Valve threatening to remove VNs with adult content from steam?

[Plk_Lesiak]

13 minutes ago, Kawasumi said:

>radical feminist
>90% of their board is conservative christians

pick one lol.

1

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.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Plk_Lesiak

[Decay]

Contrary to what a lot of people try to claim, suppression of sexual content like this is always spurred by conservative thought. Fundamentalist christians are the biggest advocates for the suppression of sexual content, and said fundamentalists are at the heart of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, formerly Morality in Media. They rebranded in an attempt to appeal to leftist movements but that doesn't change who they really are. To try to claim that they are radical feminists is hilarious to me.

None of the leftists I know are happy with this news.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Decay

[Shinoa]

 

[VirginSmasher]

3 minutes ago, Shinoa said:

 

Nice to see JAST is taking advantage of this situation to make more money for themselves. I'd respect them more for this decision if they actually released some of their own VNs more often. 

[sarkasmus]

1 hour ago, Kawasumi said:

welp, here we go.

https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/top-videogame-company-steam-removing-sexually-graphic-content/

 

Sounds more like a typical radical group which claims as everything as their victory which fits their propaganda.

If it was a movement big enough to cause such a sudden massive change we already would've heard about them before.

[Dergonu]

Just now, VirginSmasher said:

Nice to see JAST is taking advantage of this situation to make more money for themselves. I'd respect them more for this decision if they actually released some of their own VNs more often. 

Mangagamer, Fakku Games and other adult sites that hosts VNs are doing the same. I mean, it makes sense. VNs with adult content on Steam are being nuked, and not all the companies releasing eroge in the west have their own storefront, so it's nice for them to have other sites to rely on for that. Hopefully we'll see more developers who before only relied on steam move over to sites such as Mangagamer, JAST etc, so that there are more options for both the developers and the fans.

 

Oh and guys, let's try to keep our views on politics out of this. Whenever that gets brought up in a discussion on a forum, things tend to go way off topic....

[DarkZedge]

Steam had always been inconsistent and vague when it came to what they allowed on their platform and what they didn't allow on it, I wished for them to finally make up their goddamn minds and gain some consistency BUT I hoped it'd be towards the opposite side of this (as unlikely as it was) we'll see where the industry goes from here and what actually ends up happening with this.

[littleshogun]

Well I prefer if we just stop to discuss about conservative here, because I'm sure that it won't bring much productivity here. The bottom line is that there's always people like that in each part of the world, and that's the end of story.

Back to topic. As for JAST store, like VirginSmasher said it would be great if they release their own VNs more often. But then again, it's not like that JAST didn't allowed to sell the VN from outside their company (See Mangagamer with their third party section). What's matter is the execution though, so if their management of the third party shop is like when they managed their own localized VNs, let's just say that maybe the companies would think several times before they trust JAST to sell their VNs.

[Stormwolf]

Hmm.. What have i missed? I thought vn's released on steam were all ages where all the explicit stuff was cut out.

[tymmur]

1 hour ago, Kawasumi said:

welp, here we go.

https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/top-videogame-company-steam-removing-sexually-graphic-content/

 

Banning all age VNs based on that description is fairly close to book burning. It's all about getting rid of whatever you don't like for political reasons regardless and actual facts about the contents doesn't matter. It confirms what I think about movements like that. It's like #MeToo, which aims towards a decent goal, but then they single out people and convict them without trial. So what do you do if you claim to be innocent, yet the online mob claims otherwise without any evidence at all? Some have picked suicide. I'm all for people behaving properly, but I will not divert from the principle of innocent until proven guilty. There are actually people claiming that some crimes are so severe that the culprit should not be allowed to hide behind such statements.

17 minutes ago, Shinoa 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. We will see a great change in VN distribution, but likely not end of sale for VNs. It's entirely possible that the same VN will start to be sold in multiple stores from now on, completely removing the disaster if one goes out of business or pulls out of VNs or whatever.

6 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

Well I prefer if we just stop to discuss about conservative here, because I'm sure that it won't bring much productivity here.

Actually I don't think this has anything to do with conservatives. Real conservatives are pro law and order and anybody who use mob tactics is pro mob law and hence against what is normally considered law and order. Those behind this aren't conservatives, but rather some people who figured out how to gain power and like the feeling of ruling over other people.

Edited May 18, 2018 by tymmur

[TexasDice]

The real reason for all this is simply that America hates anime. I highly doubt that triple AAA games like Witcher and GTA, as well as non-anime trash like the reuploaded House Party will get hit. We actually have a precedent for this in the way the streaming platform Twitch deals with anime games; They refuse to. 

