Gacha Twinkle Star Knights being forced to change character designs by Apple

Sometimes I regret pitching an article and then ending up doing just some contextual research to find something I didn’t want. The developer of Twinkle Star Knights, Studio Kumasan, has announced that the game on iOS hasn’t received the thumbs up from Apple to go ahead with the most recent update.

It claims that one character’s piece of art hasn’t been approved, but they might need to go back and alter every character since it launched in 2023. The game is not shy about its more lust-driven side, with some of the characters certainly designed by someone in Japan – or with a specific audience in mind.

In a machine-translated version of the notice posted to X (formerly Twitter), the developers break down what’s happening in light of the major changes needed to the iOS version of the game.

As the iOS version of the game can’t feature this “Pure Prayer Estelle” character, it has to alter its current event, All-Out Battle. Rather than postponing it for everyone, Estelle will not be available for use in the mode until such a time that those on Apple devices can also use it.

Reactions have been a little odd, and this is where I regretted learning that Twinkle Star Knights has a “superior version”. Fans in both Japan and the West have simply pointed out that players should just be using another version of the game. Twinkle Star Knights X is available on a Japanese-only service, Fanza, which provides X-rated versions of gacha games that the developers make. The store page is not safe for work, with the game’s icon leaving nothing to the imagination.

Twinkle Star Knights Estelle isn’t even the worst the game has

This is typical for some gacha games, and surely this would explain why Apple has halted things, right? Well, aside from dangerously designed teen characters, looking at this Estelle character in one of the only YouTube videos featuring the character (it’s a man using the gacha until he obtains what he desires), I’m unsure what the harm was.

It’s a little risque, but it’s nowhere near what I’d consider requiring a complete overhaul for. Maybe there’s something later in the game that ticked off Apple’s staff.

To get around this, there’s an “SP Cloud Version” on the way, which the developers recommend being used over the native iOS game if they’re after Estelle in particular. If that’s you, keep an eye on their Twitter account for now, I guess.

Gacha censorship

Gacha games aren’t regularly “censored” in the West, but it does happen more than you’d think. Just eight months ago, Azur Lane had to remove five skins to meet Google’s requirements. However, as the Reddit thread that brought this to light mentions, certain games like Brown Dust 2, which also do the heavy fan service thing, haven’t been touched by Apple or Google.

If you want to know how under the radar some of these games are, the Nikke subreddit won’t let me see it without age verification, but Brown Dust 2 lets me right on through. The first thing I saw was fan art of an anime lady wearing a maid-themed bikini with their legs wide open. It’s very detailed.