Plk_Lesiak

Welcome to our glorious forum full of awkward nerds. I'm sure you'll fit right in!

I don't know, but surely it will never reach KARAKARA's levels of excellence. ;p

Hello there, brave soldiers of Fuwa! This was a rather insane week for me personally, but not without some cool developments on the blog. When it goes to minor announcements, I've added VNDB links to all the old reviews and gave a slight editing run to some of them. I'm not sure why I didn't do it in the past, but it's fixed now and I will obviously keep adding the links to all future posts. Also, if you started following the blog later down the line, this might be a nice moment to check out the things you've missed. This week I've tackled a game development of which we could observe on Fuwa pretty extensively - it's always really cool to see project in which you interacted with the developers, and maybe even left your small mark on, coming into fruition. It's also a game that tackles topics that I'm personally really interested about - that of more "human" aspects of war and totalitarianism. Panzer Hearts by HELYEES proved to be both a flawed game and a very interesting one and was definitely fun to review - hopefully that's also visible on the reader's side of things. I really encourage you all to read the post and if you're not sure if the game might be to your liking, there's a pretty large free demo available on Steam. Next week, I might tackle one more fresh release before I venture into the world of gameplay VNs - it mostly depends on the time at my disposal. Whatever happens, I hope you'll continue to follow my blog and have a wonderful week everyone!

Not true (nsfw), Yurirei is actually a relatively tame 18+ VN with sex scenes and went to Steam uncensored. It might actually be more appropriate target for the purge than most of the stuff that was hit, even if I very much disagree with it being categorized as porn.

Yup, I know, but notice that Valve's request was to censor the targeted games, not just a notice of taking them down because they're pornographic filth - I haven't played this one but all others I know and were targeted had nudity (and not much more, if speaking about Steam versions). If you say that TL was well-censored in its Steam release, then maybe they're randomly going by user tags without looking at the actual content, it's possible that even now I was giving Valve too much credit.

Still, porn without actual depictions of sex isn't much of porn. Making sex a goal in the narrative is a bit too little - and I don't say it to claim HP isn't porn after all, just that defining porn by sex being the main theme is a shitty definition. Plus I don't envy anyone desperate enough to fap to the kind of material that HuniePop offers... That's because I'm pretty sure Valve went after anime games with partial nudity (just like the bare breasts in Huniepop and Yurirei) and not the actual porn games that "properly" gate the hentai behind patches, like MonMusu does.

Indeed, I actually forgot about the explicit CGs you get after the "bedroom" puzzles. Still, for the most part it's just fanservice, especially in the Steam version, calling anything in there porn is quite a stretch. And you spend most of the time on puzzles that are completely non-erotic in nature, so calling HP a pure porn game is really not accurate - you could maybe say that about Monmusu, where gameplay is non-existant and a very poor excuse to make you pay for hentai scenes (and it wasn't targeted by Valve so far).

[redacted] I actually remembered it wrong, but Huniepop is not really a "pure porn game", it has actual gameplay and was properly censored in the "clean" version - in a way that was widely consider as appropriate in the past (with only bare breasts in the "erotic" CGs and "sex-related" puzzles) but suddenly became "pornography".

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.

I wonder... It had a partial voiceover in the old version, if I remember well? I surely didn't have a huge budget back then, so probably the cast they used back then was fairly cheap and recording additional lines could be worth the added appeal (after all, more conservative/JP-centric VN fans ofter really care about VA). I do hope they'll make some decent marketing push though, a post on Reddit rather won't win that many new sales for a two-year-old game. :]

You can always mute it. ;p

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.

Most VNs are eroge. Eroge, by definition, have porn. We get a decent number of all-ages titles (like Fatal Twelve or Chuusotsu lately), but the majority of what Japan produces have hentai. So that's what we get. Plus Steam have problems not just with porn, but also nudity, so games that don't qualify as porn by any reasonable standard can also get targeted by this. It can. But it doesn't want to. Because it wants to have kids on its platform and parents ready to spend money on games for them and porn is a big Boogyman in 'Murica (and to a lesser extent in many other parts of the world). Even having a "Steam 18+" as a seperate platform would, in Valve's perspective, ruin their "family friendly" image and make them vulnerable to all kinds of attacks and bad press. I don't really think that's the case, but it seems to be the line of reasoning they consistently follow. It's just like Twitch don't want to make a seperate 18+ section and just bans all games they find questionable (including Yandere Simulator, for no fucking reason or Sakura Santa, which is btw a tame and even fairly amusing fanservice game, solid 5/10).

