It seems like Persona 4 Arena and Europe just don’t go well together. Atlus usually doesn’t publish it’s own games in Europe, so their games are often released far later there than in other countries. But Persona 4 Arena in particular had a problem with this, as it was also one of the few region locked games on PS3. So Europeans couldn’t import it and had to wait for it to be released in May 2013, nine months after Americans could get their hands on it.
Publisher Zen United brought it over back then, but now the downloadable version along with all of the DLC has been taken off PSN. While no response was given for this, a Facebook post from late last month tells us that Atlus is now handling the game in Europe. Which suggests that Zen United no longer has the publishing rights to the game. This is just speculation though, of course. This article will be updated when an official response will be given.
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More like Atlus and Europe don’t get along period. Those relations have always been shaky. This game in particular since it’s a fighting game. It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to release it so late, especially after the U.S. getting it. Now, with the new iteration on the horizon the game is kind of pointless — that is, unless the latest one gets horribly pushed back to oblivion too.
I contacted Atlus about a month ago when I went to buy the DLC and found it had been pulled. They claimed it was nothing to do with them, as they didn’t distribute the game in Europe, and that I needed to contact Zen United. Zen United are yet to get back to me…
The DLC is also available still on the Xbox Live Marketplace, which suggests to me it has nothing to do with publishing rights. That is, unless publishing rights were determined separately for each port of the game, which I can’t see being the case.