I kind of wonder if there had been misinterpretations as to the results of previous campaigns against Japan.
English in Japan is more of a customer support tool than a language. Proficiency is improving in some places, but on decline at large, below already atrocious status quo. This means the size of English-speaking audiences for actually Japan-centric news is small and not the first priority, not small && more important. Extremely little of whatever happening in Japan appear on mainstream English social media, let alone regular mainstream media.
If that much was not obvious to whoever pulling strings on this ongoing thing, I think there may be a chance that lack of observable responses after their earlier actions led to a misplaced confidence that gaming is a tiny top-down market and consumer resistance is nonexistent.
The responses were significant enough that it elected an equivalent of senate for third term and got former PM Kishida make a hand-wavy assurance on video even just few days before this one. It was almost certainly just a lip service, but also not nothing. How would anyone interpret that as a situation safe to escalate further?