We’ve made our fair share of jokes about Phantasy Star Online 2 over here at Massively Overpowered, because how could we not? The game was happily promoted by Sega with no localization date announced, then it launched in Japan, and the company has subsequently refused to say anything about whether or not it’ll ever be released in the US. It seems like a nonsensical plan… but according to fan site TSSZ, it might be that way because it wasn’t a plan at all.
An anonymous source allegedly spoke to TSSZ and revealed that an agreement was made between Sega of Japan and a Chinese company that prevents the company from releasing PSO2 on Steam anywhere. Since Steam is how Sega handles more or less all of its PC releases, the company may have realized that the agreement prevented them from releasing the game as planned after the promotional work had already been done. It’s all speculation, but it would explain the rather idiosyncratic approach, as well as introducing the hope that the game may finally get a release once the agreement expires.
