Bandai Namco Revoke Closed Beta Access From All Non-Japanese Players.

Okay, so let me preface this entire thing by stating that I know. The Closed Beta was going to be in Japanese and aimed specifically at Japanese players. I’m not upset about this and I don’t think the team behind Blue Protocol deserve any hate for this choice.
That being said, the Closed Alpha test was never IP restricted as we had people outside of Japan participate.
I’m well aware that Bandai Namco want the very best possible test environment for the game with the maximum number of players capable of providing feedback.
The way to ensure this is a possibility is by making certain the game is available to Japanese players only.
My concern isn’t with the game being limited to Japanese players. It’s how Bandai Namco went about handling the situation.

See, during their past livestreams they had revealed this Closed Beta was intended to be for Japanese players of the game. They even went as far as stating that on their website. However, the game would not have any IP restrictions in place preventing players from outside of Japan access.
This left players, Mrs Stix and I included excited because we might have the opportunity to record some footage of the game in advance of their upcoming release.
Shortly after the first round of Closed Beta applications were over, Bandai Namco revealed they were going to be allowing an additional 5,000 players into the Beta test.
Nobody knew why at the time but this very well could have been due to the fact that they had found and revoked access to approximately hundreds, if not thousands of non-Japanese players.
Then come April 20th, the day that Blue Protocol would become available to pre-download, and an announcement is made on their website stating that the Beta registration phase is now over, and all applicants have been chosen.
People were ecstatic – it was finally time to see if they had gained access to the game, but.. a secondary blog post was made regarding “Closed Beta violations.”
While the guidelines for the Closed Beta test were outlined ahead of the application period, Bandai Namco happened to add in an additional stipulation to the Beta test after the fact: That is that you are required to be within Japan yourself.
This comes after publicly announcing via their stream there would be no IP restrictions in place. And while they remain true to their word – denying and rejecting every non-Japanese player application is literally the exact same thing as region locking the game with IP restrictions.
It just requires substantially more work to do. If the devs had just announced initially that the first Closed Beta test was going to be exclusively available to players that currently reside within Japan, and foreign IPs would be locked out of participating then I’m sure nobody would be upset by what’s going on right now.
However, making the promise and alluding to the fact that foreigners are going to be allowed in to play and then waiting until all application periods are closed before revoking our access is just.. I dunno. It rubs me the wrong way.

I know being transparent would have left them open to players using a VPN to bypass restrictions but at the same time this goes a ways to showing exactly how they plan on handling their game.
I’m still just as excited to get the opportunity to play the game, don’t get me wrong. I don’t harbor any ill-will towards Bandai Namco or the Blue Protocol team for disallowing participation to the Closed Beta to foreigners.
I just wish they had been more transparent with regards to the extremes they were going to go to to prevent testers outside of Japan from accessing.
I still firmly believe this will be the biggest Anime MMO in a long time, they have a dedicated team that genuinely seem to want to create a great game for the world to enjoy.
This is the kind of team that I want behind an MMO that I’m anticipating.
But in the future, I hope they elaborate a little more on specifically what is and what isn’t acceptable when registering for additional Betas.
This will not only prevent those of us from outside of Japan from wasting our time, but also save the devs a lot of time trying to navigate through all of the foreign applicants.
And a little transparency never hurt anyone, especially when it’s regarding a popular upcoming game like this.

Regardless, I hope that this doesn’t sour your guys’ opinion of Bandai Namco or the Blue Protocol team or game itself.
Things like this happen: The Closed Beta wasn’t targeted at us specifically, and although they could’ve done a little more to make that clear, it’s not like this wasn’t a potential outcome.
Just wait a little longer. We’ll have additional opportunities to try this game out in the future.