Special shout out to Nat8 who qualified despite there being ONE online DDR cabinet in all of Canada. yes, a single online cabinet for a geographical region of 10,000,000 KM squared.
There are two DDR A20+ machines in the GTA/GTHA in Canada, but from January 2022 to October 2023, Oakville was in Local Mode only. Many features (courses, many modifiers, DDR Selection, Extra Stage, etc.) are unavailable in Local Mode. On Nov. 1, 2023, Oakville was back online. Both locations are around a ½-hour drive from each other, or two hours by public transit. With various travel deals, I can play from time to time. Pads work well at both venues, and I scored several AAAs. Yes, congratulations to NAT8 for initially qualifying!
As a non-Japanese who has *competed* in the 9th KAC albeit a different game (Dancerush), here's my experience to demonstrate how _internationally-inclusive_ KONAMI tried to be back then: - For the first (and only) time, 5 players from Southeast Asia were given slots to compete in 5 games at KAC. - Travel expense and accommodation: paid by KONAMI. - 2 "influencers", whose main content aren't even rhythm games, were hired to accompany us film and make vlogs. - 2 really capable translators were provided - IIRC, they also provided mini meal stipend It's debatable whether or not COVID's effects still hurt their business today, but to me, with BEMANI Asia (their Southeast Asia branch) closing down and BPL stuff, it seems as if their attitude is gradually shifting to "Why care about outsiders? Let's focus on ourselves and make it sustainable from within Japan!"
BPL has opened up for more Non Japanese lately. leviern / XD*LEVI is currently signed to Taito Station Tradz in SDVX BPL S3. A lot of Korean players played in IIDX BPL S3 and one American IIDX player made the drafts (but were unfortunatly not drafted). Biggest issue for BPL is that you need to commit to the training and promotional times of the team as well as the filming of the seasons, which is hard to do for non-japanese players.
This also shows us that Konami monitors social networks. I think you’re all smart enough to realize what that implies for the other hot button issue in DDR lately.
yeah I feel like this documentary is really neglecting several giant elephants in the room regarding D@T@ and p1r@cy, as well as KR1SfourL1F3's prior run-ins with rule breaking
From my perspective as a rhythm game enthusiastic, and a PIU player, the best competitive events are made for the players to the players. Take the example of B1G ONE, in every year the tournament are open to everyone who attends the place of the event, making it the most inclusive championship of PIU in the world. Hope the DDR community reach a really big competition event in the future. Greetings
This is why I think DDR being geared more and more towards “E-Sport” that give Japan players a major advantage will make DDR worse of a franchise in the long term. I’m for players to have competitive mindsets to the game, but everyone should have access to all things within the game so everyone can have fun with the game.
Long term player here and I helped outline this video. Seriously, this whole thing was a huge spit in the face to overseas players everywhere. They wrongfully rejected world class talent here. Imagine if a major sports competition pulled some BS like this. The backlash would be catastrophic. This is nothing different and that’s what those 4 players just suffered and NO competitor from ANY game should ever go through what they just did. Quite honestly one of the most tragic moments in e-sports/video game history if you ask me. For fucking shame Konami
I want to make the point that Upbeat^^ has been a better representation of the world's top DDR players than KAC. Only 1 person dropped out and it's because of visa problems that prevented them from traveling to the US (this is what I remember anyways). Hoping that they get the support to host a second tournament.
Great video. I feel that perhaps we need to shift our attention to the NA tournaments more than KAC. They have been incredible to watch and participate in. If we host more of them, and they continue to shine, then perhaps the Japanese players and Konami themselves will have no choice but to recognize us. The more our NA tournaments do well, the harder it would be for Konami to turn us away. Also, none of this would ever happen if non- Japanese accounts had access to all the extra features like GP packs, score share, paseli, etc.
On the other hand, it’s very possibly Konami might pull a Nintendo on tournaments outside their authorization. I worry this is more likely with how Konami’s been acting, unfortunately.
#KonamiDoBetter Phenomenal video with stellar editing! Thank you for putting this together and summarizing everything in a digestible manner. I'm looking forward to Idola
Thank you so much. The plan was to make it digestible so people outside DDR can understand the situation. The hope is to inform and attract other large creators who can then raise more awareness to this. You yourself are a bigger youtuber than me, so you rerweeting and promoting this helps a ton, thank you!
23:24 Just a little correction : They added "permanent ban" rule since The 9th KAC(2019) because of Drummania drama in The 8th KAC finals, not this year. (Also they added prohibitng multiple entry by same reason) Except that, this video is very good.
@deadlyunknown The 7th KAC champion entried with 4 accounts (with his friends) and passed qualifiers on ALL those accounts. 3 of 4 were caught and DQ'd,and rest 1 tried messing finals. He said, "I wanted to versus with the previous champion, but he got DQ'd just because of rumor. I'll give up this Finals!" This is why Konami added those 2 rules on the next 9th KAC.
Well said. It's really a shame how this was handled, given that participants were forced to either miss out on songs for a year or break the rules because of the nature of all of the Japan-only content in the game. I could even deal with Grand Prix being japan only technically, because I'm sure the licensing agreements for some of the songs do state they're for distribution specifically in Japan, but access to Basic Course, which no longer even requires Paseli explicitly and can be tied to a US credit card instead, NEEDS to be able to be used with a non Japan account for that to be considered a viable option for serious players. I sincerely hope that they will amend things next year to allow these passionate and skilled players to compete. I look forward to Project Idola - it was a lot of fun last time. Thank you for the video, and for organizing the event.
Yes, precisely. I kind of want to make a follow-up video going into detail about how broken it all is. Without basic course, so much is lost. DDR GP technically can not even be played outside of Japan.
I would like to add another thing about the Bemani Pro League. An American did go to Japan to participate on the IIDX BPL Season 3. His name was PHN!X, but sadly, he wasn't drafted for the tournament. I admit that considering the popularity of DDR in the USA, it's very impressive that a guy went as far as to move from California to Japan to participate in an IIDX tournament. It's sad he didn't get drafted. But I hope that one day, DDR, SDVX, and IIDX Western players can participate in these tournaments.
@@drdvids To answer your 1st question. Yes, I believe PHN!X does know japanise because he uses it often when texting on Twitter. As for the 2nd question. In this year's IIDX BPL, there are 8 teams, and the drafting process lasts 4 rounds. Each team picks 1 player each round. That means that by the end of round 4, a total of 32 players will be picked in total to participate in the BPL. The players are picked at the same time each round. That means that there is a probability that 2 or more teams can pick the same player. If that happens, then the team's representatives that pick the same player will draw a paper from a bowl at random, and the one who wins gets the player. The losers will have to pick another player from the draft pool.
it doesn't cost a fortune to visit a country two hours away. it's in bad taste to claim another (hollow) victory against japan and he isn't trying to get cancelled by the community. stop making shit up.
I think I saw this on the discord, but I believe homebrew tournaments may be the way to go after this fallout #KonamiDoBetter or rather: #KonmaiDoBetter
As a yugioh player this is unfortunately unsurprising. Konami has quite the reputation for abusing the hell out of its western players and just generally making things very unfriendly and complicated for western customers and competitors. It's really a shame
16:15 Gold cabs are registered in Osaka because they're very explicitly NOT American licensed cabs. Konami never made US Gold Cabs. The reason why they're in the US is that Round1 has special permission from Konami to operate J region cabs in the US; they're marked as being in Osaka because they have to be *somewhere* in Japan and Osaka is where Round1's HQ is. While Konami's systems think the cabs are still in Japan, their KAC team almost certainly knows that Round1 USA is running import cabs and would treat that as US play, not Japanese play. (This is also why Round1's Gold cabs have eAmusement maintenance when their White cabs don't.) The reason why Round1 imported Gold Cabs was because of... Dave & Busters. The entire US e-Amusement region for DDR was a joint venture between Round1 and D&B because Konami wanted a larger minimum order quantity. This is also why DDR is exclusive to those arcades. As part of the negotiation for the cab order, D&B specifically wanted to be exempted from eAmusement Participation (i.e. the revshare Konami gets paid every time you insert a credit on a Japanese machine, and the reason why Konami games shut off if they're not always online). This would allow them to disconnect their cabs from e-Amusement and have them still work, but that also means no automatic updates. Instead they'd have to buy upgrade kits at a cost of thousands of dollars per cab for each new version of the game. Predictably, after A20 Plus, Dave & Busters stopped buying DDR upgrade kits. Apparently money is getting tight at D&B and management wants to cut costs. This caused a huge problem for Round1 because the entire US region for DDR was contingent upon both arcades paying for it - or, in other words, Konami wouldn't sell an upgrade kit to just Round1. Round1 worked around this by importing a bunch of Gold Cabs from Japan so that they could run A3, but their white cabs were still stuck on A20 Plus... until a few months ago. Apparently there was a Hawaiian arcade chain (Fun Factory?) that had bought US white cabs from Konami under an entirely *different deal* that included profit participation fees. Konami sold Round1 an upgrade kit that switched them over to that version of the game - literally, it's called the "DDR pp kit", as in "Profit Participation kit" - and that's what R1 white cabs run now.
