“In the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, when everything came to a standstill, the availability of information was the difference between life and death for many people. While some lives were saved by the information they had beforehand, others may have lost their lives because of it.

There must have been many lives that could have been saved if the information had been available immediately afterwards.
We, modern people, trust our lives to information.
Without information, action is delayed.”

I’m not going to say that Watch Duty’s number one feature is a push notification service that says “hey your neighborhood is on fire” but it absolutely is.

Watch Duty uses Recurly for payments too, which natively supports payment methods in different regions, as well as tax and compliance for collecting payments.

When I emailed NERV asking for it to be made available outside the Japanese App Store, their response was that they’ve done just that with the release of the English translation. It’s amazing how there are two different views here.

Watch Duty support *did* reply that the website still works. And that’s great, but the website doesn’t have feature parity with the apps.

No push notifications, for example.

I’m rather bitter because:

1. I’ve been a supporter of Watch Duty since its inception, and started paying at earliest opportunity.

2. This is a simple toggle switch to change in the Google Play Console / App Store Connect.

3. There is absolutely no reason for this to be region locked.

You can download the NERV app outside of Japan, because if you’re in Japan as a tourist, you shouldn’t be limited in receiving life saving information. Oh you’re interested in whether or not your house is on fire? Suck it up students, enjoy your fire.

I know of one person, studying in the US from China, who lost his place of living in the Eaton Fire. Sucks to suck I guess.