Drillimation Systems

Drillimation Systems Co., Ltd. (株式会社ドリメーションシステム) is an American independent game development studio headquartered in, where Chuhou Joutai takes its inspiration for Kozankyo from. The Prophet, alongside other students at, founded the studio as a way to sell its flagship product, being Chuhou Joutai.

Originally founded to make GoAnimate videos, Drillimation offers a selection of original and derivative content, though not all content is available worldwide due to licensing and/or government restrictions. Due to the use of "Co., Ltd." in the company name and the Japanese text in the logo, some players mistook the company for a Japanese developer. Despite positive critical responses to all of the games they have produced, Drillimation in the past had faced scrutiny involving the use of asset flipping in their GoAnimate animations to poor treatment of users on the Dream Logos and Fiction Wiki.

History
Drillimation was started in the summer of 2014 as a way to make GoAnimate videos featuring characters from 's  franchise. Although they were able to produce more than 80 episodes of GoAnimate material, their content drew criticism due to unauthorized use of fanmade sprites to produce the videos. Drillimation ceased using GoAnimate after the site made the transition to HTML5 in early 2016, which removed the site's most popular themes. Drillimation began restructuring themselves after they stopped, deciding to become a game developer while still being an animation studio.

In the summer of 2018, Drillimation began developing Chuhou Joutai, its first game. Drillimation's website officially launched in May 2019. The game took a year and a half to develop before the beta released in January 2020. They also took the chance and remade the very first  game, The Highly Responsive to Prayers, in the style of an NES game. In the summer of 2020, Drillimation began receiving commission requests from various doujin developers. In November 2020, Drillimation launched their official Patreon page as a way to increase revenue due to declining sales. Drillimation Systems closed their Tumblr site on December 31, 2020.

Asset flipping
Back in Drillimation's early days before they had even entered the video game industry, the company developed a reputation for using other users' sprites as well as art in their GoAnimate videos, a process that is known as asset flipping - the act of creating content using nothing but pre-made asset with little or no original work. As a result, users began attacking Drillimation by exposing their practices on Twitter and Instagram. This eventually culminated in the original sprite artist filing a large DMCA takedown on the videos, leading to all of Drillimation's GoAnimate videos being eventually removed when the company restructured.

Treatment of users on the Dream Logos and Fiction Wikis
In 2019, Drillimation Systems was criticized for their poor and harsh treatment of users on the Dream Logos and Fiction Wikis, such as censoring content in an attempt to keep the site family-friendly. It was said the overall behavior of the Prophet Driller contributed to his eventual downfall. After the Prophet had been stripped of his administrative rights from a boycott in December 2019, Drillimation announced they would no longer head the site due to the sheer amount of criticism.

Dispute with KquarGaming
On March 8, 2020, a user by his online handle KquarGaming, made critical remarks on the Prophet Driller by posting two memes of him on Instagram. Drillimation alleged that Kquar violated their copyrights and filed a DMCA complaint through Facebook, leading to the posts being removed. This led to Kquar arguing in a YouTube rant that Drillimation was abusing the DMCA in a deliberate attempt to silence criticism, calling their response "curt." A few days after the strike, Drillimation claimed through a press release and a direct message on Twitter that Kquar had no right to use the Prophet Driller's face in Drillimation-related derivative works and that his memes violated their Game Content and Brand Usage Rules. He also accused the studio of getting his Discord account suspended for a raid he did not participate in.

It's interesting to note that abusing the DMCA is an example of the, where censoring criticism draws more attention. Drillimation has assured to make sure the personality rights of all of their clients are protected. As mentioned above, Drillimation has taken legal action against those who use photographs or video footage of the Prophet Driller or any of Drillimation's clients without their permission.

Alleged mistranslations
For localizers learning the Japanese language, it is not uncommon for localizers to rely on Google Translate for words they do not know. On October 10, 2020, Drillimation Systems came under fire for their initial translation of ZUN's new content guidelines that localizers misinterpreted. Drillimation has also been criticized for their poor treatment of users, especially during the Dream Logos and Fiction Wiki era. The team was aware of grammatical and romanization techniques that the Prophet Driller did not fully understand. Drillimation also encourages Japanese players to chip in translations if they find an error.

Behind the Scenes

 * In an article about the game on the French gaming blog Graal, the writer claims Drillimation Systems is a Japanese company. This is false, as Drillimation, in reality, is an American company targeting the Japanese and western markets. This error was nonetheless corrected after the Prophet on Twitter told them of the mistake.