The makers of Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation are cracking down on a modded version of the game which is being sold as a DVD. The game, a spinoff of the popular Dead or Alive franchise that features fighting-style type gameplay, has been around for the last couple of years.
Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation is a PC web browser version of the original game, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, a sports game that is played from a third-person perspective and allows players to spend their best days in Venus, playing mini-games like beach volleyball, rock climbing and more. It sounds peaceful and innocent enough, but modders have recently been trying to ruin that.
Developer Koei Tecmo (via Twinfinite) is reacting to certain illicit uses of the game and its footage. A DVD that was made by shooting videos of Dead or Alive games has been going around, but the controversy has been specifically aimed at Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation. Due to the game being on PC, plenty of modding options are available for people to use. These modifications have targeted many of the women in the game, removing their already skimpy outfits. From there, the producer of the DVD put it up and sold the footage on auction sites. The case has been reported to the Kanagawa Prefectural Police and it's been said that even if the content of the device is modded, this is copyright infringement. The company will also be filing a civil lawsuit, as they deemed that this was a "malicious act" and that damages need to be paid.
The Dead or Alive franchise itself has been a big hit in the fighting world, so much so that there have been six games that have come out. However, it's always been a bit careless with the way it portrays women and over-accentuates female fighters' assets. It's genuinely not a surprise that as soon as the game was made available on PC, someone felt the need to do this. There are mods for everything at this point, so it was only a matter of time before a modder took things too far.
It's a shame. Mods can improve a game in a lot of creative and ingenious ways. Just look at Cyberpunk 2077. Even after its buggy release, modders have gone and made the game so much fun to play, with mods that allow for third-person camera controls, buggy NPC correction, and even changing hairstyles. One can only hope that no one will take that game to the point of no return like this modder did with Dead or Alive Xtreme: Venus Vacation.
Source: Koei Tecmo, Twinfinite