Goddess Of Victory: Nikke Ad Causes Fan Outrage

Republished By Plato

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Tencent Games has pulled a Nikke ad in Thailand after the player base revolted. Quick action scrubbed the offending Nikke ad from official sources yesterday. However, YouTuber SuperN64 has preserved the video for posterity on their channel, so you can watch it if you dare.

Taking even a brief look at it might give you some idea why the players were a bit upset.

A Not-So-Flattering Portrayal Of Nikke Fans

The ad depicts a young man with glasses and questionable hair choices, sitting by himself at what turns out to be his own birthday party.

He opens the Goddess Of Victory: Nikke game and is clearly not in it for the gameplay, instead getting very excited at the low-angle shots up the anime characters’ skirts. His brother then approaches and prompts him to make a wish. There are no points for guessing what his wish is.

Real versions of several Nikke characters appear and he is able to watch them bend over very far while they shoot their guns. It ends on the apparent unique selling point the ad wants to push that ‘every shot bounces’, and it’s not referring to bullet ricochet.

The Backlash Hits

Needless to say, the Nikke community expressed their disapproval of their portrayal as hopeless and lonely individuals who obsess over anime game characters, and also heavily disliked the suggestive content.

The backlash was so severe that only a day after its debut, the publisher pulled the Nikke ad, and the official social media for Goddess Of Victory: Nikke released a full apology for the misstep.

What Even Is Nikke?

Goddess Of Victory: Nikke is a third-person shooter that launched in November last year. It’s a game with gacha mechanics that encourages you to put together a squad of female supersoldiers, called Nikkes, to fight an existential threat.

The plot has quite a lot going on, with themes of free will, trauma, and war, but it also comes with absolute bucketloads of fanservice. Maybe the ad creators have wildly miscalculated why the community plays the game, or perhaps the section of the community that is playing for that reason resents being called out.

Either way, it’s probably a lesson on why being mean to your fanbase might not be the best business choice.

Feel like checking out some more gaming slip-ups from this week? Check out our news piece on the Neural Cloud Exception Protocol launch.