I have a question but I’m not sure if you can answer this. I have both a D&B and a Round 1 near me. When I first registered my eAmusement pass, I did it on Round 1’s White Cab which at the time was running A20 Plus. When I went to D&B who’s Can was also running A20 Plus, it brought up the profile that I created on the Round 1 white cab. Later when the R1 white cabs got upgraded to A3, it used my profile that I created on the Gold cab. So are the R1 White Cabs now tied to Osaka like the Gold Cab, and do the D&B Cabs connect to the Osaka servers, or an entirely different one
@@therock238360 D&B and Round1's white cabs are US region and have nothing to do with Osaka. eAmusement saves are NOT region locked and all data is stored on Konami's servers regardless of what region you're playing in. So you could play on a US white cab at Round1 USA, then take a trip to Japan and play DDR on a Japanese Gold Cab at a GIGO with the same data. The region of the cabinet only affects what songs you can play (for licensing reasons), what game modes are available, if PASELI or coin/credit payment is used, etc. This wasn't as obvious a few months ago when R1's white cabs were stuck on A20 Plus. Each version of DDR gets its own save data, and you can only migrate up *once*. i.e. you can migrate from A20 Plus to A3, but not A3 to A20, and you can't migrate multiple times. (You also can't SKIP a version - i.e. no going from A to A3 directly. You have to play each version in order to do the migrations, and if you skip a version you just lose that save data. This is more of a problem with IIDX than DDR or SDVX because Konami releases a new IIDX every year.)
@@VideoGameStarChannelSupreme It's stuff I've been told from friends of mine. Some of them work at Round1, some of them have just been in the rhythm game community for a really long time. Not everything is public so I can't source it. i.e. Dave & Busters or Round1 isn't about to go out in public and tell people what their negotiating position with Konami was. But we can infer most of this information from other sources. e.g. we know that the US white cabs used to not have profit participation because someone auctioned off a US white cab and posted pictures of it running. The cab was playable in "local mode" - i.e. not connected to eAmusement. Profit participation cabs *refuse to boot* without an online connection to the eAmusement server corresponding to its region. We also know that there were two versions of DDR in the US. You can identify them by looking for the version string at the top-left corner of the title screen. It will start with "TDX" or "MDX" followed by a "U" for US region or "J" for Japan region. A20 Plus and earlier on Round1 USA and D&B white cabs was "MDX:U". Round1 USA's gold cabs are "TDX:J", and the Hawaii white cabs are "TDX:U". When Round1 got the A3 upgrade kit, the white cabs were upgraded from "MDX:U" to "TDX:U" software. The upgrade kit was also notorious for bricking cabs because Konami forgot to send new security dongles, so we have a lot of pictures of the upgrader software. Guess what? The upgrader calls itself the "DDR pp kit" - as in, *profit participation* kit. It switches cabs over from the "upgrade kit" business model to the "revshare" business model. The only thing I can't find a source for is the behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt about D&B wanting local mode and then not buying the A3 upgrade kit. But it's plausible enough that I'm keeping it in my explanation until I find contravening evidence.
I wish there was a KAC America. People from North, Central, and South America can compete with JP players as well Hell maybe have an internationals KAC
They're worried the Japanese players will get destroyed by FEFEMZ again, oops! (for legal reasons this is a joke, Hibiki and O4ma. are god tier players)
This is honestly one of the best videos you've made since your "Dr.D's Top 10 Hardest DDR Songs Singles (2016)" which I still hope you plan to update for 2023 or 2024 once Hou has been cleared, the chart was leaked in another video, but I'm sure you'll probably wait until it's been officially cleared. I also hope you make a follow up video to address what happened with Chris because a lot of us still don't understand why he is so hated. I don't know anything about "paying people to edit time windows" or why Chris would even do that when he's already good, but I think it would make for a great discussion.
It sucks that Chris got the worst of it, especially as a former DDR world champion, and they treat him like that. Konami changes the rules from out of the blue, they fail to properly update everyone, and then they blame the players for it, typical behavior from a soulless corporation that hates their international audience. Kudos to Fefemz for standing by his morals.
Only reason FEF ain't going is because Konami ain't paying for his flight and accomodations lmao. Ain't got a dang thing to do with him being some upstanding beacon of justice 😂😂😂
They even hate their own audience with how shite the company went after the mid 2000's. But yeah the needless gatekeeping of Gaijins at the forefront is just asinine.
I wondered why overseas competitors didn’t join kac 11th. but I can understand the truth at that time. In my opinion, players didn’t do that on purpose and there’s huge advantages between Japan and other countries. I hope Konami to close the gap so competitive scene is more enjoyable. Thank you for uploading this video.(sorry for poor English)
It's unfortunate but Konami is pretty strict, rigid, and by the book with their rules and policies. However more open communication and clarification on what they have established as rules would always help.
Great work, Doc! It'd be just a starting point, but I hope Konami can make Grand Prix more accessible worldwide. Because players like me don't have access to the arcades / don't go there often. Also, Obligatory #KonamiDoBetter.
Ya, that's like level one starting point. Prove you actually care to make the game more widely available. If you need to cut songs for copyrighted reason, fine, but at least make an effort to have the game officially playable and supported online to the worldwide community.
I think one main issue they have is that they based it off the PASELI system, which is by nature restricted to Japan due to virtual currencency laws of Japan as well as having to battle contracts inside of japan. They for sure turn a blind eye to non-japanese people using the system and even subscribe to Konaste, but if they would embrace it internationally/worldwide they would most likely have to involve legal to adjust the system and contracts to work with it (or change konaste fundamentally to not be paseli dependant). I would love for them to do this, but I can understand it is a bit of an undertaking.
The thing is, there are other ways to monetize the game without having to have some kind of Japan only exclusive paseli system. Like believe it or not, I'm totally fine with galaxy credit. If jn the future, instead of only allowing songs to be bought through online konaste, why not give the option to purchase in game? Like what if to buy new songs/song pack you needed to use galaxy credit and play it 5 times? This would cost the same or more than buying online but it would make it available worldwide giving everyone the option to buy it. This is just one idea but there are more ways to avoid the system they set up.
This is a good summary of the issue for someone who might not be following DDR. Have you been sending this to game journalism sites like Kotaku or Polygon?
super nice video and great analysis on the issue. although im more of a pump it up player, it’s tough hearing about the disqualifications for those who worked hard on securing the top spots. i hope konami can fix their dated rules and allow foreigners to compete again🤞
Honestly, KAC isn't even a "real" tournament. As the video mentions, the ruleset is weird and keeps changing every single year. Single-elimination? Players directly picking songs? Forcing endy CSP in grand finals? Playing two songs and then taking the total sum of EX score between them? It's not a tournament, it's more of an exhibition. And yeah, more and more Konmai is just making it harder for non-Asian players to compete, so why bother? We'll make our own KAC. With blackjack, and hookers.
10:25 that rule applies to me and Sound Voltex as well. I created a Japanese Konami ID and tied my e-amuse card to it in order to play the konasute version. I am also a KAC rule breaker in that regard
@@user-fp2uu4nb2t That is their entire amusement division, so that includes the medals games :D (and before someone claim pachinko is their main driver, that devision; Gaming and Systems; is at 12% of annual revenue. 66% of their annual revenue is Digital Entertainment, yes that is right, home entertainment, like selling on steam and switch games etc.)
Honestly, the fact that I got into DDR because I was lucky enough to have the only D&B in Florida with an Ace cab within close distance back then, then suddenly I can’t get to play A3 just because the closest Round 1 is a 4 hour drive from me… That already felt like a giant slap in the face for me… But the fact that they showed that they don’t care about fucking their players over, especially with this whole KAC situation, is really messed up…
Regarding the point you made about US Gold cabs being connected to the Osaka region, each cab also needs a shop name. Konami probably looked at the shop names for the Gold cabs that Marq played on and saw that they were US Round 1 stores.
Ya, I'm sure they can tell the difference of which shops are really in Osaka vs the ones that are round 1 locations in the USA. I still just find the whole scenario hilarious as a result from Konami's doing.
US gold cabs uses a separate build of them game and the report to Eamuse what region they are playing from based on the license key and security key inserted, so Konami would have no problem at all separating them regardless of whatever VPN they were connecting through, they don't even need to rely on the shopname.
❤ Only about 30 seconds in, but I'd heard about this and its good to get some context, as my kid and I are Pop'n Music players, but she's getting to pro status and was intently watching currents KAC streams, especially for the womens competition. I started taking it seriously enough to inquire about competing SOME DAY, when she feels ready. But, then i started hearing about Konami discouraging players outside Asia from competing. Korean players we also watch stream were there, maybe someone from China, but I didn't hear any Chinese language being spoken. It sucks, but she did her first competition at Magfest last week and loved it. I post her gameplay on my channel ❤
AMAZING video, bro. i'd already known the context, but not the full story, behind the KAC DQ'ing. my GOD, the stuff non-Japanese players have to go through just to be able to play their game...Konami is even worse than i realized. oh my dear god, screw Konami. Why would they do that, is it just xenophobia for the sake of xenophobia?.. like wtf???
