Valve threatening to remove VNs with adult content from steam?

[Dreamysyu]

18 minutes ago, Happiness+ said:

So people have more issues with nudity and sex than they do with games that violent as all hell. Okay.

Yes, they do. I mean, it's stupid, but people care about porn way more than they care about gore. I mean, the anime porn is literally illegal in my country, because some of the higher-ups thought that it's all just child porn (and made some retarded definition to make basically all of it fit as such).

PS. Actually, the main problem here is not that their busyness will go wrong if they create a separate site for the 18+ titles. It's more like it could go wrong, and nobody is going to bother with this possibility, considering that 18+ games isn't what Steam is for to begin with.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Dreamysyu

[bakauchuujin]

10 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

Yes, they do. I mean, it's stupid, but people care about porn way more than they care about gore. I mean, the anime porn is literally illegal in my country, because some of the higher-ups thought that it's all just child porn (and made some retarded definition to make basically all of it fit as such).

Same with my country, though I have no idea if it is actually illegal or not. Based on the laws any loli content or something containing a character under the age of 18 whether sex occurs or not, just sexual presentation is enough which then includes ecchi. This applies both to text and to drawn art. The thing about this though is that technically every religious book and many works of fiction such as game of thrones or romeo and juliet break this law. Though these things are of course completely legal. Ecchi manga and anime with chars under the age of 18 is also sold here. So this means that we have laws saying it is illegal, though the laws are so broad that many things considered legal break them and it is impossible to know what they would actually apply to.

Edited May 18, 2018 by bakauchuujin

[iwasnevergoodwithnames ;(]

I think almost anything was written already, but there is one thing that still bothers me.

Even ignoring non-anime games like GTA, The Witcher etc. things like the Sakura series weren't even mentioned and don't seem to get removed in the near future. What did HuniePop, or these other games that are being removed do that the sakura games didn't do?

Could it be that maybe, just maybe Valve doesn't want to remove them, because they keep selling new games every two months and are doing fine in sales?

I hope I didn't wrote rubbish just now  (sorry if someone is shrugging his head in disappointment right now  if I'm actually wrong then I would appreciate it if someone could explain it to me...)

[sanahtlig]

41 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Because that's their original niche? I assume that eroge fans in Japan want porn (if we can believe Dergonu, they even care about it way more than most of us Weebs do, and many of us care about porn a whole lot) and all-ages titles are mostly viable on the console market (and those are often just censored versions of originally 18+ titles, just like those that appear on Steam). I think this is a bit like asking while PornHub doesn't produce comedy skits - it's not what its customers want and even if they want it in general, they already get it from other places.

The PC game market in Japan is dominated by adult games.  There's simply a market expectation that PC games will have porn, and this is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy (the Western equivalent would be that graphic porn cannot have literary or artistic value--because developers and audiences believe this, it becomes true).  Fans are willing to pay the "eroge tax"--paying more for niche content--because the games contain a sort of content you can't get elsewhere.

Edited May 18, 2018 by sanahtlig

[Yuuko]

11 minutes ago, iwasnevergoodwithnames ;( said:

things like the Sakura series weren't even mentioned and don't seem to get removed in the near future. What did HuniePop, or these other games that are being removed do that the sakura games didn't do?

No one knows if they were hit because Winged Cloud hasn't said anything and honestly wouldn't surprise me if they just kept quiet.

[Darklord Rooke]

3 hours ago, tymmur said:

I was thinking that GOG sells Huniepop and they have local prices, proper distribution and stuff. They might go all in on this now. They are located in Poland and as such is not affected by American laws. 

 

GOG refuses to put most VNs on their store. Nobody knows why and they don't speak to the reasons, but I don't think it will change because of Steam's changing guidelines. Seems to be a conscious decision on their part.

[iwasnevergoodwithnames ;(]

13 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

No one knows if they were hit because Winged Cloud hasn't said anything and honestly wouldn't surprise me if they just kept quiet.

so there is still hope? 

Edited May 18, 2018 by iwasnevergoodwithnames ;(

[Hetzer123]

.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Hetzer123

[Darklord Rooke]

6 minutes ago, Hetzer123 said:

What advantage does GOG has which steam and other VN storefront don't? JastUsa, Mangagamer and others have DRM free games. I heard GOG ditched regional pricing long ago so it is not a good alternate to steam.

GOG has regional pricing. I guess the advantage is that it has a Steam like platform (GOG galaxy - automatic updates etc etc) and an established customer base.

[tymmur]

37 minutes ago, iwasnevergoodwithnames ;( said:

Could it be that maybe, just maybe Valve doesn't want to remove them, because they keep selling new games every two months and are doing fine in sales?

I think we can be fairly certain that whatever they do, they think of money. If they intentionally skip some companies, it will be those companies, which are most profitable for them. If they made as much on VNs as on AAA games, they would reject the demand to remove anything.

18 minutes ago, Darklord Rooke said:

GOG refuses to put most VNs on their store. Nobody knows why and they don't speak to the reasons, but I don't think it will change because of Steam's changing guidelines. Seems to be a conscious decision on their part.