[VirginSmasher]

36 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

Mangagamer, Fakku Games and other adult sites that hosts VNs are doing the same. I mean, it makes sense. VNs with adult content on Steam are being nuked, and not all the companies releasing eroge in the west have their own storefront, so it's nice for them to have other sites to rely on for that. Hopefully we'll see more developers who before only relied on steam move over to sites such as Mangagamer, JAST etc, so that there are more options for both the developers and the fans.

4

And, inevitably, fewer sales unless these companies start promoting places other than their Twitter accounts. 

[tahu157]

6 minutes ago, TexasDice said:

Twitch deals with anime games; They refuse to. 

Never heard that before. Is it like a global ban on VNs and such? What about Guilty Gear or Blaz Blue? Or osu and other japanese rhythm games?

[TexasDice]

7 minutes ago, tahu157 said:

Never heard that before. Is it like a global ban on VNs and such? What about Guilty Gear or Blaz Blue? Or osu and other japanese rhythm games?

There is a list.

[Narcosis]

1 hour ago, Decay said:

Contrary to what a lot of people try to claim, suppression of sexual content like this is always spurred by conservative thought. Fundamentalist christians are the biggest advocates for the suppression of sexual content, and said fundamentalists are at the heart of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, formerly Morality in Media. They rebranded in an attempt to appeal to leftist movements but that doesn't change who they really are. To try to claim that they are radical feminists is hilarious to me.

None of the leftists I know are happy with this news.

Religion-based fundamentalists are the scourge of this world. The exact same fundamentalists committed numerous atrocities over the ages, including mass genocide, destruction of humanity's cultural heritage and both moral and political enforcement, all in the name of their own ideal vision of the world.

National Center on Sexual Exploitation has been involved with a rather large movement from a longer while now. That website is literally crowd-control based weaponized autism against creativity and freedom of expression. It's quite obvious majority of people that website is aimed at remain in the dark and have little to no knowledge about the subject in question, which makes it easier for the movement to quickly gather support and allies. It's quite silly to note, the website itself focuses on a bunch of large corporations with more or less precise policies that abide with the general law, leaving behind dozens of smaller companies and groups which do the same. A typical show-off to ensure the supporting parties they are doing "something".

As usual, it's just better to blame those godawful video games and introduce half-arsed actions, rather than take personal responsibility for their own parental failures and encourage proper sexual education and safety measures instead.  Little they know this won't actually fix anything, as they aren't even looking at the source of the problem and merely fighting the symptoms. It's a placebo action with nothing else aside of an desire to strengthen their own political position. Meanwhile this will only have a total adverse effect as it will hurt small game developers, stifle both creativity and market expansion of vns and create unwanted confusion amongst different parties and communities. Large companies will probably come out unscathed as they have both the funds and power to easily outmanoeuvre radicals threatening their businesses, which leads to no actual change and plenty of harm done, often against people who are least in the wrong.

Quote

JOIN THE MOVEMENT TO DEFEND DIGNITY

Clearly they're the last people to spout this kind of nonsense.

Quote

That's some top tier autism 👌

Edited May 18, 2018 by Narcosis

[ChaosRaven]

I'm not really getting it. Adult content wasn't allowed on Steam in the first place - that's nothing new. So if there's a campaign going on against titles with sexual content, it would imply that some titles broke the rules. And in that case it's just Valve cleaning up.

Though I don't really know which titles they are targeting precisely, except Huniepop. But since I never played it, I don't know if they really broke the rules or if the problem are the (free) adult patches. I mean, take the recent Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~ for example, I thought the H-scenes are cut from it, so why does it still have a 'Sexual Content' tag? If VN publishers don't play by the rules, it's not exactly surprising that Valve takes action. Especially if minors and/or rape are involved.

[Shaun]

4 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

I'm not really getting it. Adult content wasn't allowed on Steam in the first place - that's nothing new. So if there's a campaign going on against titles with sexual content, it would imply that some titles broke the rules. And in that case it's just Valve cleaning up.

Though I don't really know which titles they are targeting precisely, except Huniepop. But since I never played it, I don't know if they really broke the rules or if the problem are the (free) adult patches. I mean, take the recent Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~ for example, I thought the H-scenes are cut from it, so why does it still have a 'Sexual Content' tag? If VN publishers don't play by the rules, it's not exactly surprising that Valve takes action. Especially if minors and/or rape are involved.

Those tags have nothing to do with the developers or publisher of the game/visual novel, they are made by users and aren't official at all and sometimes are abused, there are also cases where tags are added that have absolutely nothing to do with the game.

I wouldn't take most of those tags seriously if I was you.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Shaun

[bakauchuujin]

Really hate when people who have no clue about the thing they are talking about get to influence things they have nothing to do with that doesn't cause any harm to anyone.

