Valve threatening to remove VNs with adult content from steam?

[Kawasumi]

 

[1P1A]

19 minutes ago, Kawasumi said:

 

Soccer Football mom pseudologic is the best logic.

Edited May 19, 2018 by 1P1A
European friendly

[tymmur]

The organization behind this is National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Their goal is to rid the world of the "public health crisis of pornography.". Apparently they make a Dirty Dozen List annually, which lists the evil organizations, which aids in training people to commit sexual assaults. In addition to steam, the lists include Amazon, Google, American Library Association, Amnesty International, Twitter, Youtube, HBO, snapchat, Apple's iBooks.... the list goes on and on.

If you look at the tweet @Kawasumi linked to, somebody replied (which I can't link directly to for some reason) "I think I've run into members on tumblr way back, when they claimed they were trying to quell the porn industry's mistreatment of women... ...by attacking self employed female video models.". I can't verify this, but it's not farfetched compared to the rest of the stuff you can find about them.

Their statement about steam:

Quote

Recommended Policy and Platform Improvements

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation urges Steam® and its parent company Valve® to do the following:

1) Remove the game House Party due to its singularly degrading and exploitive themes.

2) Create an 18+ category on its website where all games with any amount of nudity or sexual content are stored. All accounts should have this 18+ category disabled by default, and require an extensive opt-in to view it so that children are no longer automatically exposed to this content.

3) Institute a more robust policy enforcement against selling games that normalize or glamorize sexual exploitation in the future, no matter the age of the user.

Now there is one very interesting question. Since they appear to be a collection of regular people, why do they apparently have the legal rights to censor what other people can access? It looks very unconstitutional with attacking the first amendment (free speech), yet people react like they are some sort of government organization. They claim victory for banning selling porn on army bases, meaning they can command what goes on in the army.

If you still aren't sure what kind of people we are talking about, their beef with American Library Association is that school students can access an ebook database and in this database there are questionable books (biology?). They want those books removed. I will classify this as ebook burning and we all know what kind of people conducts book burnings, right?

Edited May 19, 2018 by tymmur

[Makotodidnothingwrong]

6 minutes ago, tymmur said:

The organization behind this is National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Their goal is to rid the world of the "public health crisis of pornography.". Apparently they make a Dirty Dozen List annually, which lists the evil organizations, which aids in training people to commit sexual assaults. In addition to steam, the lists include Amazon, Google, American Library Association, Amnesty International, Twitter, Youtube, HBO, snapchat, Apple's iBooks.... the list goes on and on.

If you look at the tweet @Kawasumi linked to, somebody replied (which I can't link directly to for some reason) "I think I've run into members on tumblr way back, when they claimed they were trying to quell the porn industry's mistreatment of women... ...by attacking self employed female video models.". I can't verify this, but it's not farfetched compared to the rest of the stuff you can find about them.

Their statement about steam:

https://twitter.com/TheZeroVirus//997534235358584833

Now there is one very interesting question. Since they appear to be a collection of regular people, why do they apparently have the legal rights to censor what other people can access? It looks very unconstitutional with attacking the first amendment (free speech), yet people react like they are some sort of government organization. They claim victory for banning selling porn on army bases, meaning they can command what goes on in the army.

If you still aren't sure what kind of people we are talking about, their beef with American Library Association is that school students can access an ebook database and in this database there are questionable books (biology?). They want those books removed. I will classify this as ebook burning and we all know what kind of people conducts book burnings, right?

They look to be an interest group. Interest groups tend to have a lot of power in the US. 

[finiteHP]

This might not be connected, but Steam is getting ready to release their streaming app thing on iOS and Android.  Apple has previously shown that they don’t want questionable content (unless it’s violence of course) on the App Store.

[kyrt]

2 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

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.

I was here for this and I don't remember what the game that must not be named was...

I think a lot of this probably has to do with the SESTA and FOSTA which recently passed thanks to senate, house and T rump passing it into existence despite it having very clear problems and issues for people worldwide. In addition to the crazy christian groups always causing problems of course. 

[finiteHP]

Just checked the techraptor article.  Besides seeing a lot of Nutaku shilling, I also noticed that they’re saying Winged Cloud has been contacted by Valve.  Not even Steam’s money printing shovelware is safe!

[Tyrael]

There's still some hope, guys. Steam critic and influencer (if you will) Jim Sterling is sticking up for us 

 

 

[Akshay]

29 minutes ago, Tyrael said:

There's still some hope, guys. Steam critic and influencer (if you will) Jim Sterling is sticking up for us 

 

 

Does this kind of thing actually help? I don't think valve will actually do anything different based on a video.

[tymmur]

6 minutes ago, Akshay said:

Does this kind of thing actually help? I don't think valve will actually do anything different based on a video.

