Acquire’s “DesiredGameRevival” hashtag gets flooded with posts unrelated to Acquire’s games

Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-06-06 17:54 JST)

Acquire broadcasted the Acquire Game Show on June 5. The show looked back on Acquire’s history, dropped new announcements, and laid out the company’s outlook for the future. The broadcast also pushed a tweet and hashtag on Twitter, but the hashtag ended up being filled with tweets unrelated to Acquire.

Acquire’s call to action on Twitter included the hashtag “#復活してほしいゲーム” which could be translated as “DesiredGameRevival.” By following their official account, retweeting, and making a tweet using the hashtag, one would be entered into a giveaway for a 10,000-yen (roughly $75) Amazon gift card.

Neither the tweet from Acquire nor the broadcast explained that the game users wanted revived had to be related to the company. However, the tweets that scrolled along the bottom of the screen during the stream all mentioned Acquire games. Based on this, we can likely infer that the intention was for it to be used to see which games viewers wanted revived among Acquire titles.

However, the hashtag quickly moved away from Acquire’s original intention and took on a life of its own with Twitter users using it to share their desired game revivals unrelated to the company.

Just after the original tweet was posted, we can see some tweets mentioning Acquire titles. But between 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (JST) the following day, of the nearly 2,500 tweets we analyzed, only around 100 of them mentioned games related to Acquire. Despite Acquire starting the hashtag, everyone was using it to discuss other games.

This sort of thing was bound to happen, though. It’s difficult to squeeze context into a hashtag, and users that just happened to see “DesiredGameRevival” without knowing where it came from would have no idea it was originally meant to be about Acquire games. This led to Twitter users freely giving their honest answers about which games they wanted to see come back. If Acquire had squeezed the company name into the hashtag to clarify the intent, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

At any rate, we took a look at the tweets between 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (JST) on June 6 to see which games were brought up the most. One name that stood out is Mega Man with Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Legends combining for around 100 tweets. The Armored Core series also received a lot of votes. There were mentions of games like Kirby Air Ride, Ape Escape, Breath of Fire, and Onimusha as well.

Acquire’s hashtag became popular enough to trend on Twitter in Japan, and thanks to them, many gamers were able to share with the world the games they want to see revived. While it may have taken on a life of its own, if you’re an Acquire fan, maybe you can take a second to think about which of their games you would like to see come back.