The devs behind the game just published a remastered version of Highway Blossoms (for those heretics unfamiliar with the title, it's one of the highest-rated yuri OELVNs) - one that is a free update rather than a separate product. It features full voice-acting and reworked visual assets, along with some technical improvements. I guess I'm a bit glad that I postponed reading it for such a long time, now I can experience the "ultimate" version on my first try... Unless it's targeted by the Valve's frenzy I guess? It has some sexual content, but hopefully, the all-ages version is clean enough for the Steam(y) Inquisition.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free review copy of this game by the developer. All opinions expressed here are solely my own. The themes of World War 2 and Nazi Germany aren’t completely foreign to VNs and manga/anime – some beloved and high-profile titles, such as Dies Irae or Hellsing take a very direct inspiration from Nazi imagery and legends about NSDAP elites’ dealings with the occult. More down-to-Earth war stories are however much rarer in this context – prominent franchises such as Valkyrie Chronicles or Saga of Tanya the Evil not only utilize much less controversial political and military framework of WW1, but also add significant fantasy elements to the mix. Even if their stories touch upon the topics such as the fate of the common soldier and atrocities committed by the warring states, the actual historical parallels in them are pretty thin. To apparently remedy this sorry state of affairs, in April 2018 a small OELVN titled Panzer Hearts was released on Steam. Developed by a tiny Finnish studio HELYEES, this game promises a dark story of war, political oppression and romance in an alternate-universe WW2. To this it also adds the theme of tank-building, that should probably excite every military geek such as myself. However, as fantastic as this sounds, can such an unassuming indie game actually deliver on all these fronts? Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Yup, this definitely looks like a conservative organization, they even insert references to faith and actual feminist talking points are few and far between (and it's not a new thing for conservatives to hijack those whenever it fits their goals and adds to their credibility). ------------------------------------- Regardless, I agree with Sanahtlig that them claiming responsibility doesn't mean much in this instance - I guess anti-porn radicals are a bit like ISIS in this matter, they'll claim everything that suits their agenda as their doing. That "thank Valve for censorship" petition does make my blood boil though, I hope they'll at least get more complaints from pissed people than congratulations from dimwitted zealots that haven't see a video game in their life outside of random pieces of media fearmongering.

Maybe, maybe, but that you assume they have guidelines and stick to them. Many of the games they're threatening to remove went through a meticulous approval process and the publishers did whatever they could to make sure everything is done according to the rules and with Valve's consent. Now, without changing the actual guidelines, Valve started going after games it suddenly perceives as too lewd. Valve has all the right in the world to set up its own rules and we might contest their choices, but mostly have to accept them. But if they don't respect their own rules and the publishers using their platforms, abuses their and our trust, we have all the right in the world to bash them. I expect a game that was greenlit by Valve to go live on their service to be safe and safe to buy, in meaning that it won't randomly infect my computer or disappear without a word after I paid money for it. It's not "whining" to expect a bare minimum of professionalism and consistency from the service you rely on heavily for your entertainment. Imagine if Netflix started pulling down shows every time you watch half into a season because they suddenly realized they are too risque. Not fun, right? I don't think many viewers would be happy about it either.

Games like Roommates also got the same warning and I don't think that one has any characters that are minors, let alone sexual content with those.

They might be responding to mass complains (the Maidens of Michael debacle is said to be initiated by a notorious troll) or just wish to defend their image of a "safe"/porn-free platform. Attacking niches is definitely an easier way to do that than acting against major titles/publishers. That Witcher nudity and sex scenes won't be touched because people would riot and not enough customers will defend Spirits or WinterWolves' stuff for Valve to care - and "anime" stuff is generally a convenient punching bad because of the stereotypes around it. It is that especially dumb/pointless and prudish kind of censorship though and I would love to see some real backlash against it.

Shame about Kindred Spirits getting hit, but considering how the all-ages versions of most SP and MG games are made I wouldn't expect this to turn into some kind of global disaster (unless Steam starts actually going after patches 18+, that would be a massacre). I can imagine that the inconsistency will be off-putting for Japanese companies and publishers, but probably not enough to change things drastically. I wonder if any Winged Cloud games got hit by this, it would be pretty funny if main smut-dealers on the platform were ommited. They always cover those SINFUL NIPPLES in the all-ages versions though. Bare breasts seams to be all this is about at this point.

All best wishes to @Zenophilious!

I hope it isn't. 'cause we're posting on it. Wait... Are we dead? Is this hell? It's... Not that bad, TBH.

Well, you get 6/10 for formatting, but 11,5/10 for characterisation. This is brutally accurate. Please make more.

Welcome, welcome! You've read quite a lot of quality titles already, I hope you'll keep enjoying those - and, have fun on the Forums!

Thank you @Mr Poltroon @Templarseeker @Thyndd @Funyarinpa for the kind words and sorry for dumping my problems onto everyone around here. I'm feeling quite better today (and not that much hungover, surprisingly). Drinking usually isn't my go-to coping mechanism, but it was actually my gf who got struck by all that stuff a bit more than me (especially the cat, who was for years her favourite pet and pretty much ignored all humans other than her when she was around), so, me binging VNs or anime alone like I usually do when I'm fed up with the world wouldn't do much to get her thoughts off all the crap that happened. As much as I can tell, I think it worked.