sanahtlig

I entered fake info because I know the risks of oversharing. Others might not be so foresighted, and with the current system these users don't seem to have any recourse if they later decide they don't want to share their personal info. Customer and payment databases are stored separately. What I've been discussing is the customer database, which is typically not subject to the same security standards as the payment database. Denpasoft uses a store platform called Shopify. It wasn't designed with adult entertainment in mind, and Dovac clearly rushed out his implementation of it.

The way you 'stop' it is not letting them store info that you want kept private. In Denpasoft's case, they ask for your name at registration. They ask for your e-mail and physical address when you try to 'buy' something free. They ask for this info they don't need, store it, and don't seem to allow you to change the name or e-mail address if you later change your mind. That's poor policy, especially in the adult business where personally-identifiable info is sensitive. By comparison, I checked my Nutaku account and I don't even see an entry for a name. As incompetent as Nutaku is, they get it.

I use Norton Security and LastPass.

Client-side protection doesn't protect you from server-side breaches. The best protection is actually not storing the information to begin with. Also, the combination of Google Chrome Incognito and LastPass should accomplish the same level of client-side protection you describe, and they're free.

Then you're probably not aware that all 3 major eroge publishers have had breaches of confidential information. 2/3 disclosed customer information, and 1/3 involved a hacker whose declared purpose was to dox customers. These companies have been very hush-hush about these incidents because their business literally depends on user confidence.

I'm more concerned with potential breaches of privacy myself. The eroge industry doesn't exactly have a stellar record, and Denpasoft's registration system made me feel distinctly uneasy.

It depends on the lore of each specific setting. In some lore, a vampire is essentially doomed to be a serial killer--their prey is destined to die or be bound to them either as servant vampires or as mindless ghouls. If you're the type of vampire that cannot blend into human society at all (e.g., due to physical deformities), and there is no vampire society to speak of, then the isolation problem becomes acute. In some lore, the infection might be progressive, eventually causing one to lose one's self entirely. These are all valid reasons to regard the condition as a curse to be cured at all costs.

Here's some broad big-picture suggestions: Moderation consistency/fairness: There's been grumbling about this lately, both on and off-site. Partnerships and engagement with publishers: Promoting visual novels effectively means working more closely with English publishers. I'd like to see them engaging openly with the community here, including posting on the forums and doing more interviews on the official blog. Outreach to Japanese developers/communities, including developers not currently selling games in English: Fuwanovel is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between the Japanese and English communities due to the many fans here who have learned or are in the process of learning Japanese. Sending out these fans in an organized fashion to establish connections could accelerate the already growing interest in the English market--and help developers be less boneheaded in their attempts to enter it. A highly innovative project like this would also re-establish Fuwanovel as a central pillar of the English community.

Dedicated VN forums in general have declined. This isn't specific to Fuwanovel. JAST's forum is a barren wasteland. MangaGamer dropped its forum entirely. FAKKU's forum has sporadic activity, but it's largely driven by employee posts. Even VNDB seems less lively lately. A lot of discussion has moved to Discord, where the focus becomes socializing rather than sharing content and ideas. Only /r/visualnovels seems to have maintained its activity levels, though much of the content nowadays is about topics that don't interest me. Fuwanovel doesn't utterly dominate like it used to, but it still seems like the most active discussion forum dedicated to visual novels. Such forums serve a very important role: chronicling knowledge and events for future generations. Browsing the old JAST forums, for example, is like opening a time capsule from the dawn of the English market. There's a great deal of knowledge there that you just won't find anywhere else, and Fuwanovel too will serve that role someday--provided a forum crash doesn't wipe it all out.

Google doesn't bother me, probably because I don't host sexually-explicit images. Much of what I do could be considered journalism, so that likely provides additional protection.

This link works for me in the US: https://erogamescape.dyndns.org/~ap2/ero/toukei_kaiseki/kensaku.php?category=game&word_category=name&word=はじめてのおかあさん&mode=normal

Actually, this announcement is very similar to one I did.

Why do I get a sense of deja vu when I read this?

And you can't prove that some Japanese people don't actually have mosaiced genitals. Go ahead. Prove it.

I'll just leave this here.

I've reached out to the people involved and encouraged them to contact the moderator investigating this issue. I encourage anyone else to report their complaints from unresolved moderation issues--abuse-related or not, publicly here or privately via PM--to assist the investigation. As Dergonu points out, this is second-hand info that I can't verify myself due to the nature of moderation. It could just be a problem of optics. However, moderators can see "removed" posts so they'll be able to get to the bottom of this--as long as they have a thread title to investigate.