Setting up my emuse pass the first time was a nightmare. I was confused why I didn't have screen filter and why I was missing speed mods. The other players told me that you have to go to a website and register to unlock those features on the account. You have to set the region to Japan and of course the website is in Japanese. The other players helped me navigate through it. There was no way I would've known what to do on my own. A lot of the higher ups in Japan don't like foreigners. That's not a comment I make out of hate or racism, I promise. Accounts not set to Japan get settings taken away as aforementioned and non Asian cabs are missing songs. The whole process of setting up the e-amuse made the message clear that Konami feels DDR should be by Japanese people for Japanese people and foreigners are not welcome.
Konami dgafs about the competition, it's a vanity event. They'd pull a bunch of randoms from the local arcade the day of the event if they could get away with it.
If anyone thought that Konami would do anything other than watch Chris and co like a hawk for violations after humiliating them with the indonesian VPN stuff I have a bridge to sell them. Half the JP player base wants Chris to be banned4life.
Can someone explain the situation as a returning DDR player from the extreme days? I could care less about siding with or against Chris but what does VPN have to do with DDR? I have not played on any modern machines so I am not familiar with the tech. Without twitter, it is near impossible to find any information on this situation.
@@spacemonkeys6786 Basically since the Asian versions of they game have access to more songs and features that can't be present in the American version due to licensing issues of songs and the paseli virtual currency system not being cleared for legal tender outside of japan. Chris got fed up with not being able to access some of the content of the Asian version of the game, so he aquired a cab with an asian version of the game, manage to gain access to an arcade VPN from indonesia to be able to connect to the asian Konami servers directly, posing to be an asian arcade, so that he could play the asian version of the game as if he was in an asian arcade from the US. Of course that breaks all kinds of terms of service on multiple layers and could potentially land Konami in a lot of trouble with their Japanese business partners. So It was a bit surprising that they didn't just ban chris out right there and then.
@@Yugge It's so weird that this has been a thing since at least DDR Extreme, before eAmuse. There's always been demand to the point where people will import cabinets over tens of thousands of miles, and they'd rather make *less* money by refusing to supply that demand than just making the games available outside of Japan. It can't *just* be xenophobia, so is it to do with the Paseli profit share? I can't get my head around current (official) Bemani. It seems like such a poor value prospect to buy such expensive cabinets only to give up a share of the income to the company that you just spend $thousands on. Does any other company do this in arcades? I'm not sure how systems like NESiCA work. It seems like Konami want to have their cake and eat it, because anyone else wanting the type of model they have release the product for free. That would suit Konami as well as arcades; arcades get fancy machines that bring in customers, Konami gets paid per play.
I hope Konami really looks into all of this and fixes the mess they made. Specially DQ'ing runner ups because of the wrong account region, DQ'ing those that qualified with the wrong account region and so on. Was really looking forward to rooting for NAT8 as i am Canadian myself and i would have loved to root for a Canadian player.
Seeing KONAMI sent the messages telling Chris4Life "I hope you'll continue to pateonize", it's like a punch in the face to ALL of the arcaders ALL AROUND THE WORLD. It makes arcade rhythm gamers trying to avoid KONAMI games at all cost & try to move on with ANDAMIRO & SEGA games.
I'm not too interested on the competitive scene as someone who plays CS games (not Grand Prix) and Stepmania more than visit the Arcade, but I hate how Konami screwed global players over with their rules thus making those players have to go through various loopholes. Even then, blocking said loopholes close to the competition. About the video, this was really put together and really put perspective into the whole story of the KAC drama. Keep it up. I really laughed at the Dairy Queen joke. OH! and one last thing. #KonamiDoBetter
just like you mentioned, my eamuse account is japanese and the name is random gibberish because that's what happens automatically if you scan your card to add paseli. you're also not told this happens at all. so even if you wanted to register an american account, it wouldn't work and you wouldn't know why.
11:18 *that part* though... I had heard a similar explanation from someone else who knew this whole situation very well... and yeah it's kinda messed up. region locking songs I might get, licensing and all that, but interface *features*?! and yeah eliminating the moving accounts thing was incredibly stupid.
A theory: I think KAC put strictly rules because 2022 - 2023 put the BPL in DDE and become a eSport, that BPL compete with different companies of stores who patronize the Bemani Games. And like a eSport, some companies nephew the main company with more inversion in trade for privileges, well.........
I am predicting that they will introduce a new rule for KAC12 that disqualifies players who have been known to use emulated e-amusement passes to log on. That said, I respect FEFEMZ's decision and wish him great success moving forward... starting with him clearing Hou CSP19 under EX conditions.
Great video, I haven't been following the bemani community much in the recent years because of many other things happening, but it's really sad to hear how backwards the hospitality Konami had during 6th~9th KAC went.
Thanks for this video, Derek. Such a clear explanation of the situation and so sad to see all these decisions by Konami. They deserve an opportunity! #KonamiDoBetter
First of all, thanks for making this video. Regardless if anything good comes out of the future KACs, this should be made aware to everyone and they can make informed judgement and playstyle going forward. Makes me wonder what the companies big ideas are when they region-lock things [do they only want domestic sales??], or purposely organize a poorly put-together competition [do they actually want the unnecessary drama for attention for their event??] and whatnot. My heart breaks for the DDR scene watching this. All the best to the grassroots events!! Hope everyone can keep dancing happily~~
I really appropriate that you actually stand up , make an almost 30 minutes video with fully information to speaking up for our DDR Community outside Japan. I really disappointed about how Konami worked this year. I hope they will watch this video and have a better understanding to non-Japanese players outside of their country. #KonamiDoBetter
They've added an English caster and a commentator at BPL DDR, so i'm sure they acknowledge the foreign DDR playerbase and how compassionate the players are. And yet they make things so complicated for international players to properly engage in the game, the events, etc... Hopefully things can be better for the next KAC.
I have been a part of the Northern California DDR scene since 2000 back when they imported machines. I've battled kay0ss - who ranked 41 on this discussion. Infamously lost to him on a ddr 3rd mix machine at one of our local tournaments back in the day. None the less - It's pretty weak that the rules prohibit players from getting the most out of the content they enjoy. The fact that we as non-japanese players, who have supported and championed for a Japanese game this long is astounding to its own. But to be told, that our best reps on the game - can not take part is a trade show event due to a rule set that is homer at best - is just weak and shows many emotions that are not in conjunction with the passion the american players kept throughout the dark times of ddr where there was no support. One can hope - world championships can be a thing. Instead of being a world title with just local players. It's like the Olympics only allowing players and contestants from the host country only. Yes #konamidobetter - as all companies need to realize that we want to party with them as well - in battle and in relaxing.
@@ashleyharris3807yes, it’s in the rules. If you’ve been disqualified from a prior tournament, you’re not allowed to enter another one. So, they’ve effectively retired all four of them unless, by some miracle, they change their minds.
Cool. So you won KAC for DDR. Does it mean you're the best in the world? No it does not. It should mean that, but it's a hollow win because the scoreboard says someone else has the WRs. Now KAC is just another tournament. Anybody competing at a high level will know who the best is. Konami is basically invalidating their own tournament and devaluing the achievements of Japanese players too, all for eSports. Why wouldn't the best in Japan want to play the best in the world? Iron sharpens iron. Want to know who the actual best player in the world is at that point? Well it's not by winning KAC. Good on you for running your own thing.
Agreed. Ideally the official championships from the company should be the big leagues but oh well. Feels like dance in general will always be at the mercy of the organisers/corporates.
To think this all would've been avoided had Konami had better player support in western countries. It's just frustrating to see how much we're missing out on.
While no longer a competitive player for DDR(Triple A days ended with my work at namco), but near the end, in that announcement, will that be for only DDR for now, and is there a chance others will be added? Looking for Pop'n Music. Thank you for the info.
i guess KAC champ trophy walk away from japan is not good for commercial because they have BPL, they need donation, it's all about business! all we know if this 4 participle KAC and they will dominating all the Japanese players
is it just me or there's a unusual amount of indonesian references in this video lol from the DQ, to the region dropdown, and a few of the community gameplays 😂
Sup Dr. D? Great vid, been thinking of trying to get my out of shape butt back into DDR but haven't really pulled the trigger on that. Also all I got to play is X3 still so I'm unsure. Help convince me!! Lol
I feel sorry for those 4 western players. 3 of them would have their first time to join KAC and Chris is known as a DDR champion in the west. All those things ruined by Konami. Probably explains Fefemz's actions after this controversy.
