Gambling jokes could have been very expensive.
Poker game at Sunshine Shuffle
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Perhaps the name of Sunshine Shuffle is not ringing too much right now, but you should know that this indie game developed by Strange Scaffold has recently been released on PC y Nintendo Switchbeing a title that falls within the narrative genre to show us some animals playing poker and tell us their stories, which up to this point could be taken as something completely normal.
However, without wanting or drinking it, the title has been subject of much controversy which has even led to the release of the title on the American Nintendo Switch eShop being blocked and rejected due to a simple joke on the part of your development team related to the fact that, according to this, the title could teach children to gamble, this being something that goes against Nintendo’s values.
The developers of Sunshine Shuffle joked that the game would teach children to gamble.
First of all, and in order to put it in context, it must be said that Sunshine Suffle has no microtransactions or loot box, so that when paying for the purchase of the game, you would no longer have to spend more money. However, it has been precisely the development team that has caused that in Nintendo have raised more than one eyebrow to the point of canceling its launch in the digital store of the Japanese company. And all this is due to marketing campaign who have followed in the study.
To be clear, Strange Scaffold is not a big studio with big resources, which is why we have witnessed a marketing and promotion campaign that has been based on launching videos and advances in the personal accounts of the members of the study in their social networks, while in order to attract attention they have been made jokes claiming that the Sunshine Shuffle teaches children to gamble. In fact, this comes from Xalavier Nelson Jr., director of the title:
SUNSHINE SHUFFLE IS SUPPOSED TO COME OUT TOMORROW ON SWITCH AND PC
KEYWORD BEING “SUPPOSED TO”
APPARENTLY, MY SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN ABOUT THE GAME NOT TEACHING CHILDREN TO GAMBLE HAS UH
CONVINCED NINTENDO THAT THE GAME IS ABOUT CHILD GAMBLING pic.twitter.com/B8YY2zo0x0
— Xalavier Nelson Jr. (@WritNelson) May 23, 2023
The consequences of this have been accompanied by the Ban on sale in South Korea, being so today, even once the situation is clarified, it is unlikely that we will see it in the Asian country. However, the team behind Sunshine Shuffle has been in charge of contacting Nintendo America to explain that everything has been a joke and that the title in fact does not teach children to bet, much less.
On the contrary, it is about a narrative adventure in which the players take the role of a detective who joins a poker tournament on a ship, while as the game progresses we can see how everyone at the table tell their story how they were part of a heist gone wrong. It could be said that the heist and the launch of the game have several parallels.
However, no matter what happens in the game, it seems that it will have a happy ending, since the studio has achieved the publicity it was looking for and the title is now available on the American eShop since May 31. Of course, where it surely does not appear is in the Russian store, which has been recently closed due to the invasion of Ukraine.
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