Dev of "waifu sci-fi RPG shooter" says doubling down on fan service literally paid off, so now it's tripling down in spite of "criticism" from people "who are not players"

After a slow launch last July, self-described "3D waifu sci-fi RPG shooter" Snowbreak: Containment Zone has swan-dived into a pool of proudly sexualized outfits and animations – and this strategy has apparently boosted the game so much that developer Amazing Seasun Games is already planning a whole lot more despite some criticism. 

A new report from Automaton puts a spotlight on how a concerted emphasis on fan service – a catch-all term often used to describe sexy outfits, scenes, and other content in games or anime especially – has benefited Snowbreak. In the original Japanese interview (machine translated), the game's Japanese producer directly agrees that the biggest contributing factor was releasing "fan service" content giving players what they want. 

Snowbreak recently climbed to the number two slot on the China App Store and the top spot on Steam for Japan, which Amazing Seasun attributes to "listening to player feedback and making significant changes to the game since its launch in June 2023." 

Using Snowbreak's SteamDB data as a reference – a rough reference, because this game is also on mobile and, like most gacha games, much bigger there – you'll find sizable jumps in player count around mid-April and late-May. Coincidentally, these spikes overlap with the reveal and release of updates promising intimate hangout and dress-up sessions with the game's many girls, including POV dates and increasingly revealing outfits. 

Snowbreak hasn't so much dialed up the fan service as it has marched into the middle of a busy intersection and dumped buckets of fan service over its head. For context, two of the most recent videos on the game's official YouTube channel feature one woman doing yoga in tight pants for just under two minutes and another woman straight-up pole dancing for just over a minute. The most recent video opens with a slow panning shot up the legs of Lyfe, one of the game's main characters, whose first line here is, "Do you like me like this?" Nobody