I hope Konami reconsiders because there may be an option for other regions to ban players from Japan and anyone working for them from being t their tournaments as a hard reaction. #konamiDOBETTER
Great video! And props to you for saying #KonamiDoBetter instead calling for pitchforks. (Also yes, Konami do better.) At the beginning you mentioned a seemingly arbitrary "Japanese proficiency" rules requirement that was added and dropped. I don't think this signals malicious or xenophobic intent by a Konami employee to exclude western players. This is speculation on my part but I think they copy/pasted the BPL rules where Japanese proficiency is a fair requirement. Because if your team sponsor, coach, and teammates are all speaking Japanese for 2 or 3 months then you need to be as well. And that is also why they removed it. Because that rule is unnecessary for KAC which is essentially a high profile exhibition match played out in a single afternoon.
It figures Konami would have no vision and totally mess up like this. They have an American player who is one of the greatest rhythm game players ever and who ticks all of the social boxes people like to see these days and instead of using him to usher in a new era of bemani games in the US they ban him and everyone else who is great and helping keep the game alive outside of Japan. Such a shame that they are squandering what could be a great opportunity. Just look at the video Polygon put out about him winning the KAC. It wasn't even that well done and got over a million views. If Konami knew what they were doing they could get people in North America interested in DDR again. Even the home cab thing was bungled.,.. why would Konami care if their KAC champion had his own cabinet? They should have given him one with a lifetime eamuse hookup for winning, not gone after him when they found out he had it.
6th KAC was a very impressive competition. This case is a flaw in the rules, and it is wrong to use this as an excuse to disqualify participants from next year. I'm looking forward to KAC, where Japanese and foreign players can compete together.
Konami can never be un-america'd. We all know who the best is and he's now dominating other konami bemani games. KAC has been a joke and this is just the nail in the coffin. Like the video said, the best tournaments are the ones we make and that goes for all rhythm games.
I wish so much Konami would give a fuck but they really just wont. Ive only started playing again in the past 4 years and I wish our games didnt have to use a private server
This documentary is well-composed. First off, my heart sympathizes with the Northern American community that don't deserve this terrible disqualification. The thing is as a global community, as you've stated yourself, is that we treat KAC like the actual world cup (or more so, the most superior tournament with a lot of prestige we give it off) when in reality, it's more of a show-off (the thing is that we as the players want to strive making a better or at most possibly a legit KAC world championships but Konami just always says otherwise). Especially with being NAT8's, HAMBONE's and MARQQQ's first time, it would be a different energy that the global community would've enjoyed. I wish Konami could follow strategies like other prominent tournaments developed in US, JP (non-Konami tournaments) or anywhere around the world starting to initiate tournaments for developing/assessing player's skillsets and making dedicated experiences for global DDR players to unite and connect physically/virtually. Personally, I have my different opinions now with the KAC as to with my past perceptions, especially you did emphasis on how constantly the rules keep changing each year. We need to give more of that "energy we treat KAC like a World Cup" towards tournaments that had pulled a better off job than KAC/Konami did themselves and there's a list that has proven that to be true. And this 2023, getting to see Krono's skill growth in this game (being that he's on the same boat with many other restricted countries for KAC), if he had the opportunity (like how up^^beat, MOTL had) to enter KAC preliminaries on with how up^^beat provided fair alternative routes to assist DDR countries (with scares resources/support) to compete, *that would've be magical* but honestly after Konami's email response, it's heartbreaking not just to qualified countries, for everyone. This KAC 2023 season has been the most vile one we've seen. I understand currently it's more of an East and West conversation regarding this current news but now, I find it flawed that we consider "East and West" to "classify" KAC as a world championship when half of the West part of the world and large portions of Eastern countries are excluded. However, I do agree that all 4 players definitely deserved the opportunity either way.
Nice video tho, but yeah Data its a thing and the post of chris on Bemaniso paying to edit the timing window are... a good reason to stop letting foreigners.
Thanks for the comment. Why should the actions of one or several players result in banning all foreigners from competition? I didn't touch the data topic in this video because it didn't seem relevant since Konami banned all of them, and not just Chris. Still, the way you word seems unfair. Would you claim no one in Japan has played on data?
Japan just hates foreigners because they are more willing to break the rules than the Japanese. This is something beyond DDR, just see streamers like Jhonny somali LOL@@drdvids
@@donutdunker7294 The chart is still locked because it hasn't been passed yet from the babylon galaxy's event. You should check up FEFEMZ progressing to pass it though. However, DKOYproductions YT channel are gradually making stepchart reference based on FEFEMZ's progress.
@donutdunker7294 it's a relatively new song, locked in a special mode and is so challenging to the point that nobody has really beaten the chart yet, i've seen feemz get close so it may be a little more before it comes up on zenius
Free *everyone* who was banned for having the rules broken by broken machines. At least we know what's going on, though... and we aren't just gonna sit here and take it. #DoBetter, Konami -- or we shall #DoBetter ourselves. Besides, even other video game companies have done a better job understanding what the phrase "world tournament" actually means.
Special shout out to Nat8 who qualified despite there being ONE online DDR cabinet in all of Canada. yes, a single online cabinet for a geographical region of 10,000,000 KM squared.
Even that cab wasnt able to participate in KAC.
Two eamuse cabs in Canada, D&B Oakville and Vaughan (Toronto)
how many people play ddr there? I bet a little few, this is a business after all.
@@user-fp2uu4nb2t that added nothing to the conversation thanks
There are two DDR A20+ machines in the GTA/GTHA in Canada, but from January 2022 to October 2023, Oakville was in Local Mode only. Many features (courses, many modifiers, DDR Selection, Extra Stage, etc.) are unavailable in Local Mode. On Nov. 1, 2023, Oakville was back online.
Both locations are around a ½-hour drive from each other, or two hours by public transit. With various travel deals, I can play from time to time. Pads work well at both venues, and I scored several AAAs.
Yes, congratulations to NAT8 for initially qualifying!
As a non-Japanese who has *competed* in the 9th KAC albeit a different game (Dancerush), here's my experience to demonstrate how _internationally-inclusive_ KONAMI tried to be back then:
- For the first (and only) time, 5 players from Southeast Asia were given slots to compete in 5 games at KAC.
- Travel expense and accommodation: paid by KONAMI.
- 2 "influencers", whose main content aren't even rhythm games, were hired to accompany us film and make vlogs.
- 2 really capable translators were provided
- IIRC, they also provided mini meal stipend
It's debatable whether or not COVID's effects still hurt their business today, but to me, with BEMANI Asia (their Southeast Asia branch) closing down and BPL stuff, it seems as if their attitude is gradually shifting to "Why care about outsiders? Let's focus on ourselves and make it sustainable from within Japan!"
BPL has opened up for more Non Japanese lately. leviern / XD*LEVI is currently signed to Taito Station Tradz in SDVX BPL S3. A lot of Korean players played in IIDX BPL S3 and one American IIDX player made the drafts (but were unfortunatly not drafted). Biggest issue for BPL is that you need to commit to the training and promotional times of the team as well as the filming of the seasons, which is hard to do for non-japanese players.
How did you place? And that’s cool that you participated!
@@Owen2131_ 5th Place in the 9th KAC
This also shows us that Konami monitors social networks. I think you’re all smart enough to realize what that implies for the other hot button issue in DDR lately.
LOL
yeah I feel like this documentary is really neglecting several giant elephants in the room regarding D@T@ and p1r@cy, as well as KR1SfourL1F3's prior run-ins with rule breaking
Konami has always known about that and is literally in all those sharing sites already.
@@jtiza but surely piracy of DDR wasn't this blatant in 2017 when americans started going to KAC
Here's a thought: piracy is not the illness, but a symptom instead.
From my perspective as a rhythm game enthusiastic, and a PIU player, the best competitive events are made for the players to the players. Take the example of B1G ONE, in every year the tournament are open to everyone who attends the place of the event, making it the most inclusive championship of PIU in the world.
Hope the DDR community reach a really big competition event in the future. Greetings
I love your opinion manny thats why i move on from DDR either because the machine itself really strict and the rules is BS
This is why I think DDR being geared more and more towards “E-Sport” that give Japan players a major advantage will make DDR worse of a franchise in the long term. I’m for players to have competitive mindsets to the game, but everyone should have access to all things within the game so everyone can have fun with the game.
Long term player here and I helped outline this video.
Seriously, this whole thing was a huge spit in the face to overseas players everywhere. They wrongfully rejected world class talent here.
Imagine if a major sports competition pulled some BS like this. The backlash would be catastrophic.
This is nothing different and that’s what those 4 players just suffered and NO competitor from ANY game should ever go through what they just did.
Quite honestly one of the most tragic moments in e-sports/video game history if you ask me.
For fucking shame Konami
I want to make the point that Upbeat^^ has been a better representation of the world's top DDR players than KAC.
Only 1 person dropped out and it's because of visa problems that prevented them from traveling to the US (this is what I remember anyways).
Hoping that they get the support to host a second tournament.
100% agreed - (edit: a few players dropped out due to visa, including myself)
I wished more players from Asia participated and came over.
Yep! Like i said, Up^^beat is the true world championship!
