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Steam informs developers to disregard previous 18+ content mandate, pending possible review
- Thread starter Axisofweevils
- Start date
If those VNs involve sexualization of minors, then yes, fuck them -- each and every one of them. If they don't, they aren't what I was talking about.
It's not really clear that a stricter policy is coming, and it's also not really clear that the devs aren't going to get screwed over by a sudden, new, strict policy.
It's a temporary stay of execution while someone at Valve looks into the appeal. All of the options (win, lose, or draw) are apparently still on the table.
Actually there was no mandate to speak of (that existed publicly). People were just pulling shit out of their ass in order to justify this mass takedown even though there was actually no evidence to any kind of consistent application of any policy or rules (as shown by the games hit that didn't actually contain anything "questionable" to speak of). Of course pointing this out apparently made you a paedophile apologist so I'm not sure what the rationale people had other than smearing people who enjoy these kind of games, especially with the "nothing of value lost" posts that fail to mention that, yes, people do enjoy Visual Novels, it isn't okay to cheer a blatantly unfair decision just because you don't like the content in question. (I am not talking about the sexualisation of minors, though by the standards set here, literally any anime would end up being banned, which I guess is the goal but whatever.)
The funny thing is, most of these games have been on Steam for literally years and have been on sale too (meaning someone from Valve directly approved it for the front page). So what comes as a stark policy change with no actual communication from Valve is cheered on here as some crusade against sexualisation of minors (which we didn't actually know for sure) and the bans are likely to be reversed (or not, again, we don't actually know anything here.)
Going by IsThereAnyDeal to look for past sales, Kindred Spirits has gone on a massive sale that likely involved the front page not once, but twice, meaning twice Valve looked at the content in question and said, yes this is acceptable for the front page of Steam.
Huniepop has gone on sale more than like 20 times, Valve's stamp of approval is on the content of the game in question and that is no doubt. Roommates, the decidedly much more tame game than all of these has still been on sale about 15 times or so. This isn't like the shitty shovelware crap that has been flooding the store for years.
Taking a deeper look into the process here, I myself for sure remember Huniepop showing up in a seasonal deal so it was specifically curated.
The precedent set by Valve for literally years overturned in about two days with no real communication of any new policy or guideline is pretty shitty for what is supposed to be the largest games distribution platform in the world.
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If you actually cared to look into any of the ones given a warning, you'd see that most of them have no underage characters.
Valve never did that . Why are you spouting that nonsense ?
I mean people here don't give a shit about developers, they'll gladly sit on the high horse of their own invention while some poor developer is wondering if they're going to make rent next month.
Technically there is one game on Steam that is a legit loli porn VN that doesn't even try to justify it as anything else. Its in Chinese though so you wouldn't really see it.
There's a game where you play a girl who is just repeatedly sexually assaulted (at least by all accounts). Ryona games on Steam do exist if you try and look for them, they're usually in another language though.
Does she look to be over 20? Maybe for anime fans but not the big mass. Thats why Valve want to remove it, because it will arouse people who like kids.
The indie devs aren't out of the woods yet. The wording in the tweets sent to the Huniepop and Mutiny!! devs indicates that Valve is going to be re-reviewing the games. The 2 week deadline may be gone, but that doesn't mean Valve can't bring the ban hammer down on them at a later date after this 're-review'.
https://twitter.com/HuniePotDev/status/997979877977436160
https://twitter.com/Lupiesoft/status/997982926242398208
Edit: Mutiny!! is heavily discounted on Steam right now so grab it while you can.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/669050/Mutiny/
https://twitter.com/HuniePotDev/status/997979877977436160
https://twitter.com/Lupiesoft/status/997982926242398208
Edit: Mutiny!! is heavily discounted on Steam right now so grab it while you can.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/669050/Mutiny/
Are we through with all the shitty hot takes yet?
It's more likely that it was a mistake, or some automated email based on some insane group flagging games. Gotta hope Valve has some measure of rationality to not actually do something like this.
That game isn't even Japanese and you don't know why Valve wants to remove anything, you're talking out of your ass. Valve hasn't publicly put forth any reasoning. (Also, to definitively quantify something as subjective as the age of an animated character is impossible due to the blurring of age in all anime styled art. The only exceptions are the absolute extreme like loli shit.)Does she look to be over 20? Maybe for anime fans but not the big mass. Thats why Valve want to remove it, because it will arouse people who like kids.
Last time I checked, "underage" meant under 18 here in the states, which the character you linked is not. There is one character in the game however which even though the game states she is, you'd hard pressed to actually consider her to be that age. That also is not a Japanese game.
With that said, I said "most" of the games that were given warnings, not "all". Even then, if they were actually cracking down on sexualization of minors, none of the most egregious examples on Steam were given warnings, of which there's at least several dozen, primarily due to patches which add in scenes for said characters.
No, I'm sure there will be plenty more people defending the sexualization of children so it doesn't interfere with their cartoons.
Does she look to be over 20? Maybe for anime fans but not the big mass. Thats why Valve want to remove it, because it will arouse people who like kids.
You're talking about a game made by an American dude that was nominated by Steam itself for several awards. What you think is happening here isn't happening at all.
Except nobody here is defending the sexualization of children and you know that.
Very well could be the case for a group report bombing...
It's not how I'd ever set up any automated stuff but very well could have been someone put stuff in, didnt expect this to ever trigger and bam, whoops.
But..I doubt it.
I really don't know that. I made it clear that is what I was talking about, and it still seems to bother some folks. And frankly, I saw plenty of it in the last thread, both skirting around saying it aloud and those that said what they really thought and got banned. So let's not pretend like there isn't a group here that thinks it's perfectly fine to make and play games about underage children fucking.
