Just for the record, so you can have an accurate picture, it went more or less this way:
- I started a discussion on the European Namco Bandai forum, about why I thought a PC version of that game could be reasonably successful (Guess what? I was right, too!). I didn't really hope to achieve much, it was more me venting "Damn, I'd like if. It would make so much sense".
- The Namco Bandai Community Manager (Tony Shoupinou) unexpectedly answered, conceded i made a few good points about the potential popularity of the game on PC, suggested me to try a petition.
- I argued back that petitions were usually dismissed quickly and laughed at, that no one seemed to take them seriously, etc. He answered back saying that this is the case when the numbers are laughable, but that if we got somehow signatures in the order of the thousands they were more than open to listen to the feedback.
- I opened a few threads about this thing on a bunch of visible forums (some that I usually followed, others where I was more of a lurker) with a link to that discussion. I also sent mails to different gaming sites which I hoped could have any interest in promoting a petition for this port (i.e. PC Gamer, RPS, Total Biscuit).
- Predictably, those forum threads were quite successful and a lot of people replying seemed to be easily excited by the idea; on the other hand it was quite surprising how even those gaming sites were very quick to publish something about it. Barely few hours after I sent my emails (and -I'm guessing- several other people too) there were news on RPS, few other gaming blogs. There still was no actual petition at this point. Everyone was just talking about how we needed one.
- Few hours after RPS published the first news a petition was started by a reddit user named dinpoke. RPS and the other sites which published something about it started updating their articles with the petition link, which gathered few thousands signatures in the first hours.
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Total Biscuit released his famous video about the petition and why a PC port was a good idea; signatures started skyrocketing shortly after. We had more than 20,000 of them 24 hours after the petition was opened.
- Tony Shoupinou posted something like "Holy crap, we are impressed, we didn't expecting anything like that. My bosses asked me what's going on; we are listening".
- Snowball effect. Pretty much EVERY gaming site talked about the petition at some point, signatures kept coming steadily until well past the 85,000.
- A PC port was finally announced few months later, after few vague hints that something was moving.
- Just after the official confirmation I received via mail by Tony Shoupinou a bunch of goodies. A Dark Souls hoodie, a DS zippo and the very cool strategy guide made by Future Press.