Great video. I feel that perhaps we need to shift our attention to the NA tournaments more than KAC. They have been incredible to watch and participate in. If we host more of them, and they continue to shine, then perhaps the Japanese players and Konami themselves will have no choice but to recognize us. The more our NA tournaments do well, the harder it would be for Konami to turn us away. Also, none of this would ever happen if non- Japanese accounts had access to all the extra features like GP packs, score share, paseli, etc.
Exactly this is why regional tournaments like Mistake On The Lake in Ohio exist.
On the other hand, it’s very possibly Konami might pull a Nintendo on tournaments outside their authorization. I worry this is more likely with how Konami’s been acting, unfortunately.
#KonamiDoBetter
Phenomenal video with stellar editing! Thank you for putting this together and summarizing everything in a digestible manner. I'm looking forward to Idola
Thank you so much. The plan was to make it digestible so people outside DDR can understand the situation.
The hope is to inform and attract other large creators who can then raise more awareness to this.
You yourself are a bigger youtuber than me, so you rerweeting and promoting this helps a ton, thank you!
23:24 Just a little correction : They added "permanent ban" rule since The 9th KAC(2019) because of Drummania drama in The 8th KAC finals, not this year.
(Also they added prohibitng multiple entry by same reason)
Except that, this video is very good.
Thanks, I guess I missed that rule was added earlier.
what's the drama regarding gitadora back then?
@deadlyunknown The 7th KAC champion entried with 4 accounts (with his friends) and passed qualifiers on ALL those accounts.
3 of 4 were caught and DQ'd,and rest 1 tried messing finals.
He said, "I wanted to versus with the previous champion, but he got DQ'd just because of rumor. I'll give up this Finals!"
This is why Konami added those 2 rules on the next 9th KAC.
Well said. It's really a shame how this was handled, given that participants were forced to either miss out on songs for a year or break the rules because of the nature of all of the Japan-only content in the game. I could even deal with Grand Prix being japan only technically, because I'm sure the licensing agreements for some of the songs do state they're for distribution specifically in Japan, but access to Basic Course, which no longer even requires Paseli explicitly and can be tied to a US credit card instead, NEEDS to be able to be used with a non Japan account for that to be considered a viable option for serious players. I sincerely hope that they will amend things next year to allow these passionate and skilled players to compete.
I look forward to Project Idola - it was a lot of fun last time. Thank you for the video, and for organizing the event.
Yes, precisely. I kind of want to make a follow-up video going into detail about how broken it all is. Without basic course, so much is lost. DDR GP technically can not even be played outside of Japan.
I would like to add another thing about the Bemani Pro League. An American did go to Japan to participate on the IIDX BPL Season 3.
His name was PHN!X, but sadly, he wasn't drafted for the tournament. I admit that considering the popularity of DDR in the USA, it's very impressive that a guy went as far as to move from California to Japan to participate in an IIDX tournament.
It's sad he didn't get drafted. But I hope that one day, DDR, SDVX, and IIDX Western players can participate in these tournaments.
Thanks for sharing, I didn't know this story.
Was he able to speak Japanese?
And how does the draft system got bpl work?
the BPL has a rule where participants must be able to speak conversational japanese
leviern just got drafted for SDVX BPL Season 3 and if i am not mistaken he is american that moved to Japan!
yep, participants must reside in japan
@@drdvids To answer your 1st question. Yes, I believe PHN!X does know japanise because he uses it often when texting on Twitter.
As for the 2nd question. In this year's IIDX BPL, there are 8 teams, and the drafting process lasts 4 rounds. Each team picks 1 player each round. That means that by the end of round 4, a total of 32 players will be picked in total to participate in the BPL.
The players are picked at the same time each round. That means that there is a probability that 2 or more teams can pick the same player. If that happens, then the team's representatives that pick the same player will draw a paper from a bowl at random, and the one who wins gets the player. The losers will have to pick another player from the draft pool.
FEFEMZ the realest G for dropping out.
it doesn't cost a fortune to visit a country two hours away. it's in bad taste to claim another (hollow) victory against japan and he isn't trying to get cancelled by the community. stop making shit up.
lol shut up@@obvioussockaccount
@@obvioussockaccountL
I think I saw this on the discord, but I believe homebrew tournaments may be the way to go after this fallout
#KonamiDoBetter or rather: #KonmaiDoBetter
As a yugioh player this is unfortunately unsurprising. Konami has quite the reputation for abusing the hell out of its western players and just generally making things very unfriendly and complicated for western customers and competitors. It's really a shame
16:15 Gold cabs are registered in Osaka because they're very explicitly NOT American licensed cabs. Konami never made US Gold Cabs. The reason why they're in the US is that Round1 has special permission from Konami to operate J region cabs in the US; they're marked as being in Osaka because they have to be *somewhere* in Japan and Osaka is where Round1's HQ is. While Konami's systems think the cabs are still in Japan, their KAC team almost certainly knows that Round1 USA is running import cabs and would treat that as US play, not Japanese play. (This is also why Round1's Gold cabs have eAmusement maintenance when their White cabs don't.)
The reason why Round1 imported Gold Cabs was because of... Dave & Busters. The entire US e-Amusement region for DDR was a joint venture between Round1 and D&B because Konami wanted a larger minimum order quantity. This is also why DDR is exclusive to those arcades. As part of the negotiation for the cab order, D&B specifically wanted to be exempted from eAmusement Participation (i.e. the revshare Konami gets paid every time you insert a credit on a Japanese machine, and the reason why Konami games shut off if they're not always online). This would allow them to disconnect their cabs from e-Amusement and have them still work, but that also means no automatic updates. Instead they'd have to buy upgrade kits at a cost of thousands of dollars per cab for each new version of the game.
Predictably, after A20 Plus, Dave & Busters stopped buying DDR upgrade kits. Apparently money is getting tight at D&B and management wants to cut costs. This caused a huge problem for Round1 because the entire US region for DDR was contingent upon both arcades paying for it - or, in other words, Konami wouldn't sell an upgrade kit to just Round1. Round1 worked around this by importing a bunch of Gold Cabs from Japan so that they could run A3, but their white cabs were still stuck on A20 Plus... until a few months ago. Apparently there was a Hawaiian arcade chain (Fun Factory?) that had bought US white cabs from Konami under an entirely *different deal* that included profit participation fees. Konami sold Round1 an upgrade kit that switched them over to that version of the game - literally, it's called the "DDR pp kit", as in "Profit Participation kit" - and that's what R1 white cabs run now.
The US got gold cabs ever since A20 released which Dave and Busters upgraded to shortly after so thats definitely not the reason why it happened.
I have a question but I’m not sure if you can answer this. I have both a D&B and a Round 1 near me. When I first registered my eAmusement pass, I did it on Round 1’s White Cab which at the time was running A20 Plus. When I went to D&B who’s Can was also running A20 Plus, it brought up the profile that I created on the Round 1 white cab. Later when the R1 white cabs got upgraded to A3, it used my profile that I created on the Gold cab. So are the R1 White Cabs now tied to Osaka like the Gold Cab, and do the D&B Cabs connect to the Osaka servers, or an entirely different one
@@therock238360 D&B and Round1's white cabs are US region and have nothing to do with Osaka. eAmusement saves are NOT region locked and all data is stored on Konami's servers regardless of what region you're playing in. So you could play on a US white cab at Round1 USA, then take a trip to Japan and play DDR on a Japanese Gold Cab at a GIGO with the same data. The region of the cabinet only affects what songs you can play (for licensing reasons), what game modes are available, if PASELI or coin/credit payment is used, etc.
This wasn't as obvious a few months ago when R1's white cabs were stuck on A20 Plus. Each version of DDR gets its own save data, and you can only migrate up *once*. i.e. you can migrate from A20 Plus to A3, but not A3 to A20, and you can't migrate multiple times.
(You also can't SKIP a version - i.e. no going from A to A3 directly. You have to play each version in order to do the migrations, and if you skip a version you just lose that save data. This is more of a problem with IIDX than DDR or SDVX because Konami releases a new IIDX every year.)
How do you know all this? Do you have sources for further reading?
@@VideoGameStarChannelSupreme It's stuff I've been told from friends of mine. Some of them work at Round1, some of them have just been in the rhythm game community for a really long time. Not everything is public so I can't source it. i.e. Dave & Busters or Round1 isn't about to go out in public and tell people what their negotiating position with Konami was.
But we can infer most of this information from other sources. e.g. we know that the US white cabs used to not have profit participation because someone auctioned off a US white cab and posted pictures of it running. The cab was playable in "local mode" - i.e. not connected to eAmusement. Profit participation cabs *refuse to boot* without an online connection to the eAmusement server corresponding to its region.
We also know that there were two versions of DDR in the US. You can identify them by looking for the version string at the top-left corner of the title screen. It will start with "TDX" or "MDX" followed by a "U" for US region or "J" for Japan region. A20 Plus and earlier on Round1 USA and D&B white cabs was "MDX:U". Round1 USA's gold cabs are "TDX:J", and the Hawaii white cabs are "TDX:U".