[Decay]

36 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

I'm not really getting it. Adult content wasn't allowed on Steam in the first place - that's nothing new. So if there's a campaign going on against titles with sexual content, it would imply that some titles broke the rules. And in that case it's just Valve cleaning up.

Though I don't really know which titles they are targeting precisely, except Huniepop. But since I never played it, I don't know if they really broke the rules or if the problem are the (free) adult patches. I mean, take the recent Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~ for example, I thought the H-scenes are cut from it, so why does it still have a 'Sexual Content' tag? If VN publishers don't play by the rules, it's not exactly surprising that Valve takes action. Especially if minors and/or rape are involved.

The issue is that there are no rules. Just a vague "no pornographic content" guideline with no further definition of what that means, and what specifically is and isn't allowed in your games. These games they're targeting now were specifically looked at and approved by Valve. Especially Kindred Spirits, MangaGamer specifically sent every single potentially questionable graphic to Steam and had them verify each one, and also made sure they played the game and gave it the okay. Kindred Spirits followed the rules, except now Valve decided that no, actually it doesn't follow the rules. 

Edited May 18, 2018 by Decay

[Happiness+]

I have two questions:

Can we receive more Ever17, Clannad, etc VNs that have no adult content in them? I would like to have more JVNs that don’t pamper to the sterotype that these are just all anime porn games. Especially when the porn is so irrelevant.

Why can’t steam just make a separate place on their market for all porn titles? Not just porn VNs but porn western games as well. They do cater to the same market anyway. So why not?

[Plk_Lesiak]

11 minutes ago, Happiness+ said:

Can we receive more Ever17, Clannad, etc VNs that have no adult content in them? I would like to have more JVNs that don’t pamper to the sterotype that these are just all anime porn games. Especially when the porn is so irrelevant.

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.

11 minutes ago, Happiness+ said:

Why can’t steam just make a separate place on their market for all porn titles? Not just porn VNs but porn western games as well. They do cater to the same market anyway. So why not?

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).

Edited May 18, 2018 by Plk_Lesiak

[Dreamysyu]

8 hours ago, adamstan said:

And maybe even it's not "Valve" but automatic system, similar to that utilised by FB? Meaning, if something gets flagged enough times, it gets pulled down (and nobody even checks it personally), or in the case of Steam - system generates generic warning to the developer - "Your game doesn't meet our standards. Change it or we remove it"? That would explain the vagueness of warnings, and lack of proper explanation what needs to be changed mentioned on Mangagamers blog.

If it's automatic, then how would they know that anything had been changed in the game when the time to delete it comes? Still, yeah, it's not entirely impossible that it has something to do with people reporting the games. 

3 hours ago, sarkasmus said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but Kindred Spirits doesn't have such a patch, right? It is still trageted by this.

Yeah, Kindred Spirits is basically the same game in both Steam and Mangagamer versions.

1 hour ago, tahu157 said:

Never heard that before. Is it like a global ban on VNs and such?

If you look through that list of the games banned on Twitch, about half of them are anime-style, even though there are literally hundreds of "normal" games that also violate their rules, but are allowed. The guy developing Yandere simulator did a few videos about this, here's the first one if you're interested.

34 minutes ago, bakauchuujin said:

Really hate when people who have no clue about the thing they are talking about get to influence things they have nothing to do with that doesn't cause any harm to anyone.

Welcome to politics!

7 minutes ago, Happiness+ said:

Why can’t steam just make a separate place on their market for all porn titles? Not just porn VNs but porn western games as well. They do cater to the same market anyway. So why not?

Why would Steam even bother with this? It's not their problem, they don't care about 18+ games to begin with. Also, considering that their livelihood doesn't depend on 18+ titles to begin with, they won't risk creating even more backlash from more conservative-thinking people, which will surely follow and has a risk of actually hurting their busyness.

[Happiness+]

18 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

Why would Steam even bother with this? It's not their problem, they don't care about 18+ games to begin with. Also, considering that their livelihood doesn't depend on 18+ titles to begin with, they won't risk creating even more backlash from more conservative-thinking people, which will surely follow and has a risk of actually hurting their busyness.

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

 

25 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

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).

 

I see your point here. This is exactly why I thought we should have a new marketplace last month. 

Because for all this complaining and whining about Steam, is there any solution?

 

26 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

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.

Yeah but why? Mangas don’t have this problem. Japanese video games don’t have this problem. Anime has grown to create separate market for this. However, JVNs continue to have porn as like this major selling point. So why is this the case? 

[Flutterz]

8 minutes ago, Happiness+ said:

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

Yup, America's a fun place. Want to buy a gun? Go ahead. Want to buy sex? Off to jail with you.

[Kawasumi]

lol