Japan-based games developer Cygames has just announced that it will be suspending the voice recording works for Granblue Fantasy, its smartphone RPG due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In order to keep its cast and staff safe from the Coronavirus, Cygames has suspended voice recording for the time being. For certain content coming out in the near future, there will be generic lines used in the place of unrecorded lines.
Stay safe, everyone. https://t.co/1vTIKIiZZ0
— グランブルー EN (@granblue_en) April 22, 2020
The move is in response to the State of Emergency Protocol put in place by the government of Japan. The mandated stay-at-home measures and social distancing will in turn make it difficult to gather staff and voice actors at studios to conduct recording sessions.
Via Twitter, the official game account stated that the game content post 23 April 2020 will only have pre-recorded generic lines instead of fully voice-acted lines. This will of course impact all upcoming story events and possible collaboration events in the foreseeable future. It is worth noting that the game is no stranger to having to implement the whole unvoiced thing, as it started with the passing with one of the actors, before another had to take time off due to a medical issue. Unfortunately the latter, the late Fujiwara Keiji, has since succumbed to cancer.
In any case, Granblue Fantasy isn’t the only game to be impacted, as several other developers and publishers have come out to make similar announcements. It would definitely be something to pay attention to, as developing content for mobage that relies on constant updates. This disruption is after all unprecedented.