When Round1 got the A3 upgrade kit, the white cabs were upgraded from "MDX:U" to "TDX:U" software. The upgrade kit was also notorious for bricking cabs because Konami forgot to send new security dongles, so we have a lot of pictures of the upgrader software. Guess what? The upgrader calls itself the "DDR pp kit" - as in, *profit participation* kit. It switches cabs over from the "upgrade kit" business model to the "revshare" business model.
The only thing I can't find a source for is the behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt about D&B wanting local mode and then not buying the A3 upgrade kit. But it's plausible enough that I'm keeping it in my explanation until I find contravening evidence.
I wish there was a KAC America. People from North, Central, and South America can compete with JP players as well
Hell maybe have an internationals KAC
Konami its way too xenophobic for that
They're worried the Japanese players will get destroyed by FEFEMZ again, oops!
(for legal reasons this is a joke, Hibiki and O4ma. are god tier players)
This is honestly one of the best videos you've made since your "Dr.D's Top 10 Hardest DDR Songs Singles (2016)" which I still hope you plan to update for 2023 or 2024 once Hou has been cleared, the chart was leaked in another video, but I'm sure you'll probably wait until it's been officially cleared. I also hope you make a follow up video to address what happened with Chris because a lot of us still don't understand why he is so hated. I don't know anything about "paying people to edit time windows" or why Chris would even do that when he's already good, but I think it would make for a great discussion.
Thanks a lot. I kind of want to wait until there is 1 more level 19.
Then it would be top 10 19s.
And make a separate top 10 18s
It sucks that Chris got the worst of it, especially as a former DDR world champion, and they treat him like that. Konami changes the rules from out of the blue, they fail to properly update everyone, and then they blame the players for it, typical behavior from a soulless corporation that hates their international audience. Kudos to Fefemz for standing by his morals.
Only reason FEF ain't going is because Konami ain't paying for his flight and accomodations lmao. Ain't got a dang thing to do with him being some upstanding beacon of justice 😂😂😂
another stalking comment. stop making shit up.
@@obvioussockaccountL
They even hate their own audience with how shite the company went after the mid 2000's. But yeah the needless gatekeeping of Gaijins at the forefront is just asinine.
I wondered why overseas competitors didn’t join kac 11th. but I can understand the truth at that time.
In my opinion, players didn’t do that on purpose and there’s huge advantages between Japan and other countries.
I hope Konami to close the gap so competitive scene is more enjoyable.
Thank you for uploading this video.(sorry for poor English)
bro the thumbnail of chris kills me 😂😂 amazing video d great job on addressing the kac incident
ok ddrwatchman2023
@@obvioussockaccountL
Great video Dr. D!! Thanks for offering such a clear explanation of the situation. Hope this can get resolved in the future 😔
I hope so too!
It won't. Konami only cares about money (other companies care about money and their customers).
良い動画です！今回の失格措置に対して、日本のBEMANIプレイヤーも問題があると感じており、KONAMIに対して不信感を抱いています。
一方で、日本では海賊版に対する嫌悪が非常に強い事も重要だと思います。日本人は海賊版の問題に対して、今回の失格措置と同じくらい深刻なものだと考えています。
(以下は私の推測ですが、海賊版の使用に対する直接的な証拠がなかったために、KONAMIは今回の様な馬鹿げた方法を取ったのかもしれません。すなわち、複数アカウントの問題はただの建前ではないかということです)
Thanks for sharing this perspective.
It's unfortunate but Konami is pretty strict, rigid, and by the book with their rules and policies. However more open communication and clarification on what they have established as rules would always help.
Nice vid ma . Now that Chris and other top players are banned from competition. Time to bust out the old Cobalt Flux and get into the scene again
Great work, Doc! It'd be just a starting point, but I hope Konami can make Grand Prix more accessible worldwide. Because players like me don't have access to the arcades / don't go there often.
Also, Obligatory #KonamiDoBetter.
Ya, that's like level one starting point. Prove you actually care to make the game more widely available. If you need to cut songs for copyrighted reason, fine, but at least make an effort to have the game officially playable and supported online to the worldwide community.
@@drdvids Exactly! I can live without the licensed songs, but at least give us the Konami originals / Bemani Crossovers.
I think one main issue they have is that they based it off the PASELI system, which is by nature restricted to Japan due to virtual currencency laws of Japan as well as having to battle contracts inside of japan. They for sure turn a blind eye to non-japanese people using the system and even subscribe to Konaste, but if they would embrace it internationally/worldwide they would most likely have to involve legal to adjust the system and contracts to work with it (or change konaste fundamentally to not be paseli dependant).
I would love for them to do this, but I can understand it is a bit of an undertaking.
The thing is, there are other ways to monetize the game without having to have some kind of Japan only exclusive paseli system.
Like believe it or not, I'm totally fine with galaxy credit.
If jn the future, instead of only allowing songs to be bought through online konaste, why not give the option to purchase in game? Like what if to buy new songs/song pack you needed to use galaxy credit and play it 5 times? This would cost the same or more than buying online but it would make it available worldwide giving everyone the option to buy it.
This is just one idea but there are more ways to avoid the system they set up.
This is a good summary of the issue for someone who might not be following DDR. Have you been sending this to game journalism sites like Kotaku or Polygon?
I haven't yet, but feel free to spread it around!
super nice video and great analysis on the issue. although im more of a pump it up player, it’s tough hearing about the disqualifications for those who worked hard on securing the top spots. i hope konami can fix their dated rules and allow foreigners to compete again🤞
Thanks for the video, the subtitles, and good luck on project Idola
Thank you! 😃
even though i don't play DDR, but i play other bemani games, i still find this video very interesting. good job on making it.
Honestly, KAC isn't even a "real" tournament. As the video mentions, the ruleset is weird and keeps changing every single year. Single-elimination? Players directly picking songs? Forcing endy CSP in grand finals? Playing two songs and then taking the total sum of EX score between them? It's not a tournament, it's more of an exhibition. And yeah, more and more Konmai is just making it harder for non-Asian players to compete, so why bother?
We'll make our own KAC. With blackjack, and hookers.
At least KAC 11th don't force any song for the final but they can't do math. 0+2+2+2=8???? KONAMI messed up
10:25 that rule applies to me and Sound Voltex as well. I created a Japanese Konami ID and tied my e-amuse card to it in order to play the konasute version. I am also a KAC rule breaker in that regard
Same! Another SDVX player here, I had to use a Japan account too
I just don't understand why Konami are so determined to not make money internationally on Bemani in general
because bemani only counts for 6% of their annual income.
@@user-fp2uu4nb2t where is this info? do you work there?
@@user-fp2uu4nb2t That is their entire amusement division, so that includes the medals games :D (and before someone claim pachinko is their main driver, that devision; Gaming and Systems; is at 12% of annual revenue. 66% of their annual revenue is Digital Entertainment, yes that is right, home entertainment, like selling on steam and switch games etc.)
@@obvioussockaccountL
Honestly, the fact that I got into DDR because I was lucky enough to have the only D&B in Florida with an Ace cab within close distance back then, then suddenly I can’t get to play A3 just because the closest Round 1 is a 4 hour drive from me… That already felt like a giant slap in the face for me…
But the fact that they showed that they don’t care about fucking their players over, especially with this whole KAC situation, is really messed up…
well thats D&B fault, they didnt wanted to renew the contract with konami so... thats their fault.
@@user-fp2uu4nb2t why are you defending konami?
@@obvioussockaccountL
@@user-fp2uu4nb2t so the reason d&b doesn’t have a3 is purely because they didn’t renew their contract? I thought a3 was just gold cab exclusive.
Yet another reason not to trust Konmai. This is kind of situations are happening way to often, and its now spilling into DDR...
Regarding the point you made about US Gold cabs being connected to the Osaka region, each cab also needs a shop name. Konami probably looked at the shop names for the Gold cabs that Marq played on and saw that they were US Round 1 stores.
Ya, I'm sure they can tell the difference of which shops are really in Osaka vs the ones that are round 1 locations in the USA.
I still just find the whole scenario hilarious as a result from Konami's doing.
US gold cabs uses a separate build of them game and the report to Eamuse what region they are playing from based on the license key and security key inserted, so Konami would have no problem at all separating them regardless of whatever VPN they were connecting through, they don't even need to rely on the shopname.
❤ Only about 30 seconds in, but I'd heard about this and its good to get some context, as my kid and I are Pop'n Music players, but she's getting to pro status and was intently watching currents KAC streams, especially for the womens competition. I started taking it seriously enough to inquire about competing SOME DAY, when she feels ready. But, then i started hearing about Konami discouraging players outside Asia from competing. Korean players we also watch stream were there, maybe someone from China, but I didn't hear any Chinese language being spoken. It sucks, but she did her first competition at Magfest last week and loved it. I post her gameplay on my channel ❤
AMAZING video, bro. i'd already known the context, but not the full story, behind the KAC DQ'ing. my GOD, the stuff non-Japanese players have to go through just to be able to play their game...Konami is even worse than i realized. oh my dear god, screw Konami. Why would they do that, is it just xenophobia for the sake of xenophobia?.. like wtf???
