Left Alive Streaming Disabled by Square Enix Due to Poor Launch

square Enix's newest action shooter, Left Alive, which released just a couple of days ago in Japan and will launch in the west on March 5, has gotten off to a rocky start. due to the game's poor reception thus far, the company has decided to take immediate action on the matter in the region of Japan.

In response to a rough launch weekend for the game, Square Enix has chosen to disable streaming for Left Alive in Japan. Players who attempt to stream the game will notice they've been blocked from posting on any provider, where at first only event scenes in the game's story were blocked for viewers.

Part of the issue has to do with poor reviews beginning to surface on the Amazon Japan website for the game, with Left Alive currently sitting at under 2 out of 5 stars. The majority of the negative criticism, however, doesn't stem from Square's decision to prevent people from streaming the game. Rather, most reviews directly address the poor performance of Left Alive itself, with unsatisfying design choices and control issues being a common concern among those who bought the game.

Lack of reception, and likely sales, have also forced Square Enix to heavily discount the game already on the Amazon store in Japan. As of right now, Left Alive is marked down nearly half off its standard pricing, which means anyone living in the western region may want to wait a few days if they planned on buying the game on launch day.

The decision to not allow players to stream Left Alive is different from other streaming restrictions players have been forced to deal with in the past. Back in 2017, developer Atlus banned anyone from streaming Persona 5 past the in-game July 7 calendar date, before loosening the restriction to the in-game date of November 19.

Here, it looks as though Square Enix is realizing Left Alive will likely underperform, and are looking to find ways to prevent those interested in finding second-hand impressions before making a purchasing decision. However, in the age of various video-on-demand platforms and YouTube, simply disabling streaming can only help so much.