"Aren't you the girl who keeps yelling outside about how the Bell Gargoyles are easy and their attacks are heavily telegraphed?"
"...Maybe. Nevermind that. Here's the list of all the things he has done, to the best of my knowledge."
- Copyright strikes: ZUN has always quietly accepted that circles that produce Touhou arranges throw copyright strikes around to terminate channels that post them, a shitty practice as many of us in the west have no access to this music otherwise. But not only that, he has also indulged in the practice by sending mass copyright strikes to people who posted Trojan Green Asteroid music back when it came out. That caused the loss of quite a few Youtube channels, some that had other content than just Touhou music. Strangely enough, music from the games or past albums is fair game, but everything from TGA onwards is no go. And for anyone about to throw the "it's in his right" card, yes, you are correct, this is why it's a list of sins, not crimes.
- The Touhou Smash incident: Now this one is a gigantic dumpster fire, so I'll have to give the footnotes. Basically, western indie dev From Soy Sauce was making a Touhou x Smash Bros fangame. They crowdfunded it through Kickstarter and also posted something about wanting to get the game on console (that was back before that became common, more on that later on). ZUN caught wind of it and took to Twitter, said that he disapproved of it and left some cryptic shit about how it was against the "doujin spirit". Everyone at FSS was confused and didn't know what to do. Namusan, the admin of the biggest 2hu Facebook page, saw this as an opportunity to get some sick engagement and started to stoke the fires, arranging some communication between both parties. Instead of talking to them himself to get this stuff sorted, ZUN sent in his place some chungus who nobody knows but has apparently "contibuted a lot to the Touhou franchise". He basically just repeated what ZUN had said, didn't really clarify much of anything, and pushed on for them to cancel the game. They complied, although apparently they reworked it into just a smash clone without Touhou characters. Now, that's already pretty bad, but AT THE SAME TIME, ZUN was pushing for some eastern fangames to be released on console, at least one of which was crowdfunded through some chinese service. So... Yeah, doujin spirit, huh?
- Lazyness: Over the years, ZUN has shown an increasing amount of disregard for the franchise. Newer games have lots of asset reusal and a sharp decrease in quality of backgrounds and such (it would be understandable if he was under a tight deadline as opposed to, you know, a whole year). His games get released on Steam as is, without any sort of translation, which he insists should be handled by fans exclusively (maybe pay them for it, then? Oh, right, that would go against the "doujin spirit"). Older ones see no release, because porting them would require a non-zero amount of effort. Also, apparently the card system in UM is quite broken because he couldn't be bothered to test it thoroughly and for some reason didn't hire anyone to do it for him despite being the sole owner of a huge game franchise. These may all be small things on a grand scale, but I might as well throw 'em here since we're washing dirty laundry.
- Selling his franchise to the gacha devil: Twice, even. Okay, this one I DO think is real bad. A lot of people consider gacha games to be a non-issue, but I'm one of those Jim Sterling types of people who absolutely loathes ultra-predatory monetization in games, and gacha is the epitome of that. To see something that I loved so much being turned into a corporate whale meatgrinder is downright depressing, when it used to be such a "by the people, for the people" kind of series. There's never been a need for that.
- Music stuff: Lastly, there's been talk of ZUN opening a record label or something to "facilitate the publishing of Touhou arranges". It's very crystal clear a ploy to make money out of fanworks. Again, absolutely no need for this, it's greed pure and simple. I didn't really keep up with the story because I'm no longer all that involved with the fanbase, so I can't say how it developed from there, if at all. Still, a very "doujin spirit" move to make, for sure.
- Won't bring Mima back.
- There's probably more that I don't know of, or that my ADD brain refuses to remember right when I need it. But these are what I can tell from the top of my head. Do with this knowledge what you will. I will not debate anyone, though, so if it turns out I'm wrong about everything, let the feeling alone satisfy you.~
- The Touhou Smash incident: Now this one is a gigantic dumpster fire, so I'll have to give the footnotes. Basically, western indie dev From Soy Sauce was making a Touhou x Smash Bros fangame. They crowdfunded it through Kickstarter and also posted something about wanting to get the game on console (that was back before that became common, more on that later on). ZUN caught wind of it and took to Twitter, said that he disapproved of it and left some cryptic shit about how it was against the "doujin spirit". Everyone at FSS was confused and didn't know what to do. Namusan, the admin of the biggest 2hu Facebook page, saw this as an opportunity to get some sick engagement and started to stoke the fires, arranging some communication between both parties. Instead of talking to them himself to get this stuff sorted, ZUN sent in his place some chungus who nobody knows but has apparently "contibuted a lot to the Touhou franchise". He basically just repeated what ZUN had said, didn't really clarify much of anything, and pushed on for them to cancel the game. They complied, although apparently they reworked it into just a smash clone without Touhou characters. Now, that's already pretty bad, but AT THE SAME TIME, ZUN was pushing for some eastern fangames to be released on console, at least one of which was crowdfunded through some chinese service. So... Yeah, doujin spirit, huh?
- Lazyness: Over the years, ZUN has shown an increasing amount of disregard for the franchise. Newer games have lots of asset reusal and a sharp decrease in quality of backgrounds and such (it would be understandable if he was under a tight deadline as opposed to, you know, a whole year). His games get released on Steam as is, without any sort of translation, which he insists should be handled by fans exclusively (maybe pay them for it, then? Oh, right, that would go against the "doujin spirit"). Older ones see no release, because porting them would require a non-zero amount of effort. Also, apparently the card system in UM is quite broken because he couldn't be bothered to test it thoroughly and for some reason didn't hire anyone to do it for him despite being the sole owner of a huge game franchise. These may all be small things on a grand scale, but I might as well throw 'em here since we're washing dirty laundry.
- Selling his franchise to the gacha devil: Twice, even. Okay, this one I DO think is real bad. A lot of people consider gacha games to be a non-issue, but I'm one of those Jim Sterling types of people who absolutely loathes ultra-predatory monetization in games, and gacha is the epitome of that. To see something that I loved so much being turned into a corporate whale meatgrinder is downright depressing, when it used to be such a "by the people, for the people" kind of series. There's never been a need for that.
- Music stuff: Lastly, there's been talk of ZUN opening a record label or something to "facilitate the publishing of Touhou arranges". It's very crystal clear a ploy to make money out of fanworks. Again, absolutely no need for this, it's greed pure and simple. I didn't really keep up with the story because I'm no longer all that involved with the fanbase, so I can't say how it developed from there, if at all. Still, a very "doujin spirit" move to make, for sure.
- Won't bring Mima back.
- There's probably more that I don't know of, or that my ADD brain refuses to remember right when I need it. But these are what I can tell from the top of my head. Do with this knowledge what you will. I will not debate anyone, though, so if it turns out I'm wrong about everything, let the feeling alone satisfy you.~