No, I meant here in this thread. I'm of the opinion that Valve needs to set out a consistent guideline that is publicly available, lest some poor developer loses their livelihood overnight. I'm only going by what Valve deemed acceptable as a precedent for literally years. I also saw plenty of generalisation (again, calling literally everyone who disagrees with you the "Paedophile defence force" does not make for a good argument.) Let's not pretend there isn't a group here that thinks it's perfectly fine to ban literally all anime art styled games from steam, with the implication being that they're all paedophile games (Am I back in church, with my priest yelling about how Yu-Gi-Oh was a satanic game for pedos?)
Except nobody is doing that , that isn't even the discussion ..except in the mind of people unfamilliar with the case or valve behavior and past actions or the devellopper of those games.
But hey
"why didn't anybody think of the children ?" right ?
You think some of those games became top sellers in their categories , got awards and only now people realised that there was some content inside those games , right ?
It bothers people because you're were initially labeling every single dev that got these letters as pedophile content creators which is not true at all, and then you proceed to state that people are defending that pedophilic content in this thread, which is straight up making shit up.
Nice stereotype bro. It's funny because the majority of games hit were not Japanese in origin.
Educate yourself.
Here in this thread a guy is literally complaining because I specified that what I wanted removed was games involving the sexualization of children. And several of the games that got notices contained that content, even if some of them did it by having an off-site patch. I have zero problem with adult sexual content in games, but I want Steam to draw a firm line about games that involve the sexualization of children, even if that specific content is hosted elsewhere. I don't think Valve should be doing business with people sexualizing minors, period. And I'd be glad if they did so in no uncertain terms, by explicitly banning any sexual content involving minors, including games where the publisher patches it back in on the sly.
Perhaps its like many of this kind of games, the characters are not minors in the context of the game, but its only a lame excuse to include child-like looking sexualized characters.
Sex in almost all its variations should be allowed to include in games, but things like rape or pedophile are simply not tolerable.
The developer of such games should be prosecuted if they ever dare to travel to countries were the glorification of these things are criminal (like most countries beside Japan). And Valve should be prosecuted because they spread these kind of games.
That's not what they did though. Like, at all. If you bothered to actually check it, there was no rhyme or reason for the warnings
You're just jumping into anime=underage for some weird fucking reason
I am honestly surprised by how many are defending this kind of games that originated from Japan, which basically are all about sexualization of children. Young looking girls only there to arouse grown up men. If you check up these kind of games from Japan, and what influenced this game, you might reconsider what kind of "culture" you are defending. We do not need this on steam and its good they are already stopping it.
A young looking girl standing in panties IS ONLY there to tickle the itch of pedophiles, and is not something that we need to expose the big mass of users in the west to. They could have made the whole game without even including the girls, but no, they needed to include them to make grown up men who like young girls buy the game.
The low post count makes it too obvious what you're doing here.
You need a high post count to criticize games that basically sexualize children?
No, I was in the last thread, and most of the games I saw there -- many of which were being held forth as not having this content -- actually did, it was just patched in from the publishers. Kindred Spirits on the Roof would be an example of a game which multiple people defended as being "fine" in the last thread, but which has sexually explicit scenes featuring underage girls. I don't know the entire list, and I don't know Valve's reasons for each, but many of the games I saw being discussed in the last thread -- including games people were saying didn't have any bad content -- were clearly targeted because of explicitly underage characters or characters that looked underage. Valve may have certainly had wider criteria than that, but it seemed obvious to me that the mass of games I saw fit that category.
Based on how you define that, that's not going to happen as it would cut out several legit publishers that have games the ESRB are totally cool with like NISA, PQube, and XSeed in addition to semi-big niche publishers like Mangagamer that have been a great partner for Valve.
I'd say you're trolling as you just straight up associated the entire Japanese culture with paedophillia, and equating all of these games (one of which is literally set in a University) as for the sexualisation of children, like I cannot take any of your points in honesty. It's either you're trolling or you're coming from a place of extreme ignorance.
And that's unfortunate that Valve is choosing business over not sexualizing minors.
Likely wont get one. They issued a statement to developers and no consumers have been affected by it yet.
Then again, you likely wouldn't get one anyway...
That's business every platform-holder is choosing though, even Nintendo now that Gal Gun is on Switch. If you have an issue, take it up with the ESRB as the only one here that's actually entirely on Valve is Mangagamer because their games are largely unrated.
no they didn't, and no, not really. If that was the thing there much, much worse games to take down that they didn't tried to takedown in any way . Your theory doesn't really hold up.
Kindred spirits is a fine game. i know because i've played it.
I know steam knew , since it was allowed to be on the store AFTER review from steam ( it was special request for review by the publisher to see if they were ok with all the content )
You don't the list , you don't know the content , you don't know why those notices when out , we don't know why those notice were reversed in some cases.
You're here for a fight , but you're missing the context ..so you're fighting either in the wrong place , or for something that isn't there in the first place.
Congratulations
Your username is based on someone who murdered a sexually-abused woman by using her as a doorstop, but by all means, continue lecturing us about how the developers we like glorify violence against women.
I'm glad this has turned around but it's not all in the clear yet.
We will see how it ends up, hopefully this was all just a mistake.
We will see how it ends up, hopefully this was all just a mistake.
This is all incredibly strange. I wonder if the 4chan rumor that it was a rogue employee is true?
It's more likely that there was an internal communication error and the e-mail was sent to all devs with games commonly flagged as containing nudity/sexual content.
Good that they reversed course, but they still fucked up to begin with. This further highlights a lot of the problems with how Valve likes to operate in the dark.