Steam Has Eroge?!

[phersu]

So, Steam now has Huniepop and Sakura Spirit, both of which are games with nudity. Huniepop goes a step further, as it is eroge with sex scenes! Steam left them in!

 

Could this be the start of something new?

[Zakamutt]

More like easily uncensorable eroge, lol.

 

And nah, perhaps the status quo might be tenable (though the whole patch thing feels like something that might a crackdown at some point because prudefags), but I highly doubt they will sell straight-up eroge ever. There isn't that much to gain comparted to the losses they'd take.

[Decay]

Sakura Spirit doesn't have explicit nudity, and the Steam version of Huniepop omits the "sex scenes" (if you can call them that).

 

Basically companies are going to start releasing eroge on Steam but still have to censor them because Steam forbids actual pornographic content and they will never budge on that.

[Nosebleed]

Huniepop is no conventional eroge by any stretch of the imagination.

There's no h-scenes in it, you just play a puzzle game and you hear moans every time you hit a combo.

There's also no nudity in it, although there's a patch that shows the nude CGs.

Still, there is no dialogue going on, there's just a still picture you get when you complete the puzzle.

Also all the girls are most obviously over the age of 18. Except for Nikki who's 18.

And this warrants Huniepop an M rating, hence why it's on steam.

Sakura Spirit and Sakura Angels are not eroge either, there's no nudity, just very big breasts and cringe worthy writing.

Steam is still very far away from allowing eroge on their platform.

Though it had worse times, but it's still not ready to embrace full on eroge.

If anything you might start seeing patcheable eroge, i believe that's the safest path to take.

[Decay]

Probably the biggest reason you will never see actual eroge on Steam is the way transaction handlers deal with companies that sell pornographic material. Steam will immediately be labeled as a high risk business and the transaction fees they pay will skyrocket to exorbitant amounts. These hiked fees will apply for everything they sell. This could cut into their profits by more than the expected return from selling eroge, which would make the whole endeavor a wash.

 

The second biggest reason is one of public image, but eventually people accepted common video stores renting out pornography behind the curtain, so I don't think people would ultimately care that much. There is the issue of age verification. I can take a few minutes to walk to the corner store and buy funds for my steam wallet. Any kid is able to do this, and if their parents don't heavily restrict what they can do on their computer, they can buy whatever they want. They would have to find a better solution to prevent that.

 

Huniepop is getting away with publicly advertising a decensoring patch on the Steam forums, but Huniepop is also even more softcore than Skinemax. It's not clear if more traditional eroge with extensive sex scenes would be granted the same treatment.

[Suzu Fanatic]

Probably the biggest reason you will never see actual eroge on Steam is the way transaction handlers deal with companies that sell pornographic material. Steam will immediately be labeled as a high risk business and the transaction fees they pay will skyrocket to exorbitant amounts. These hiked fees will apply for everything they sell. This could cut into their profits by more than the expected return from selling eroge, which would make the whole endeavor a wash.

 

The second biggest reason is one of public image, but eventually people accepted common video stores renting out pornography behind the curtain, so I don't think people would ultimately care that much. There is the issue of age verification. I can take a few minutes to walk to the corner store and buy funds for my steam wallet. Any kid is able to do this, and if their parents don't heavily restrict what they can do on their computer, they can buy whatever they want. They would have to find a better solution to prevent that.

 

Huniepop is getting away with publicly advertising a decensoring patch on the Steam forums, but Huniepop is also even more softcore than Skinemax. It's not clear if more traditional eroge with extensive sex scenes would be granted the same treatment.

[krill]

There's also the country-by-country legal issues, don't know if Steam would want to keep track of which eroge is allowable in which countries.

[Zenophilious]

they all ready do that to a degree by blocking sales of games in regions where they are not allowed due to content.

Useful lists are useful.

Now, you know that your country bans a lot of games if it has its own page listing which games are currently banned.  Looking at you, Australia.

 

Apparently Steam doesn't care as long as the erotic content isn't directly available upon purchase, and requires a third-party patch in order to be available.  Proof: HuniePop is still up, and this tweet (if indeed HuniePop's creator isn't BS'ing, which wouldn't really make much sense for him to do...)  They'll have to okay more games similar to it to really prove anything, but...the possibility of Steam being okay with official 18+ content restoring patches, as long as they aren't listed on the game's page, is very real, or at least it seems to be.

[Coffee]

Yeah, censored...

To be honest I would rather support fan translators and the Japanese game itself. I mean it took until Clannad was already translated by fans to be translated by the company. I'm not wasting money on that.

[Alucard]

A "restoration" patch available freely but not on steam was how I figured they would/should do the grisaia games but it seems like they want to throw it under a different umbrella which is too bad because I'm more comfortable buying through steam than most other places

[Zenophilious]

A "restoration" patch available freely but not on steam was how I figured they would/should do the grisaia games but it seems like they want to throw it under a different umbrella which is too bad because I'm more comfortable buying through steam than most other places

Seems to me that FrontWing doesn't quite understand their American market, and Sekai pretty much kowtowed to them in almost every way.  They're basically trying to treat their American market in the exact same way as their Japanese market, when really, it's not popular enough in the west to get enough mainstream media attention to damage their image.  I can't blame them for wanting to be cautious, but I can blame them for, again, not adapting their tactics for a different audience, and basically screwing with us through Sekai (ie changing things at the last minute, making frequent demands, etc.).

[Dragoon]

I didn't even read what the rest said, but these are my mayor experiences with steam VNs.

• Shit translation.
• Over censored.
• Shitty fanservice.
• Mi ingliz vry gud i trenslate visuel novol.

All in all, apart from Narcissu, I can confidently say, stay away from steam VNs. (Get nekopara from somewhere else.)

I haven't played Planetarian yet, but it has no 18+ content anyway, so the story isn't modified as far as I know.

If somebody can comment on the translation quality of it, that would be great.

[Decay]

Nekopara's translation is actually identical across all versions of the game. Narcissu and Planetarian also use the same translations that were previously released but may be lightly edited (if they are, I don't know to what extent). The Insani translation released for Planetarian, which is what was used in the Steam release, is alright.

 

If a VN can hold up without the porn, I don't see any real reason not to get the Steam versions if that's what you want. Like, Cho Dengeki Stryker has barely any h-scenes at all and they're not particularly good and contribute nothing to the rest of the game, so the all-ages version of that is fine. But for Nekopara, it doesn't have enough substance to appreciate on its own merits, so I don't know why anyone would get the censored version.

[Dragoon]

It doesn't matter if it can hold up without the porn, I want to play the original version.

Also when I said nekopara, I didn't mean the translation, I meant that it's censored.

[Zakamutt]

Well, you shouldn't buy them on steam anyway and get them from a more direct source since Steam takes like a 30% cut, if at all possible. You pretty much always get a Steam key anyway.

 

The stuff that's on Steam that's not from MG/SP... yeah that tends to be pretty bad a lot of the time, though some decent enough stuff is up there as well.