I wasn't aware of that. It seems to me that while GOG started out as a platform for old games, they have no problems taking in new ones or even videos. They seem to sell whatever they can profit from. But regardless of who it is, somebody will realize the potential profit in distributing/reselling VNs. Jast and MG are likely candidates, but there could be more. I don't see a doomed future for EVNs, but they will get less mainstream if the big distributors won't sell them. Also it doesn't help with the reputation that VNs are "Japanese rape games".

1 minute ago, Darklord Rooke said:

GOG has regional pricing. I guess the advantage is that it has a Steam like platform (GOG galaxy, automatic updates etc etc) and an established customer base.

This and one more thing. GOG is not new anymore and as such they are more trustworthy with payments than some brand new company nobody heard of before. GOG even do regional pricing better than steam as it really do accept the local currency for apparently all countries. Steam skips out on a number of currencies.

Edited May 18, 2018 by tymmur

[sanahtlig]

Different platforms attract different audiences.  The best strategy is usually to appeal to the widest audience possible.  That means marketing on as many platforms as is feasible.  The non-adult audience is teeming with potential VN fans and those who would like eroge but haven't tried them, or who have tried them but aren't regulars on a given platform.  Or perhaps they pirated their first title or two but could be persuaded to buy them if they had a familiar place to shop.

Edited May 18, 2018 by sanahtlig

[sarkasmus]

13 minutes ago, Darklord Rooke said:

GOG has regional pricing. I guess the advantage is that it has a Steam like platform (GOG galaxy - automatic updates etc etc) and an established customer base.

And you can use paypal or paysafecard or something similar if you don't have a credit card, which is currently the only thing preventing me from using the other stores.

(I know it's not possible if you sell porn at least for PP that's a problem I don't know about the other methods, but I'd be fine with all ages + uncut patch from another website on GOG)

Edited May 18, 2018 by sarkasmus

[PhleBuster]

Speaking from personal experience, GOG is not friendly toward Japanese indie games, especially visual novels. There may be some exceptions but it's clear to me they don't really want those non-games in their store. They're at least as bad in this regard than Steam was pre-Greenlight, quite possibly worse with their internal bias.

As for the main topic, well I can't say too much and it's mostly speculation, but it's worth bearing in mind that most adult content of sexual nature is already forbidden in their terms of service. This has been enforced very laxly so far, but with the removal of any Steam-side curation with Steam Direct, and people pushing boundaries with new titles, it wouldn't surprise me if they've gotten fed up and decided to write actual internal guidelines (good luck getting them to share those), which may have turned out stricter than previous case by case judgments. There may be actual legal reasons (at least plausible threat of legal action for violating some regional laws for selling pornographic content either containing minors, or to minors) for this, though it'll never be more than speculation since they'd never disclose such detail. If anything, I've been surprised at what -has- been allowed in the marketplace over the past few years until now.

I can't say I know the details of affected games' contents, but it seems to me we're pretty much talking about games that already self-censored themselves and released adult content as an off-Steam patch, and which haven't been just removed from Steam but given an opportunity to correct the content further, which should in this case just mean moving a bit more of the content into the patch, and shouldn't be an unreasonable amount of work.

[Hetzer123]

.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Hetzer123

[Darklord Rooke]

5 minutes ago, Hetzer123 said:

What are their guidelines for adult content? I know they reject Visual Novel  might be due to lack of gameplay. 

Nobody seems to know xD

[PhleBuster]

1 minute ago, Palas said:

If you've ever read one of those wonderful VN game reviews saying "story was OK, but there was no gameplay, you just click on the screen to advance the text, 4/10", imagine that as a GOG curator (personal interpretation).

[Flutterz]

3 minutes ago, PhleBuster said:

If you've ever read one of those wonderful VN game reviews saying "story was OK, but there was no gameplay, you just click on the screen to advance the text, 4/10", imagine that as a GOG curator (personal interpretation).

I can just imagine a GOG curator reading DDLC with a checklist:

Good ❌

Old ❌

Game ❌

[Flutterz]

Just now, Palas said:

Where's angry react when I need it

Is joke, I actually liked DDLC 

[kooolm]

The fact that erotic content is so hard to get on Steam when the scenes of murder and violent crimes are totally okay is super idiotic. Not to mention the sex scenes are not even real people but just 2D images...

[Flutterz]

2 minutes ago, Palas said:

No but see it was the best post I saw today, I want to properly give you the clout while still feigning anger

The world just ain't fair

[Hetzer123]

.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Hetzer123

[1P1A]

So Steam no longer wants to be associated with sexual content with cartoon minors? That's a shocker.

[sanahtlig]

8 minutes ago, Hetzer123 said:

I wonder what storefront that allows multiple layers of degeneracy(all kind of fetish) without any problem (like guro, incest, loli ,etc in the game).

DLsite, hands down.  They even have

This post has been edited by Fuwanovel moderation.  Have a nice day!

[Hetzer123]

.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Hetzer123

[sanahtlig]

The game that must not be named--nor the events that led to the fabled Lolipocalypse--must never be spoken of in the Halls of Fuwa.  So hath the Fuwa zealots decreed.