/. Maybe one day these games get more popular and steam less retarded, so people get uncensored stuff. But right now it’s pretty sad story.
Why so much people complaining about the lack of h-scenes? This is not actually getting censored, the original release did not have h-scenes, they were added later. These are not important to the plot and are very bad, you wont lose anything by not reading them. Even the Japanese version of Perfect Edition is All ages.
I guess it comes down to two things for me;
The first would be that it was announced that a translation would be done for EX sometime ago and now that has been taken away.
The second is that it is steam only, I know how good it is for smaller names to get their project out there but I dislike it with a passion. The amount of unused steam codes I have from kickstarter projects and so on is over the top.
I would have ended up saying oh well and buying the all ages version if it was not on steam but because its on steam the only way I will read it is through illegal means
I guess I should also add this is a big visual novel and should be treated as such.
VN’s this big need a physical release and this VN would make a goal on a kickstarter project very quick which would allow for fans to get a hard copy release and some bonus goodies.
I should probably point out that while VisualArt’s is capable of doing a Steam release and physical releases in Japan, they likely don’t have the capability to produce and distribute a physical release for the Western market at a large scale. These things aren’t that easy, especially for a Japanese company making their first releases outside the region.
This is fantastic! Amazing news! ^^ The official English release of Clannad (which I backed at Kickstarter, and which I will be getting a nice physical copy of in the mail when it is released!) is getting close to its release day, and now we get this! ^^ I will buy and enjoy all of them! ^^ It’s an awesome time to be a KEY fan indeed! ^^ Here’s hoping for Angel Beats, Rewrite, and possibly Kanon, Air, and Kud Wafter as well in the future! ^^
I would rather see all the Visual Novels you listed as physical copies through kickstarter than just on steam only.
Most of them would make the goal very easy
Can’t say I approve considering
1) Bowing down to licensees has always signaled the end like what happened with numerous anime trackers, communities, and subgroups
2) Fug steam
Geez, what’s with all the negativity in here? :-/ So much whining. This is great news, and should be celebrated , yet there are a whole bunch of comments here complaining about it, and talking about it as if it’s a bad thing (there are several positive comments as well of course, I’m just saying). :-/
I don’t understand why you guys have such a problem with Steam, and as for losing out on a few H-scenes…KEY VN’s H-scenes are all there more for the sake of it, and are a very minor and unimportant part of their works as a whole. They are also pretty bad. KEY’s VN’s are about drama, story, and emotions. If you just want porn games, there are a TON of eroge out there that are way better in that particular area (though most aren’t as good when it comes to everything else).
Hell, don’t mind them (regarding H-scenes in every KEY VN). But to be honest, I’d prefer a physical copy of LB!:PE than a digital one since you have a box art and some documentations, including instruction manual (heh, I believe some of us does not bother to read those… :P). Plus, not everybody had a faster internet connection since downloading such a large amount of GB of purchased digital-copy of the game would be a pain in the arse that might get interrupted without warning.
Still, NO A-CHAN SENPAI ROUTE!!!
Sob…
I agree about the physical copy. Maybe we’ll get one from them later at some point, who knows. Btw, your download of a game being interrupted due to your internet being poor is not really a problem in Steam. It’ll just pause the download, and then you can just resume it once your connection is back to normal again. You won’t have to start over.
its about sense of completeness…. and we waited 3 years or more for the EX version… so its natural for some of us who waited that long to be depressed or just disappointed. i first play key games as Eroge, and i wanted my eroge to have H-Scenes, it like give me an achievement point with the heroine. some of us feels that way, i agree that VN is about story and drama, but if it offer an H-scenes its a plus. now they cut that offer and not give us an alternative, well i’m disappointed for that reason. i hope you understand now why some of us feels that way, and i’m sorry for my bad english.
So what happens to the EX translation?
Wont be finished i guess =/