• In Announcements
• May 31, 2023

Saving the sisters- announcing Onikiss re-release

Good evening, everyone, we have an announcement to make, and some explanation behind it to give you.  

We’re happy to announce we’ve licensed Onikiss “Onii-chan Where’s my Kiss” from the developer Tinkle Position/Sister Position.
Some of you reading this may be slightly confused by this, and that’s understandable.  
Another publisher, Sol Press, also published Onikiss a few years ago. That version was in fact available until yesterday despite the fact that Sol Press has long since ceased operations. If Sol Press published it, how (and why) are we re-releasing it? Well, the answer to that is rather simple. For those in the know this won’t come as much of a surprise, but Sol Press never paid any royalties owed to many of the developers they worked with- including Tinkle Position.

For those who aren’t aware of how these sorts of agreements work, we’ll give a brief high-level overview. Typically, the agreement is that a set percentage (determined in each individual contract) of the revenue generated goes to the original developer in exchange for us being able to publish their title. Sometimes there is an upfront payment of royalties (otherwise known as a “minimum guarantee”) required, and other times not. This royalty payment is how your purchase supports the original developers.

In this instance, because Sol Press never paid the developers, not a single cent of any Onikiss sale to date has made it to Tinkle Position which, as you can imagine, isn’t a good thing. Because they were never paid, the contract Sol Press signed with Tinkle Position was declared null & void, and effectively Sol Press no longer has (and never had) the license to publish the title. We have re-licensed it, and with a few minor changes & fixes, are re-releasing the original release, with the translation by Bango, and editing by Fred the Barber. We have received permission from the remainder of the original staff who worked on it to re-use their work.

Of course, we aren’t going to request those who already purchased it to do so again. However, if you wish to support the developers, it would be appreciated if you did so. And we promise that the developers will be paid, as all of our partners are, the full amount they are due. We are fortunate that-and grateful for Tinkle Position/Sister Position is still willing to consider licensing their properties to us after the previous experience they had with Sol Press.

Because of the situation, we’ll be publishing it at a lower price than is typical for us, and lower than the original price Sol Press sold it at. It will also be available on all the standard storefronts for us. It was already available on JAST and Fakku, and will now also be available again on Denpasoft, as well as adding Mangagamer, and possibly more in the future. A Steam release is highly unlikely as Sol Press’ submission had been banned, and Valve typically does not allow you to resubmit the same title for reconsideration.

We apologize for the extended blog post, but we felt that it was important to be transparent to the community about what transpired previously, especially as many people likely purchased the title with the assumption that their purchase was supporting the original developers, and everyone deserves to know that was never, in fact, the case.  

We look forward to working with Sister Position in the future and are grateful as always for your support.