I love this video really much,the jokes,the editing,is all top-notch.
And Konami sucks.Fuck Konami.
Setting up my emuse pass the first time was a nightmare. I was confused why I didn't have screen filter and why I was missing speed mods. The other players told me that you have to go to a website and register to unlock those features on the account. You have to set the region to Japan and of course the website is in Japanese. The other players helped me navigate through it. There was no way I would've known what to do on my own. A lot of the higher ups in Japan don't like foreigners. That's not a comment I make out of hate or racism, I promise. Accounts not set to Japan get settings taken away as aforementioned and non Asian cabs are missing songs. The whole process of setting up the e-amuse made the message clear that Konami feels DDR should be by Japanese people for Japanese people and foreigners are not welcome.
thank you for this video i think you did a great job explaining everything!
Konami dgafs about the competition, it's a vanity event. They'd pull a bunch of randoms from the local arcade the day of the event if they could get away with it.
Sometimes it feels like every rhythm game contest is a vanity event tbh
If anyone thought that Konami would do anything other than watch Chris and co like a hawk for violations after humiliating them with the indonesian VPN stuff I have a bridge to sell them. Half the JP player base wants Chris to be banned4life.
Can someone explain the situation as a returning DDR player from the extreme days? I could care less about siding with or against Chris but what does VPN have to do with DDR? I have not played on any modern machines so I am not familiar with the tech. Without twitter, it is near impossible to find any information on this situation.
@@spacemonkeys6786 Basically since the Asian versions of they game have access to more songs and features that can't be present in the American version due to licensing issues of songs and the paseli virtual currency system not being cleared for legal tender outside of japan. Chris got fed up with not being able to access some of the content of the Asian version of the game, so he aquired a cab with an asian version of the game, manage to gain access to an arcade VPN from indonesia to be able to connect to the asian Konami servers directly, posing to be an asian arcade, so that he could play the asian version of the game as if he was in an asian arcade from the US.
Of course that breaks all kinds of terms of service on multiple layers and could potentially land Konami in a lot of trouble with their Japanese business partners. So It was a bit surprising that they didn't just ban chris out right there and then.
@@Yugge It's so weird that this has been a thing since at least DDR Extreme, before eAmuse. There's always been demand to the point where people will import cabinets over tens of thousands of miles, and they'd rather make *less* money by refusing to supply that demand than just making the games available outside of Japan. It can't *just* be xenophobia, so is it to do with the Paseli profit share?
I can't get my head around current (official) Bemani. It seems like such a poor value prospect to buy such expensive cabinets only to give up a share of the income to the company that you just spend $thousands on. Does any other company do this in arcades? I'm not sure how systems like NESiCA work.
It seems like Konami want to have their cake and eat it, because anyone else wanting the type of model they have release the product for free. That would suit Konami as well as arcades; arcades get fancy machines that bring in customers, Konami gets paid per play.
I hope Konami really looks into all of this and fixes the mess they made.
Specially DQ'ing runner ups because of the wrong account region, DQ'ing those that qualified with the wrong account region and so on.
Was really looking forward to rooting for NAT8 as i am Canadian myself and i would have loved to root for a Canadian player.
Seeing KONAMI sent the messages telling Chris4Life "I hope you'll continue to pateonize", it's like a punch in the face to ALL of the arcaders ALL AROUND THE WORLD. It makes arcade rhythm gamers trying to avoid KONAMI games at all cost & try to move on with ANDAMIRO & SEGA games.
I hope someday we can compete in KAC, in all games.
Had casually followed the drama, but already had an idea of how Konami botched this and why. Great video summary 😊
I'm not too interested on the competitive scene as someone who plays CS games (not Grand Prix) and Stepmania more than visit the Arcade, but I hate how Konami screwed global players over with their rules thus making those players have to go through various loopholes. Even then, blocking said loopholes close to the competition.
About the video, this was really put together and really put perspective into the whole story of the KAC drama. Keep it up. I really laughed at the Dairy Queen joke.
OH! and one last thing. #KonamiDoBetter
just like you mentioned, my eamuse account is japanese and the name is random gibberish because that's what happens automatically if you scan your card to add paseli. you're also not told this happens at all. so even if you wanted to register an american account, it wouldn't work and you wouldn't know why.
Very good point. Thanks for sharing.
11:18 *that part* though... I had heard a similar explanation from someone else who knew this whole situation very well... and yeah it's kinda messed up. region locking songs I might get, licensing and all that, but interface *features*?! and yeah eliminating the moving accounts thing was incredibly stupid.
I'm A Casual Player, So I Guess Having A Japanese Account For Everything? I'm New To These e-Amusement Things.
Ya I recommend just having Japanese account if you play ddr
@drdvids Okay, Thanks For Clearing It Up For Me. I Haven't Played DDR Since I Think 8 Or 9 Years Ago. And That Was From The SuperNOVA Cabinet.
A theory: I think KAC put strictly rules because 2022 - 2023 put the BPL in DDE and become a eSport, that BPL compete with different companies of stores who patronize the Bemani Games. And like a eSport, some companies nephew the main company with more inversion in trade for privileges, well.........
I am predicting that they will introduce a new rule for KAC12 that disqualifies players who have been known to use emulated e-amusement passes to log on.
That said, I respect FEFEMZ's decision and wish him great success moving forward... starting with him clearing Hou CSP19 under EX conditions.
Great video, I haven't been following the bemani community much in the recent years because of many other things happening, but it's really sad to hear how backwards the hospitality Konami had during 6th~9th KAC went.
Thanks for this video, Derek. Such a clear explanation of the situation and so sad to see all these decisions by Konami. They deserve an opportunity! #KonamiDoBetter
First of all, thanks for making this video. Regardless if anything good comes out of the future KACs, this should be made aware to everyone and they can make informed judgement and playstyle going forward.
Makes me wonder what the companies big ideas are when they region-lock things [do they only want domestic sales??], or purposely organize a poorly put-together competition [do they actually want the unnecessary drama for attention for their event??] and whatnot.
My heart breaks for the DDR scene watching this. All the best to the grassroots events!! Hope everyone can keep dancing happily~~
From someone into Yu-Gi-Oh, I feel you.
I really appropriate that you actually stand up , make an almost 30 minutes video with fully information to speaking up for our DDR Community outside Japan. I really disappointed about how Konami worked this year. I hope they will watch this video and have a better understanding to non-Japanese players outside of their country. #KonamiDoBetter
They've added an English caster and a commentator at BPL DDR, so i'm sure they acknowledge the foreign DDR playerbase and how compassionate the players are. And yet they make things so complicated for international players to properly engage in the game, the events, etc... Hopefully things can be better for the next KAC.
"English" caster. That s*** its so cringe I wish it was remove.
@@user-fp2uu4nb2t you will never be japanese.
I have been a part of the Northern California DDR scene since 2000 back when they imported machines. I've battled kay0ss - who ranked 41 on this discussion. Infamously lost to him on a ddr 3rd mix machine at one of our local tournaments back in the day. None the less - It's pretty weak that the rules prohibit players from getting the most out of the content they enjoy. The fact that we as non-japanese players, who have supported and championed for a Japanese game this long is astounding to its own. But to be told, that our best reps on the game - can not take part is a trade show event due to a rule set that is homer at best - is just weak and shows many emotions that are not in conjunction with the passion the american players kept throughout the dark times of ddr where there was no support. One can hope - world championships can be a thing. Instead of being a world title with just local players. It's like the Olympics only allowing players and contestants from the host country only. Yes #konamidobetter - as all companies need to realize that we want to party with them as well - in battle and in relaxing.
It breaks my heart because all four of them were so deserving of an opportunity. #KonamiDoBetter
That’s the general gist of it, yes. Messed up? For sure!
@@ashleyharris3807yes, it’s in the rules. If you’ve been disqualified from a prior tournament, you’re not allowed to enter another one. So, they’ve effectively retired all four of them unless, by some miracle, they change their minds.
@@quietleaf6320 LMAO touch weights nerd
@@obvioussockaccount L
@@akhimahathir2004 mad?
I feel so bad for NAT8 for being disqualified from KAC, he had to drive roughly four hours to R1 in Michigan from Canada
you've never been good at anything so of course you'd think this way.
@@obvioussockaccountL
Just added Auto generated Japanese and Chinese subtitles, enjoy.
KONAMI should takes notes from Andamiro
We don't even have A3 in Canada T_T
Cool. So you won KAC for DDR. Does it mean you're the best in the world? No it does not. It should mean that, but it's a hollow win because the scoreboard says someone else has the WRs. Now KAC is just another tournament. Anybody competing at a high level will know who the best is. Konami is basically invalidating their own tournament and devaluing the achievements of Japanese players too, all for eSports. Why wouldn't the best in Japan want to play the best in the world? Iron sharpens iron. Want to know who the actual best player in the world is at that point? Well it's not by winning KAC. Good on you for running your own thing.
