Okay, let me explain how this fuck up probably happened. Please bear with me, because it's going to sound really stupid, and I'm not defending Square Enix here, only explaining the nature of the fuck up.
- Tomb Raider comes out in Japan on April 25 2013, at the price of 8000yen (80 USD).
- The Japanese release includes voices in English or Japanese, and Japanese text. This differs it from the version sold in US and Europe where the voice options are only in English.
- Somehow it appears the PC Tomb Raider release on Steam was available for purchase in Japan at the US/Europe release price of 50 USD when it was released last month.
- Additionally it appears that someone fucked up massively and included all the language content meant for the Japanese release along with the package.
- So for a period of time Japanese fans were able to buy Tomb Raider on Steam for 50 bucks, and enjoy Japanese language support, a whole month before the release in Japan.
- Someone found out, panicked, and removed the language content support so Japanese consumers would no longer be able to buy a fully functional Japanese version of Tomb Raider at almost half the price and a month before it is released in Japan.
- Now that the Japanese launch is finally arriving, they are offering the option for anyone who used the previous "exploit" to top up the 30 dollars of difference to regain access to the Japanese language options.
From Square Enix's perspective, what they were doing was closing a reverse import regional loophole, and now they are offering an olive branch to fans who used that exploit so they don't have to sit on a useless 50 buck English-only Tomb Raider. From the perspective of everyone else, Square Enix is scamming everyone.
ROFLMAO.