Evo Japan 2019 kicked off festivities last night in Fukuoka, ushering in a second year of the Evolution Championship Series spin-off event. The broadcast day opened with a special Dead or Alive 6 exhibition, followed by a stage show that apparently got too risqué for the Evo organisers, who later issued an apology.
Dead or Alive has long been known to put its female fighters at the forefront of its marketing campaigns, with an entire “extreme” side series asking the question, “What would they look like in bikinis?”
While the folks behind the next mainline instalment say they are dedicated to bringing the franchise’s deep combat mechanics to the forefront, the Dead or Alive marketing team leaned hard into the more titillating elements of the franchise when showing the game off at Evo Japan alongside two models.
What began as a simple stage show demonstrating the fighting of Dead or Alive 6 veered off the rails as the women on stage modelled in clothing that had been torn up to show their cleavage and bras.
While waiting for the demo to be ready, the models hopped up and down to mimic the traditional Dead or Alive breast and butt-bouncing physics.
It seems the final straw for the Evo Japan broadcasters, however, was when the Dead or Alive 6 producer showed off the game’s photo mode by pausing an attack while the characters were locked in a pile drive move that, when paused, looked like a sexual embrace. Just a few minutes later, the Twitch stream abruptly cut to black.
Shortly after, Evo head honcho Joey “Mr Wizard” Cuellar wrote a now-deleted Tweet stating that the Dead or Alive 6 stage show did not “reflect the core values” of Evo or the fighting game community in general.
“We ended the stream temporarily to protect the integrity of our brand,” he added. “We sincerely apologise to our fans.”
Meanwhile, the simultaneous broadcast on Japanese live stream platform OPENREC remained live the entire time.
When the broadcast returned, Evo’s director of global business development Mark “MarkMan” Julio reiterated these sentiments with a second apology.
“I just wanna get on stream and apologise on behalf of the Evolution Championship Series,” he explained while commentator Steve “Tasty Steve” Scott sat in silence next to him. “The stuff that was on stream just recently from one of our partners does not reflect, of course, the content and intention of Evo. We do apologise if we offended anyone during the broadcast.”
Evo has not responded to Kotaku’s request for comment.
Comments
10 responses to “Evo Japan Cuts Sexual Dead Or Alive 6 Stream Short, Issues Apology”
I watched the vids preparing to eye roll but that was pretty immature shit.
When they started talking about DoA6 they were talking big game about how they were going to tone down the sexualization and focus on the gameplay and try and make it more legit for streaming and tournaments and so on. I was pretty interested for once, since I enjoy how the series plays but it’s so skeevy that you can’t even say you enjoy it without people popping out of the woodwork to call you a perv.
Then the game got delayed and now they’re talking about doing a free to play release, have the same overtly sexualized costumes everywhere and already announcing huge costume DLC packs.
So basically it looks like it’s just that DoA5 sales tailed off so they’re just releasing the same game again. Disappointing.
Agreed. I remember playing a lot of dead or alive at my local bowling arcade when I was younger and I loved the core mechanics but it’s been ruined by the sexualization.
Pfft, that’s no piledriver, ’tis a powerbomb.
I love the DoA series, but stunts like this annoy the crap out of me.
I agree with stopping the stream and here is why. If Ed Boon came onto the EVO stage and showed off nothing but fatalities and was pouring fake blood on the stage, that would be garbage. This was more or less along that line.
This was a great time to show off the combos, if they changed anything to the hold system and doing it with their expertise. Instead of backing up all of their talk about how they are focusing on the fight mechanics, they use the tournament scene to show off nothing but the lewd content which they claim is no longer the main focus.
They had a beta that I did not get to try. I would have appreciated seeing the actual gameplay, but thanks to all of the pausing for what they did show, it looked glitchy. It also made it feel like they will not be able to sell the game based on the fighting mechanics.
To further explain, I would feel the same way if all Street Fighter did was show off Critical Arts and had people on stage pretending to just use those mores on each other while someone pretended to freeze up. That would feel like a joke showing.
I personally pay very little attention to the jiggle physics and that sort of stuff in the games. I actually like the story that does exist despite how crazy it is. The gameplay overall is fun to me.
If they had talked about the jiggle physics while they were showing off awesome combos and deep mechanics, go for it. Would have been fine. This was lame.
I was ready to say “DoA has always had a sexual element to it and they shouldn’t be ashamed of it” but then I watched the footage.
That was some juvenile “hur d’ey in a sex pose” preteen shit there, it was so cringe inducing.
Yay for political correctness. Cant be having sexual content in there oh no.
It’s a fighting game stream. Why does it need to have women jiggling their tits like objects ?
That ain’t what this is.
Evo is trying to make pro gaming a big all ages sporting event. They’re cultivating an image. If someone started doing this shit on a Disney stream,b they’d cut it in seconds and nobody would bat an eye because of course. It’s Disney. This is no different.
Fighting games are for a mature audience because of their violent content. The only popular child friendly game at evo is smash bros. Most other fighting games are rated M or higher.
Snorted with laughter at “core values” and “integrity”.
So the stream actually was cut. I guess the west still has a long way to go before it becomes comfortable with sexual content. I think Japan is way more progressive when it comes to that aspect of their culture.