Summary
Late last week,Ryu Ga Gotoku Studiosmade an unexpected announcement with a tweet that streamerxQc, a former professionalOverwatchplayer who has since pivoted to gambling streams, would be playing the opening ofLike A Dragon: Infinite Wealthon stream. Fans of the series did not like this one bit.
xQc is a controversial figure, and that’s made him a lot of money. He’s been slapped with multiple bans from Twitch for reasons including DMCA violations and showing animals having sex. His reputation as an “agent of chaos”, as TheGamer’s Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley puts it in the article linked above, has made him extraordinarily rich, as well as putting him firmly in the list of the most popular streamers on Twitch.
As of right now, xQc has 12 million followers on Twitch, making him the fifth most popular streamer on the platform.
Why Sega chose him to promote its upcoming game is pretty clear – he’s got those sweet, sweet viewer numbers. It isn’t thestupidestmarketing tactic in the world. If you’re trying to get your game introduced to a new demographic of potential players, which in this series’ case would be the majority of the Western world, it makes sense to collaborate with a streamer whose regular viewership doesn’t overlap that much with the people who are already going to buy your game. xQc has a huge viewership, so if you’re going purely by numbers, then sure, paying him a ton of money to play this game on stream makes sense.
But when you consider the kind of streamer xQc is, it doesn’t make sense at all, and Yakuza fans made it clear they felt a streamer who showed a genuine interest in the games would have been a better pick. He didn’t know the first thing about the games,apparently not even that it was a turn-based game. He also seemed to struggle with combat and the minigames, likely due to a complete lack of familiarity with the series. The only thing that seemed to catch his attention wasthe gambling den in the game, which makes sense considering, you know.
I generally think it’s a waste of energy to get angry about botched marketing attempts – after all, it’s not my job to make sure a game makes money, no matter how much I like that game. But I find Sega’s attempts to put Infinite Wealth in the Western mainstream bizarre. The series has enough clout to stand on its own two legs, especially after the launch of the exceptionally well-made and popular Yakuza 0, and throwing money and free copies at streamers who can’t even be bothered to look up the game they’re streaming first doesn’t seem like a great use of a marketing budget.
