Persona 5 is a great game that has one rather baffling and annoying quirk- the game blocks the use of the Share button on the PS4. Entirely. Well, not entirely, you can use Share during the opening movie, main menu, and first 15 minutes of gameplay- but after that, the game indiscriminately blocks taking screenshots, recording videos, or streaming your game in any form. Even the automatic system screenshots that get taken when you win a Trophy are disabled.
Atlus has already previously discussed why it has blocked the use of the Share button – put simply, it is a mandate from Atlus in Japan, and the American branch has no choice but to comply, citing ‘sensitivity to spoilers’ as the reason – but in a new blog post that was made yesterday, the American branch made it extremely clear exactly how serious it is about ensuring that no uncontrolled media on the game gets shared.
“If you do plan on streaming, video guidelines above apply except length,” Atlus said in a post on their own website. “If you decide to stream past [the in game calendar’s date] 7/7 (I HIGHLY RECOMMEND NOT DOING THIS, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED), you do so at the risk of being issued a content ID claim or worse, a channel strike/account suspension,” they added, rather ominously.
They did, however, say that this was just a one time thing- and not likely to become a habit going forward. “That being said, Persona 5 is a super special case for us and we’re in ongoing discussion about how our policies may evolve in the future. Thanks for reading and good luck in the Metaverse.”
This is… nonsensical. Once the game has been bought by the player, the player owns it, and Atlus has no right to tell them what to do with it. This is worse than even Nintendo’s stance on YouTubers, and believe me, that requires effort. Persona 5 is an amazing game, it might actually be my favorite game of the year so far- but Atlus’ stance on this leaves an extremely bad taste in my mouth.