I'm wondering the same thing. Like the video said, Valve doesn't care. They do whatever they think is the easiest for them unless it will seriously hurt their profits. What people think about Valve and their actions doesn't matter as long as people won't react by buying games elsewhere.

[Tyrael]

10 minutes ago, Akshay said:

Does this kind of thing actually help? I don't think valve will actually do anything different based on a video.

 

Just now, tymmur said:

I'm wondering the same thing. Like the video said, Valve doesn't care. They do whatever they think is the easiest for them unless it will seriously hurt their profits. What people think about Valve and their actions doesn't matter as long as people won't react by buying games elsewhere.

He has a very significant audience and he's been doing this for years as well. We know Valve employees watch at least a few of his videos because they invited him over back when they did the platform overhaul a while back so he could discuss some of the improvements he had in mind for the platform. Only thing we can do at this point is trying to make them listen tbh. We should keep trying to protect the things we love, even if things seem dire.

[Soulless Watcher]

Seriously, wtf valve? They claimed that the entire reason they don't curate their storefront was because of visual novels, because they didn't realize there was a market for them so they don't know what else will sell. 

There have been plenty of people throwing a bitch fit about the asset flips and completely broken games that are thrown up on the storefront, but they have never done anything close to real curation with that pile of shit. 

So I suppose this means that the Witcher games will also have to be censored or removed...... right?....... right?!...... OF COURSE FUCKING NOT! 

Hypocritical self righteous bastards. 

[adamstan]

In the video posted above, the guy mentions that the former "Morality in Media" organization, that claims to be behind this, has set out to ban Mass Effect and Witcher from Steam too They just started with anime titties, as that was easy target...

Edited May 19, 2018 by adamstan

[Soulless Watcher]

5 minutes ago, adamstan said:

In the video posted above, the guy mentions that the former "Morality in Media" organization, that claims to be behind this, has set out to ban Mass Effect and Witcher from Steam too They just started with anime titties, as that was easy target...

Ok, while this is still bullshit, I'm actually allot less angry now. I would much rather the culprits be genuinely retarded, rather than pretending to be retarded.

Although Valve can still go rot in hell for listening to them. 

Edited May 19, 2018 by Soulless Watcher

[PhleBuster]

While they're an easy target to point a finger at, I figure that's giving them too much credit and attention they don't deserve. 

My guess: they had absolutely nothing to do with what went down (even articles mention they've been going at it for years already), but they'll be all too happy to claim the credit as proof of how effective they are.

[sanahtlig]

1 hour ago, Akshay said:

Does this kind of thing actually help? I don't think valve will actually do anything different based on a video.

Who cares if Valve actually listens?  It's free publicity from someone with a huge audience.  And publicity means more sales for any developer/publisher mentioned.

[Plk_Lesiak]

There's a petition on change.org to make Valve reverse their desitions on HuniePop and other affected games. It obviously is extremely unlikely to work, but the more people show explicit discontent the more Valve will have to think about what they're doing.

Also, Thank God for Jim Sterling.

[Tyrael]

38 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

There's a petition on change.org to make Valve reverse their desitions on HuniePop and other affected games. It obviously is extremely unlikely to work, but the more people show explicit discontent the more Valve will have to think about what they're doing.

Also, Thank God for Jim Sterling.

Was just about to post this. Almost at 7000 signatures and counting 

[sarkasmus]

53 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

There's a petition on change.org to make Valve reverse their desitions on HuniePop and other affected games. It obviously is extremely unlikely to work, but the more people show explicit discontent the more Valve will have to think about what they're doing.

Also, Thank God for Jim Sterling.

Signed it.

At least making some "noise" is better than just watching it happen.

[BookwormOtaku]

Also signed, might as well put up as close to a fight as we can.

[Kaito1]

I'm not sure why Valve is making a fuss all of sudden. These VNs are already censored to begin with, by having their 18+ content removed. Isn't that already enough for them?

[Soulless Watcher]

It will not do much. Valve has all the data on people who buy these games and they still decided to go forward. They know that they are screwing over paying customers and creators, they just don't care. They are Valve and they own Steam, so fuck you. 

Still I will sign. 

[Kaito1]

2 minutes ago, Soulless Watcher said:

Still I will sign. 

Everyone, please spread the word

[Tyrael]

30 minutes ago, Palas said:

Yeah hold up my mans. Jim Sterling is a pundit with terrible takes, always on the side of the uproar, and generally a hack.

Good to see our good old forum clown is still active around here 

[Eurekachan26]

It is a bit worrying heard about all this, more when this people who treat 2D artwork as the worse thing ever.

Hope things dont escalate.  I didnt check more news or anything.   I dont want to be more stressed than I am now.