Intentionally or otherwise, social media brand Twitter has become directly involved with the controversy surrounding Bayonetta 3's executive producer Hideki Kamiya and the lead character's previous voice actor Hellena Taylor, and it's not just because the controversy is taking place there. It seems Twitter has restricted Hideki Kamiya's account following his response to Taylor's call for a Bayonetta 3 boycott.
There's a lot to unpack here, but how it began is with Taylor making a video revealing that PlatinumGames made her audition to reprise her role as Bayonetta (which is not common) and offered her $4,000 dollars to do the voice acting for the whole game afterward. There's also been some suggestion online that there is a cultural element here and these actions—forcing her to audition again and offering her a flat, buyout rate—is how a lot of eastern companies operate. Instead of outright firing someone, they leave enough not-so-subtle hints, forcing the issue. Kamiya responded, and it devolved from there.
According to Kamiya, Taylor was misrepresenting the situation and called what she said "untruth." He then not-so-vaguely threatened everyone online by ending this tweet with "BEWARE OF MY RULES." This alluded to Kamiya's well-known trigger finger for blocking folks, which is anyone's right on social media. However, it's clear that many viewed Taylor's Bayonetta 3 video, realized the injustice done here, and took that to Kamiya. Right or not, Kamiya responded by blocking as many people as he could, and so Twitter restricted his account.
The general consensus is that Kamiya must have blocked so many online users that Twitter's automatic systems defined it as a mass blocking potentially done by a bot. With the number of people responding to Taylor's boycott, it's certainly imaginable and possible that Kamiya blocked so many at once that this resulted in his account becoming restricted as Twitter sought to understand what was happening, the technology in and of itself that is. Of course, there are a number of reasons this could be the case, but that seems to be what's happening here.
The situation is still developing, and it's not likely to be over soon. Bayonetta 3's release date is forthcoming, many are debating whether they should buy it or not, and either way, there's a big mess in all of this. None of it is directed at the actor who replaced Taylor, that being the well-known Jennifer Hale taking on the role of Bayonetta, and that's because it's not her fault. She probably didn't even know. And all of this is clearly a huge mess, with a strong possibility that more comes to light over the next couple of days and/or weeks.
Bayonetta 3 releases on Nintendo Switch on October 28.