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Update []:
Barely Making Games has released another update to Steam, commenting on the future of its Densha De Go! "tribute," Retro Rail Go!, and outlining certain changes it has made "to maintain the game in a healthy and safe path of development."
As stated in this announcement, the game has now been rebranded to "Retro Rail: Japan!" (presumably in order to distinguish it from the Taito series) and has also claimed to have removed all of the "placeholder AI image assets," replacing them with work by an actual commissioned artist (apologising in the process).
It has also addressed persistent claims that the game is a "pirate port”, stating "There are no 'stolen assets', no copyrighted video usage nor trademark infringement on our game. These are false accusations." To further distance themselves from these claims, the developer stated it has gone to the effort of removing and modifying "some footage, colour schemes and names," releasing a small changelog and a new trailer to reintroduce the game to audiences.
Given the scale of the negative response from Japanese rail fans, it remains to be seen whether these changes will be enough to silence the game's biggest critics, but it's clear now that the developer isn't giving up on the project, with the title still presumably on schedule to land on Steam later this year.
Original Story []: Barely Making Games, the developer of the upcoming Steam tribute to Densha De Go!, Retro Rail Go!, has suggested it could soon "halt" development of the project altogether after receiving a torrent of negative feedback on social media, where users have dubbed the game a "rip-off" and have been trying to get it removed from Steam.
Following the release of its demo earlier this month, the train sim was featured positively on four "big" gaming websites, including Time Extension, where I personally suggested it might be a good alternative to fill the gap left by Densha De Go!'s absence from Steam. This positive coverage of the game reportedly helped it jump from 700 to 2000 wishlists within just 48 hours. However, the increased visibility has also seemingly come at a cost, with the developer being inundated with a string of negative comments and accusations online, particularly in response to Japanese coverage on sites like GameSpark.
"Unfortunately, there is also a big sad side to the story," wrote Barely Making Games, in a new update published on Steam, "Which has been many people complaining about the game being a rip-off, clone, and even wishing Japanese companies to sue me and take the project down.
"Naturally, this has saddened me to an extreme, and I am honestly considering giving up on the game altogether, given so much online hate and accusations."
Some of the major criticisms of the game include the UI and the character art, which clearly draw a great deal of inspiration from Densha De Go!; its potential use of real trains and railway companies; and accusations that it used generative AI to make the game. This has led some online (especially in Japanese corners of the internet) to criticise the project, calling it "a complete violation of copyright law."
In response, Barely Making Games has tried to explain why he decided to make the project, claiming it was never meant to be "a rip-off" or "a cash grab," or to infringe any copyrights or offend anyone," but was simply meant to be "a tiny experience for a tiny audience, who is looking for ways to experience... a throwback into simpler times where games were just games, made and played for fun."
As the developer explains, Retro Rail Go! is "a tiny passion project made by a single person" from a "developing country" with "very little to no resources" who was "not able to play many of the famous Japanese games", due to their high price and the fact that many games weren't localised for countries outside the US and Europe. As a result, it saw a potential gap in the market for "a fun and short retro train simulator, localised and fully customizable, set at a cheap price so people from everywhere could buy it and have a few hours of fun."
Notably, in this message, the developer does admit to using "a few placeholder AI-generated images" — something, I should note, wasn't disclosed on the main Steam page and would have affected my original coverage if it had been. But it claims it has tasked a human artist with replacing these, so these will not be in the finished game.
As for whether the project is still going ahead, Barely Making Games says, "I’ll wait for things to settle a bit to make a decision about halting the project, and if that’s the case, I deeply and sincerely apologise to those who were in for what the project is and was meant to be, as I do not have the resources to fight such an uphill battle against accusations and possibly legal matters."