Steam Is Banning Sex Games With Young-Looking Characters
https://tinyurl.com/ybh4zgyo
These days, anything goes on Steam, but not anything anything. If games are “
illegal, or straight up trolling,” Valve says it’ll send them packing. In
the past, that’s meant low-effort games with titles like Big Dick and MILF,
achievement spam, and certain sex games.
Now, according to some developers, Valve is going after games that feature
themes of “child exploitation,” which it seems to define, at least in part,
as games with sex scenes or nudity where the characters are in high school.
Over the past few weeks, the company has removed the store pages of several
visual novels, including cross-dressing yaoi romance Cross Love, catholic
school adult visual novel Hello Goodbye, “story about the love between
siblings” (yuck) Imolicious, and cat girl game MaoMao Discovery Team. The
developers of these games all claim to have received similar emails stating
that their games could not be released on Steam.
“While we can ship most titles on Steam, we found that this one does feature
themes of child exploitation,” read the email received by Top Hat Studios,
makers of Cross Love. “Because of that, the app has been banned and cannot
be reused.”
There are a couple ties that bind the games in question: 1) Cross Love, Hello
Goodbye, and Imolicious feature school settings, and 2) all four of the
aforementioned games contain adult elements and center around anime-styled
characters who appear young—in some cases uncomfortably so. However, their
developers have taken to protesting the bans on social media, saying that
their games have been misunderstood. They all claim they’ve reached out to
Valve since receiving their bans, only to be met with silence.
Cross Love’s developers say they’ve taken great pains to ensure that their
game demonstrates, on multiple occasions, that its students are of age. This
includes scenes where they peruse 18+ manga and are ID-ed before being
allowed into an adult bookstore.
“These scenes aren’t there to be artificially shoehorned in, and while they
do exist as further proof of characters’ ages (beyond the disclaimer in the
beginning that explicitly states them as being 18), the real reason they’re
there is to further many of the themes in the story,” said developer Top Hat
to Kotaku in a Twitter DM, pointing out that it’s tried to contact Valve
with this information six separate times, to no avail. “A large chunk of the
story is about accepting who you are, being comfortable with yourself, and
altogether similar themes within a type of coming of age-style love story,
which isn’t really seen in most yaoi games.”
“While we can ship most titles on Steam, we found that this one does feature
themes of child exploitation.”
Other games are more questionable. Imolicious’ developer claims there aren’
t “any children” in the game, but it revolves around school girls. When I
pointed out that most school girls are, by definition, children, developer
Yume Creations replied in a DM: “High school students aren’t children, they
are teenager[s].” Most teenagers in high school are still minors, so that
rationale doesn’t really hold water. The developer also noted, however, that
“in [the] case of Imolicious, I added a disclaimer that all characters [are]
over 18 like you can see in most visual novels.”
They’re not wrong: This is a trend among visual novels featuring adult
material—and more broadly among “loli” anime, which tends to feature
suspiciously young-looking women who are said to be over 18. But while some
take these declarations at face value, others view them as obvious (and
creepy) fig leaves.
“Having a disclaimer stating that a drawing is of consensual age or not is a
ridiculous thing to rely upon,” said one user in a Steam forum thread
discussing MaoMao Discovery Team’s legality. “At the end of the day, it is
a fictional drawing that does not have an age. If you think they look too
young, then they are too young. A bit of text saying ‘this person is 20'
changes nothing.”
Which brings us to the heart of the matter: It’s Valve’s store, and what it
says goes. If someone at Valve decides characters look too young, then they’
re too young. Top Hat, however, believes there’s a double standard at play
here, not unlike the one some developers felt they’d fallen victim to before
Valve officially allowed uncensored sex games on Steam. Other games that
feature young-looking characters, school settings, and romantic/sexual
themes, like Nekopara Extra, Sakura Sakura, A Piece Of Wish Upon The Stars,
and Material Girl, are all still on Steam, Top Hat pointed out.
Kotaku reached out to Valve to ask about the rationale behind banning certain
games, but has yet to hear back.
Imolicious developer Yume Creations says it’s given up on trying to get the
game on Steam, opting instead to release an uncensored version on internet
hentai capital Fakku. In a Steam post, MaoMao’s developers made it sound
like they, too, are throwing in the towel. But while Top Hat has put Cross
Love up on other stores like Itch.io and Nutaku, it’s still giving Steam the
old hopefully-at-least-college-age try.
“Steam is a major service, and we had hundreds of players looking forward to
buying the game there upon release,” Top Hat said. “The game had wishlists
in the thousands, and the community group had several hundred people in it.
This is a very large userbase to lose out on, and it hurts us pretty bad. It’
s not world ending, but it is quite the end of the year blow.”
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關鍵字：Child Exploitation 兒童削剝
所以Cross Love、Hello Goodbye、MaoMao Discovery Team這些遊戲才會被刪除頁面。
兒童削剝呀！不意外就是了，這在美國是逆鱗級的議題。