Annoyed by the critics that suddenly feel betrayed by the series because they had convinced themselves the games weren't sexist even when it couldn't have been more obvious. People tried to tell them Bayonetta was misogynist as fuck but they were dismissed as "sex-negative" or whatever.
Many such cases!
Also no wonder this game struggled to sell, if the basis for the character is just perverse developers fantasies. Not exactly going to crack the mainstream, that already got played out to death in the 90s and early 2000s
The Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball hype wave was exhausting in its heyday.
Was this during Gamergate when the announcement that the third? entry would not get Western releases became a rallying point for dinguses who vowed they would expensively import the grindy softcore porn game to stick it to Anita Sarkeesian
(The reason it didnt get localised was because the previous game sold poorly)
That seems likely but I didn't check the dates myself.
This entire mess reminds me of that "V!v!an James" character from G!merGate that in an "empowering" way "just wants to play games" while also being a cheerleader for deliberately reinforced patriarchy, up to and including being the sockpuppet for memes about how feeemales are simply unfit for leadership in game corporations because biotruths.
I get squicked when a cishet man makes an :awooga: focused character and the pretense is "empowerment" to deflect criticism. Sure, someone somewhere is likely to see almost any individual fictional character as empowering, but does that mean all criticism must be shut down? Is my wife's opinion of Bayonetta's "empowerment" less valid than such a fan? If she less of a woman because she criticized the treats right alongside me?
And it still sold like shit lol. Clearly no one wanted that type of game anymore