DLSite revamp question

Visual Novel Community Visual Novel Talk
#1

So, DLsite revamped close to like a month ago I guess, and I was going to buy euphoria, but I’ve been playing some darker stories recently, and instead went for a bargain basement version (2960 yen) of ???◊??? (good game…no, lighthearted, yes.) So, I DL’d and unpacked it, started to fire it up, and all of a sudden I get a THIS GAME IS JAPAN ONLY window popping up, telling me that I also need a japanese version of windows, and that now the game is going to close. I hit OK, the game closes and I’m figuring I’m out about $35. Figuring there has to be SOME way to work around this I fire the game back up and look a bit closer this time.

I notice that the window has 2 buttons, one OK, one Cancel. I hit Cancel, game starts right up, and plays normally.

So I’m wondering if anyone else has bought anything off of DLSite recently and run into the same little window. Like a supposed counter against people like me who totally buy 98% of their DLSite products from Pro instead of off English?

*note, the game page itself says nothing about needing a Japanese OS to run it.

#2

I haven’t experienced this, but I run Windows with a Japanese MUI and that tends to defeat nearly all of these protections.

Anyway, with the exception of certain DRM schemes, which may have been modified to exhibit this form of protection, DLsite does nothing to the software submitted by publishers. It is most likely that the game’s developer added this protection deliberately.

In any case, if DLsite wanted to stop you, it could just refuse foreign credit cards on the non-Eng sides. DMM does this quite effectively and it works better than any software protection would.

#3

yeah, to be honest i just thought of that (the foreign CC blocking) so I’m really wondering what sort of protection a window that you can basically just tell to shut up is.

I’m just kind of baffled cause I’ve been using DLSite for 2~3 years and haven’t had anything of the sort happen before the revamp.

#4

Just an update, DLSite Japanese requires the credit card name during checkout in Japanese now. I didn’t bother moving to the external page, cause I’m not really interested in anything at the moment, so I can’t confirm if I can still purchase anything with my CC, but I’m finding it hilarious.

#5

When did this happen? I changed my credit card just recently and I didn’t see anything like this. I know they’re using an external page but what do you mean by ‘requires the credit card name … in Japanese’?

#6

I just discovered it today, though I go as a non-member on the japanese side of things. It’s refusing to recognize romanji as a valid credit card name, you have to get around it by using hiragana or katakana.

Any time I type my name in, I get a ??? error. As soon as I go with any hiragana or katakana, it goes through without a hitch. Don’t know how it goes for actual members on Pro, but for non members, (or just myself I guess) it’s refusing Western names as valid.

#7

I’m a member on the Japanese side. I wrote my name in katakana when I registered, and I haven’t run into any problems since then. Can’t remember if I tried to register using romaji first though.

#8

I don’t think you’re talking about the credit card name- I think you’re talking about the name you’re registered under DLsite with (in which, yeah, I wrote my name in Katakana)

For registering / changing a credit card, you have to enter your name in roman letters- because that’s how it appears on your card, even if you’ve a Japanese credit card, and that’s what you need to put in so that the issuer will authorise the transaction (typically name, expiry date and verification code are what’s required).

#9

Yeah, you’re totally right, after waking up and going back to the page, the first step during a purchase is “User Information”, which is exactly what you’re talking about. Non-Members have to register in hiragana or katakana now, whereas before you could go lazy mode and just use roman letters. That’s what I get for being stupid tired I guess.

#10

Good news for real, I hated the revamp because the new DLsite doesn’t support my old browser (IE6) anymore, if you also add the fact that the romaji name I’ve registered is wrong (unlike the katakana version, which is the correct one), you can imagine my fears :shock: …

On a side note, usually I use Firefox and it’s working fine even now, EXCEPT when I attempt to activate those games ‘gifted’ with the Soft Denchi anticopy protection, for some reason my Firefox (and Chrome, too) can’t manage the online activation (unlike IE6). I’ve sidestepped the problem in the wrong way :oops: (ONLY for the Soft-Denchi-Cursed games I’ve bought since the revamp, of course), but it’s VERY irritating…

#11

Hey, I found a comment at hongfire’s forum that said something about dmm allowing foreign credit cards now (comment was made back in August).

I decided to give it a try, because it seems I wanted to buy something from dmm.co.jp. I just can’t remember what right now…

Anyway, while registering, it DID accept my credit card (Oh god, I hope all I did was register, I don’t know enough japanese yet to truly understand what I was doing, Let’s hope I didn’t subscribe to a year’s worth of guro, gay live-action AV), but, since I’ve got nothing to buy right now, I can’t truly test this.

So, if anyone does want something from dmm.co.jp, it would be nice if he could let me know here if he does manage to buy anything.

EDIT: So, I can’t actually download the game, unless I’m in Japan, although I can perfectly buy it? Damn it! Time to find myself a proxy >_>

EDIT2: Apart from having to download via a proxy, it was smooth sailing from then on.:slight_smile: I still can’t remember what I wanted to buy from them, but I bought Katahane just to test things out and everything’s working fine.

#12

Interesting, interesting. The problem is my proxy has bandwidth limitations that make it inappropriate, but if I can manage something with another free proxy it would be fine. What did you use?

#13

I used Tor’s Japanese servers for the download. At times it was OK (300 KB/s), but usually it was horrible(10 KB/s). Clearly not the place I will be buying anything if there’s any other option.

#14

Minor bump to note that I just re-downloaded Katahane from DMM (hard drive crashed :frowning: ) without the need for a proxy. Policy change once again? Freak accident? Dunno.

#15

Thanks, I’ll give that a look when I get home this evening.

EDIT: Confirmed! I successfully bought + downloaded Doukyuusei 2 (yeah yeah shut up, I was just looking for a quick DMM exclusive and I’d never played that one)

I sincerely hope this is a permanent policy change.

#16

http://www.dmm.co.jp/rule/=/category=member/
http://www.dmm.co.jp/rule/=/category=privacy/

The words “foreigner” and “overseas” have been removed for real (I’ve read the legalese stuff here years ago, when foreigners were banned), apparently the policy change happened at September 20 for credit cards and December 13 for personal data.
Now I hope that the Euro-Yen exchange rate becomes more favourable :cry: …

#17

Tried to buy something from DLSITE Pro today. It didn’t work instead I got this message:

Which is strange since the card has 200 dollars on it. I then tried another card with 700 dollars on it and got the same result.

:frowning:

#18

I think dlsite just hates your card provider for some reason. Ignosco has the same problem, but with gyutto.

Thankfully my card works with everything (I had problems a couple of places even with my visa debit card but since moving to a credit card those have fixed themselves)

#19

Gyutto accepted my card :).

But now the problem is the following: I’m supposed to use IE explorer to download the game,right? When I click ‘install’ for the plugin nothing happens after. In fact Activex isn’t downloading any plugins I try.

I also got this message:

#20

You can download the game normally without the ActiveX plugin, iirc it gives instructions for that.