I'm going to repost this here because a blog probably isn't the best place to hold this discussion. A friend told me about an episode of perceived moderator abuse, where he got in an argument over a topical matter (not related to Fuwa rules) and moderators started removing his posts over what he perceived as simple disagreement. This was one of those hot-button topics in the VN scene where there's supposedly a "right" answer (known to "true" fans, such as our dear moderators), and the position held by normies is "wrong". This person is not the type to engage in incendiary rhetoric, and he's also important in the scene and could've been helpful to Fuwa. Furthermore, this doesn't appear to be an isolated incident. I'm hearing that multiple people with standing in the community and no reason to go around flinging mud and breaking rules have been complaining about Fuwa moderation. Coincidentally, these incidents all seem to involve one particular moderator. When I told him about this post, his response was "Hope they don't ban you over it". When outsiders--and even users who post here for a while--genuinely think this, that's a problem. These sorts of incidents would bother me as a matter of principle under any circumstances, but in this case it's not just a matter of principle. Such practices actually risk doing lasting harm to the community here. Many users are not going to stand and fight when confronted with (perceived) moderation abuses. They'll just leave and bad-mouth Fuwa to all their friends, causing a Balkanization of the fanbase. Fuwanovel was supposed to be a place where users from all parts of the community can come together to discuss in a non-toxic environment--not one where certain cliques and opinions are favored by moderation and others are actively excluded. Zakamutt's blog post on moderation issues is also worth a read.

A friend told me about an episode of perceived moderator abuse, where he got in an argument over a topical matter (not related to Fuwa rules) and moderators started removing his posts over what he perceived as simple disagreement. This was one of those hot-button topics in the VN scene where there's supposedly a "right" answer (known to "true" fans, such as our dear moderators), and the position held by normies is "wrong". This person is not the type to engage in incendiary rhetoric, and he's also important in the scene and could've been helpful to Fuwa. Furthermore, this doesn't appear to be an isolated incident. I'm hearing that multiple people with standing in the community and no reason to go around flinging mud and breaking rules have been complaining about Fuwa moderation. Coincidentally, these incidents all seem to involve one particular moderator. These sorts of incidents would bother me as a matter of principle under any circumstances, but in this case it's not just a matter of principle. Such practices actually risk doing lasting harm to the community here. Many users are not going to stand and fight when confronted with (perceived) moderation abuses. They'll just leave and bad-mouth Fuwa to all their friends, causing a Balkanization of the fanbase. Fuwanovel was supposed to be a place where users from all parts of the community can come together to discuss in a non-toxic environment--not one where certain cliques and opinions are favored by moderation and others are actively excluded.

The "this should be a blog post" feedback is an allusion to the blog feature of Fuwanovel. It's a nice way to collect together your high-content posts in one place. If you feel the topic is of general interest and want to encourage ongoing discussion, you can then create a discussion thread and link to the blog post. It helps to have a summary line to grab readers' interest so they'll read the full article.

He forgot to mention that his goal is to literally take over the community with his Discord channel. Be afraid!

I might give this game a shot then, thanks. Maybe Sekai Project will help bring this game to Steam!

And again, the problem here is that any rigorous policy that tries to enforce moral principles and political correctness in fiction will end up excluding a large swath of content I happen to enjoy. Cheesecake? Offensive and demeaning to women. Lolis? Get that pedobait off here. Inappropriate religious symbolism? You're disrespecting someone's faith. We have this culture of outrage and it's really tiresome. I feel like the correct response to blatant trolling is to just ignore it. It's attention-seeking behavior. If you give them attention, they win. Attempts to root them out will result in collateral damage that justifies their cause and rallies support for them.

I posted an analysis at some point where I think I counted 18+ vs. <18 releases for original Japanese titles on VNDB, probably Windows-only. It came out to around ~80% 18+ I think.

I actually haven't had much of a problem finding games I'm interested in. The discovery queue is surprisingly effective at identifying games you might be interested in based on your current library. Although finding games in new genres can be sort of a pain.

As a philosophical stance, I find Valve's policy brief interesting. They're basically taking a hands-off libertarian approach, presuming that the market will sort itself out if the proper filtering tools are provided. Applied to the market as a whole, I find this viewpoint irresponsible--regulation and quality standards are necessary to prevent predatory practices and exploitation--but for a video game store it could be appropriate. We have curated alternatives, so there's no reason to cry 'the sky is falling' over an ideological experiment. Let the market decide whether it wants an uncurated store.