Looks like something happened with Nitro+Chiral yesterday. I think there was a livestream where they talked about DVDs and monetary issues, but I didn't get to see it.
Several posts like these just popped into my timeline on X. From what I've gathered, they don't have enough money now.
I saw someone said that N+C confirmed themselves that they would still be making BLVNs despite their hardships, so in the end it's not the end of the world...
But I do find it funny that people immediately jumped to blame pirates.
Afaik the company themselves never revealed the reason for their financial troubles. For anyone with any economics knowledge, you'd know that companies struggle because of various reasons. There could be many many people who have bought their games already, but we don't know HOW the company have been spending that money, where it's gone to during those years and what business decisions or wip projects they've scrapped in the shadows.
N+C was formed in 2004 and over the span of 22 years they actually haven't released that many unique games, not counting the fandiscs, remakes/ remasters. And remakes aren't free, they aren't 100% new products but they still cost money to make because programmers, artists and writers need to be paid for that extra content. But the company can only milk old titles for so long. There's a concept known as diminishing returns, at some point anyone who's interested in N+c games will have bought them, played from beginning to end already, you can't magically expect continuous profits to flood in from an old product. Releasing more merchs is an option, but merch also costs money to manufacture and they rely on an existing fanbase.
I've been playing BL games for several years and everyone I've talked to have bought and played N+c games. Their brand is famous within the industry. Truly, all their games have been milked enough. It's unreasonable to blame pirates for the problems of a company, I know from a company's POV pirates are annoying pests, but pirates are not strong enough to make or break a company
I think both fans and devs of the genre have to come to terms with the fact that VNs is a niche, and BL games is a niche within a niche. The existing fanbase might continue playing BL games, or they might not and move on to other hobbies (also fans don't live forever, it's a bit sick to think about it but it's true...) so the industry is on a ticking clock to attract new fans. If they can't do that then the whole industry slowing down is inevitable.
(Yep, I'll go with that 
)
They should support BL games more instead of trying to turn an otome game into bl. Even so, I respect the developers who want to mix both genres, but they should clearly state the genres beforehand in a tag so people who don't like BL aren't unpleasantly surprised.