Agreed. Ideally the official championships from the company should be the big leagues but oh well. Feels like dance in general will always be at the mercy of the organisers/corporates.
To think this all would've been avoided had Konami had better player support in western countries. It's just frustrating to see how much we're missing out on.
because you all use data, thats why
While no longer a competitive player for DDR(Triple A days ended with my work at namco), but near the end, in that announcement, will that be for only DDR for now, and is there a chance others will be added? Looking for Pop'n Music. Thank you for the info.
i guess KAC champ trophy walk away from japan is not good for commercial because they have BPL, they need donation, it's all about business!
all we know if this 4 participle KAC and they will dominating all the Japanese players
is it just me or there's a unusual amount of indonesian references in this video lol
from the DQ, to the region dropdown, and a few of the community gameplays 😂
Idk what you are talking about. Take it up with Len... My editor based in Indonesia 😂
@@drdvidsThat might be the case 😂
wkwkwkwkwk
Sup Dr. D? Great vid, been thinking of trying to get my out of shape butt back into DDR but haven't really pulled the trigger on that. Also all I got to play is X3 still so I'm unsure. Help convince me!! Lol
Do it
The only upside to this we now value grassroots tournaments even more than ever.
I feel sorry for those 4 western players. 3 of them would have their first time to join KAC and Chris is known as a DDR champion in the west. All those things ruined by Konami. Probably explains Fefemz's actions after this controversy.
I hope Konami reconsiders because there may be an option for other regions to ban players from Japan and anyone working for them from being t their tournaments as a hard reaction.
#konamiDOBETTER
thats not gonna happen lol.
Great video! And props to you for saying #KonamiDoBetter instead calling for pitchforks. (Also yes, Konami do better.)
At the beginning you mentioned a seemingly arbitrary "Japanese proficiency" rules requirement that was added and dropped. I don't think this signals malicious or xenophobic intent by a Konami employee to exclude western players. This is speculation on my part but I think they copy/pasted the BPL rules where Japanese proficiency is a fair requirement. Because if your team sponsor, coach, and teammates are all speaking Japanese for 2 or 3 months then you need to be as well. And that is also why they removed it. Because that rule is unnecessary for KAC which is essentially a high profile exhibition match played out in a single afternoon.
It figures Konami would have no vision and totally mess up like this. They have an American player who is one of the greatest rhythm game players ever and who ticks all of the social boxes people like to see these days and instead of using him to usher in a new era of bemani games in the US they ban him and everyone else who is great and helping keep the game alive outside of Japan.
Such a shame that they are squandering what could be a great opportunity. Just look at the video Polygon put out about him winning the KAC. It wasn't even that well done and got over a million views. If Konami knew what they were doing they could get people in North America interested in DDR again.
Even the home cab thing was bungled.,.. why would Konami care if their KAC champion had his own cabinet? They should have given him one with a lifetime eamuse hookup for winning, not gone after him when they found out he had it.
because he pays to edit timing window in ddr lol
@@user-fp2uu4nb2t don't act like you don't use stepmania.
@@obvioussockaccount L
@@akhimahathir2004 mad?
When i seen Chri's post on X, i was literally without words. Couldn't even realize this mess. #KonamiDoBetter
Learn English before you post on CZcams. Yikes.
konami doing konami things
19:32 Sudden danooct1 cameo.
Oh shit, he does play DDR in his alt.
Konami ruin PES, MGS and now DDR they definitely just care about pachinko
6th KAC was a very impressive competition.
This case is a flaw in the rules, and it is wrong to use this as an excuse to disqualify participants from next year.
I'm looking forward to KAC, where Japanese and foreign players can compete together.
Konami can never be un-america'd. We all know who the best is and he's now dominating other konami bemani games. KAC has been a joke and this is just the nail in the coffin. Like the video said, the best tournaments are the ones we make and that goes for all rhythm games.
A disqualification a day keeps the Dr. D away! :p
Great video though, very comprehensive.
"Konami tries to not be a shit company challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)"
Definitely well said, #KonamiDOBetter
I wish so much Konami would give a fuck but they really just wont. Ive only started playing again in the past 4 years and I wish our games didnt have to use a private server
Wishing they allowed chris chike to the kac 11th. Konami should of made it more specific that its a japanese only tournament
Players really should have not blatantly have broken the rules if they wanted to qualify to be honest.
I wish I can go to KAC
クリス以外の3人は参加できないことが非常に悲しい。
クリスは出場停止処分で当然だと思う。なぜなら違法DDRをプレーしていた過去があるからである。
これが多くの日本人の考えだということを理解してもらいたい。その上でもっと多くの外国人に参加の機会を与えて欲しい。
日本人として全く同意見です
外国人っていう理由になってきちゃってますよね...
everyone in the us plays data so... yeah no more foreigners
今回はその件についての公式回答が得られると思ってた。
このビデオ見て一番の感想は「そこかよ」って感じ。（もちろんKONAMIに対しての突っ込み）
From the moment konami prohibited someone to own private machine i smell some BS companies trying to do their things. IYKYK
it just makes me want Microsoft to buy Konami more and more lol
Konami tryin' to pull a Activision Blizzard with tournaments
🤣
❤❤
when will konami learn that they can get more money by not hating foreigners
Oh well
This documentary is well-composed. First off, my heart sympathizes with the Northern American community that don't deserve this terrible disqualification. The thing is as a global community, as you've stated yourself, is that we treat KAC like the actual world cup (or more so, the most superior tournament with a lot of prestige we give it off) when in reality, it's more of a show-off (the thing is that we as the players want to strive making a better or at most possibly a legit KAC world championships but Konami just always says otherwise).
Especially with being NAT8's, HAMBONE's and MARQQQ's first time, it would be a different energy that the global community would've enjoyed. I wish Konami could follow strategies like other prominent tournaments developed in US, JP (non-Konami tournaments) or anywhere around the world starting to initiate tournaments for developing/assessing player's skillsets and making dedicated experiences for global DDR players to unite and connect physically/virtually.
Personally, I have my different opinions now with the KAC as to with my past perceptions, especially you did emphasis on how constantly the rules keep changing each year. We need to give more of that "energy we treat KAC like a World Cup" towards tournaments that had pulled a better off job than KAC/Konami did themselves and there's a list that has proven that to be true. And this 2023, getting to see Krono's skill growth in this game (being that he's on the same boat with many other restricted countries for KAC), if he had the opportunity (like how up^^beat, MOTL had) to enter KAC preliminaries on with how up^^beat provided fair alternative routes to assist DDR countries (with scares resources/support) to compete, *that would've be magical* but honestly after Konami's email response, it's heartbreaking not just to qualified countries, for everyone. This KAC 2023 season has been the most vile one we've seen. I understand currently it's more of an East and West conversation regarding this current news but now, I find it flawed that we consider "East and West" to "classify" KAC as a world championship when half of the West part of the world and large portions of Eastern countries are excluded.
However, I do agree that all 4 players definitely deserved the opportunity either way.
@@mistasparkle this is the one time you gain the courage to talk shit when you're a nobody. 🤡
@@obvioussockaccountL
Nice video tho, but yeah Data its a thing and the post of chris on Bemaniso paying to edit the timing window are... a good reason to stop letting foreigners.
Thanks for the comment. Why should the actions of one or several players result in banning all foreigners from competition?
I didn't touch the data topic in this video because it didn't seem relevant since Konami banned all of them, and not just Chris.
Still, the way you word seems unfair. Would you claim no one in Japan has played on data?
Japan just hates foreigners because they are more willing to break the rules than the Japanese. This is something beyond DDR, just see streamers like Jhonny somali LOL@@drdvids
12:42
What is the name of that last level 19 song? I've never seen that one before.
The down right is called "鳳(Hou)"
@@TehOIceHot Thank you! You're a legend 🙏
@@TehOIceHot Do you know if it's on Zenius -I- vanisher? I can't seem to find it anywhere to download.
@@donutdunker7294 The chart is still locked because it hasn't been passed yet from the babylon galaxy's event. You should check up FEFEMZ progressing to pass it though. However, DKOYproductions YT channel are gradually making stepchart reference based on FEFEMZ's progress.
@donutdunker7294 it's a relatively new song, locked in a special mode and is so challenging to the point that nobody has really beaten the chart yet, i've seen feemz get close so it may be a little more before it comes up on zenius
Free *everyone* who was banned for having the rules broken by broken machines.
At least we know what's going on, though... and we aren't just gonna sit here and take it.
#DoBetter, Konami -- or we shall #DoBetter ourselves.
Besides, even other video game companies have done a better job understanding what the phrase "world tournament" actually means.
I am DanceDanceRevolution…
And I approve of this video. #KonamiDoBetter
I am DanceDanceRevolution.
KAC 11th is truly the worst.