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Bokuten - Why I Became an Angel is now available on the MangaGamer store and Steam!


NowItsAngeTime

Favorite girl?  

10 members have voted

  1. 1. Favorite girl?

    • Aine
      3
    • Naruko Nakizaki
      4
    • Yuri Hisaka
      3
    • Minamo Wakamatsu
      0
  2. 2. Favorite route?

    • Aine
      6
    • Naruko Nakizaki
      2
    • Yuri Hisaka
      2
    • Minamo Wakamatsu
      0
  3. 3. Favorite Common Route Chapter?

    • Chapter 1
      0
    • Chapter 2
      3
    • Chapter 3
      2
    • Chapter 4
      2
    • Chapter 5
      0
    • Chapter 6
      1


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Honestly tired of this type of drama. Well, I wasn't really going to buy this VN on Steam to begin with, but it sucks that this stuff will always mean that the sales will drop eventually. I just hope that most people who were interested in buying this game on Steam already did it.

Just using this opportunity to say that, while I haven't played this game yet, the OP is pretty great

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Hm, seems like I could at least find some info why Germany is a special case here:

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

Apparently the age protection of Steam isn't good enough to ensure that only adults get access to titles with explicit content. I think I heard that some time before already, but it seems like they are getting serious now. I checked all titles I own on Steam and it seems only Acting Lessons and Being A Dik are banned so far, although I can still access them in my library. However, the vast majority of the titles I own on Steam are all ages, even if many of them have optional adult patches. Evenicle is banned as well, even if I don't own that. The only titles left with adult content in my library are Depraved Awakening, Kara no Shoujo and the Funbag Fantasy series. I expect those to be banned soon as well. Fortunately, they at least don't seem to care about the adult patches.

That said, apparently the age protection is good enough for USK 18 titles like The Witcher 3 - surely there's no disturbing content to be found there that might be inappropriate for kids. I wonder... *sigh*

Still, at least there's some logic behind what they are banning, which can't exactly said for random bans like the one of Bokuten in all countries.

Edited by ChaosRaven
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Quote

Update 8:47pm CT, July 31: When reached for comment, MangaGamer’s PR Director John Pickett told the Daily Dot that the publisher received an email from Steam several hours after Bokuten was removed from Steam. The representative with Steam responsible for the ban claimed MangaGamer had “added sexual content” to the game “that would not have passed our content review process,” according to Pickett. Pickett refuted this claim by stressing that no material was added to the game since its release on Dec. 19, 2019.

After contacting Valve for comment, Valve’s Vice President of Marketing Doug Lombardi said Bokuten was removed after discovering an external patch that activated adult scenes with underage characters. “In our initial content review, we missed content hidden in the game’s depot that features adult content with underage characters,” Lombardi told the Daily Dot. “While not accessible in the game itself without an externally acquired patch, we were distributing that content depot through Steam, therefor[e] the game would not have passed our content review. We’ve notified the developer, and improved our content review process to avoid this in the future.”

Pickett called Lombardi’s statement “incorrect,” as Bokuten’s adult material must be added externally, which he compared to downloading an adult Skyrim mod. “We took painstaking care to ensure that there was no adult content in the all-ages edition distributed on Steam and Discord [Store]. There is mature content befitting a mature title, but there is no adult content in the build provided by Steam,” Pickett said. “Our company does offer an adult-patch, and adult content is contained in the patch available solely on our own website and our servers. No adult content is distributed through Steam servers for Bokuten.”

Pickett also denied that the game’s 18+ patch activated scenes involving underage characters engaging in sexual acts. He argued Lombardi’s allegation was “a serious claim,” albeit “not the first time Valve has made such as false claim, as demonstrated with The Expression: Amrilato.”

“At present we’re hoping this issue can still be resolved amicably and we can see Bokuten restored to Steam,” he told the Daily Dot, “but this does give cause for all visual novel developers to worry when Steam can make such a claim and take such action after a title has been reviewed and cleared for sale.”

As for whether MangaGamer itself is being targeted by Steam, Pickett pointed out that Valve’s content reviewers appear “biased to consider anything with anime art as ‘sexualizing minors,'” such as overreacting to games with characters wearing schoolgirl uniforms. He criticized Valve’s propensity for providing no clarifying information on what offensive content needs to be changed, as Valve neither shows consistency in its decisions nor does it give publishers an option to alter and resubmit their games, he said. “We would love nothing more than for Valve to have clear, uniformly enforced content standards. If there were clear standards we would happily make every effort to abide by all of them, but there aren’t. Valve is making arbitrary decisions that vary day-by-day, person-by-person, and they’re not applying those same decisions, those same ‘standards’ to other publishers and especially not to major AAA publishers.”

 

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Finally some insights of what has happened. Since adult patches for VN's are fairly common, I wonder how they got the idea that this one in particular was just activating hidden content. I assume that MangaGamer is telling the truth here, so I guess a hater probably claimed that he can prove that the title has hidden adult content in its files and Valve fell for it.

But well, at least there's some communication going on again, so hopefully the case can be clarified now.

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As for the all age version, apparently there's still some 18+ CG left behind in the all age (ie Steam) version. Here's the post in question from Reddit, and I'll quote it below.

Quote

Well, I can confirm that there is 18+ content left in the game files of the Steam version (I didn't install the 18+ patch so it's all ages version).

Here's proof (NSFW obviously):

link

link

link

link

I'm gonna guess that's what got it banned.

Not all H-CGs were included. Only some were left in there while most got removed.

EDIT:

Added another one. If anybody doesn't believe me, feel free to open "data02000.arc" using GARbro.

EDIT 2:

Before anyone starts saying I'm defending Valve or anything. I'm not. I feel like they should have contacted MangaGamer and let them know there is 18+ content left in there instead of outright banning the game from Steam.

The screenshot if you need some more proof.

Spoiler

zLnKARj.png

I guess I can say that Valve did really check Bokuten thoroughly (Probably including using GARbro), so that they decided to give the ban. What I can say is that while I did comment that Bokuten's plot is like soap opera (Especially at Yuri's route), it's still not right to outright banned it. Although if I may give some more speculation, seeing the middle school girl uniform (Even though the middle schooler in question is as evil as soap opera villains) and rape surely give Valve some alarm to check on Bokuten, although whether it's caused by some troll who report on Bokuten or not is another matter (Some did speculate that the ban was caused by the report).

Edited by littleshogun
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Well, if they really left some H-CG's in the data archives of the game, they can only blame themselves this time. They should know the routine by now and how critical Steam are in that regard and should have done a final check before releasing it. Checking the images is certainly the easiest thing among all data sources.

That said, they are still human and make mistakes like all of us. So they probably just missed the CG's somehow - shit happens. The adult patch probably just adds copies of it, instead of using the left-over images. I hope they can clear up the misunderstanding fast now and think about ways to ensure that it doesn't happen again. It's just annoying and additional work for both sides.

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Good for Mangagamer then, although Valve can be nicer though when it came to warn the hidden 18+ contents. Then again, maybe they're swamped by a ton of game to review and thus too tired to write an e-mail about hidden contents to Mangagamer. I still think that Bokuten here have soap opera plot, but in any case at least I didn't need to worry about whether Musicus will be released on Steam or not later.

Edited by littleshogun
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After some discussion at certain Discord server, I decided to complete this. So is that mean that I wouldn't think that Bokuten have soap opera plot anymore after I finished this later? Well perhaps I'll find out about that by myself later. As for my comment, like back at Deardrops I'll going to comment each routes along with usual VA info.

Edited by littleshogun
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