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Steam appears cracking down on games with sexual content. Huniepop dev calls it "an anime titty holocaust".

Last posted May 22, 2018 at 11:11PM EDT. Added May 18, 2018 at 06:35PM EDT
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I accidentally predicted the future again. My bad.

Back onto the matter, it seems as though Valve has hit up some game developers via email regarding the graphically sexual nature of their games, warning them that unless they're adjusted, the games themselves are subject to removal from the platform.
A bunch of developers have been hit other than Huniedev, meaning that this isn't a localized issue, and could possibly affect all future titles on the platform.




Now, I know nothing of these games, nor do I want to know anything about them, this is kind of out of nowhere for Valve to do, as they've never really been one seriously police their site like this, and this specific genre is a weird pick out of all the other ones that could potentially be violating Steam's guildlines as of right now. Something must have happened for this to suddenly show up.

Time for my OPINION, not that it matters coming from a fucking furry haha.
I don't like anime, like, at all, and I won't be sad for these games to go, and I don't or can't sympathize with the developers because of it. This is either something Valve just woke up and realized, or they're fucking up somehow. Honestly, I don't think these types of games really belong on Steam, since they're more marketed as lewd stuff than actual video games that are meant to be engaging (AND YES THIS INCLUDES AMOROUS). I always say "if it takes two hands for me to play a porn game, you have failed at making a porn game."
My actual hope is that this is Valve's stepping stone into actually policing their marketplace so it can cull all the shit it constantly gets flooded with every day. This might just be a start for that. It's not a good one, and could probably be handled better, but it's a start. Lastly, I think this will just pass by and nothing will change, because there's simply too many weebs fans of these games for Valve to simply ignore.

Also this is just really funny to me. Huniedev made a hashtag for this whole situation, and it is just… wow.




EDIT: Added a tweet. Also, fuck I missed a few words in the title. It's supposed to be "Steam appears to be"
Last edited May 18, 2018 at 06:53PM EDT

Honestly I disagree about the part of these games not "belonging" on Steam. They should be allowed on Steam simply because they also deserve a decent marketplace to be in other than dlstie and I guess itch.io. Even if you don't like them, there are people who do and they are legitimate games (at least as legitimate as other games that share all the same characteristics EXCEPT the sexual content), besides it's not like Steam actually gives a shit how much of a "game" they are considering they have an entire section dedicated to movies as well.

If Valve is cracking down on sexual content then it is probably because some of their advertisers or partners are having some kind of issue. Valve is a beast that doesn't tend to move unless their finances are being threaten.

It is odd because the games that are mentioned are already censored on Steam. Depending on how far Valve is willing to take this they might ban game like the The Witcher series. They'll probably also crack down on nude mods and the such. GoG is becoming more appealing with each passing fuck-up. Even the goddamn Nintendo Eshop is starting to suppant Steam.

Yeah, while I'm sometimes known as excessively prude I don't like the feeling of this. I'm curious what caused this. Part of me was thinking some young kid lied about their age to get one of these games and then their parents found out and complained [Not going to lie, this was like 5 seconds worth of thinking). I'm inclined to agree more with Bravely Default that it may have been due to a partnership with someone.

I'm not a personal fan of these sorts of games. However, they are clearly marketed to an obvious purpose and clearly mark the fact they are not oriented towards "all audiences". It's not like someone entered in a cheat code and/or secret area in game marketed to everyone and found a bunch of explicit content. This has clearly been there from the start, and indeed was the primary focus of them. As such, I would think Valve would be smarter than to play dumb about "removing sexual content". Feels like asking Battlefield I to remove all references to any and all real world military conflicts.

The thing is about this is that a sjw group openly admitted to being behind this and to being working with valve on this.

Oh well Valve has been going to shit the past couple of years anyhow. /-9999999 votes
Joking aside I mean that in a financial standpoint; after they removed their quality control for new games they've only seen single digit growth year after year. If you're hosting 5000 new games a year but then you do something and allow 10000 new games a year but you're only making 10% more profit you're doing something wrong financially. Valve has done the same thing that killed cellphone gaming, they removed quality control for their stores but despite the store hosting twice as many games it's only making 10% more revenue. The law of diminishing returns is a bitch. If your store has twice as many brands of products that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to generate twice the revenue.

I also think Valve should just let them be there even though I never much cared about these kind of games either but it is weird that Steam suddenly goes after those. They were already censored anyway, so what's the problem here?

Also, how popular these kind of games usually are? If these games doesn't have a shit tons of fans, then there probably isn't much to do. Like BravelyDefect said, Valve is a beast, they already get shit tons of money all the time just from virtual items and have shit tons of users, so they probably don't give a fuck if they lose couple users.

>Huniepop, a Tetris-like dating sim with actual gameplay

Steam: "Destroy it"

>Walking simulators like Firewatch, where you can't lose and have no gameplay features but still costs half a AAA title because "the moments"

Steam: "Let's keep it"

Last edited May 19, 2018 at 03:30AM EDT

In this day, it's not acceptable for this "naked panic" to still last and porn to be so stigmatized. Especially jarring considering how much violent content Steam has which is not stigmatized.

Even when when this was done to "appease advertisers", the blame can go to the advertisers.

Also, according to an article those "sexual content" rules appear to be extremely vague and enforced selectively.

Also, when you were a child, do you remember how much sexual content on media did have a negative effect on you? Probably not.

Last edited May 19, 2018 at 03:52AM EDT

I'm just confused as to why non-anime-esque games with sexual content such as the Witcher or GTA 5 seem to be given a free pass here. I would be more accepting if there didn't appear to be this double standard; it seems more like an anti-anime or anti-culture-we-don't-like thing than an anti-porn thing.

Date the anime girl bad, but fuck and then opt to kill the prostitute fine, apparently.

https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2018/05/ncse-takes-credit-steam-censoring-removing-ecchi-games-visual-novels/59126/

"What’s interesting, however, is that games like Ladykiller in a Bind have not been affected. In fact, Valve broke their own guidelines regarding sexual content appearing in a game by allowing Ladykiller in a Bind to release on the platform uncensored. This is mostly because the developer, Christine Love, is part of the Social Justice Warrior indie-game clique, and has regularly been promoted by friends from the Leftist-media, including Polygon, Kotaku, and Vice."

I wouldn't mind this if it weren't for the fact that they're pulling a Twitch and being selective with their enforcing. Not to mention the fact that they're basically 3 years late to enforcing their own rules (which by the way are pretty damn vague).

The reason is definitely not quality control, as I'm pretty sure there are still non-functional shovelware available on steam. They opened the floodgates to trash, and don't seem to care unless someone pressures them about it.

When I mean someone apparently that someone is NCSE.

Freakenstein wrote:

>Huniepop, a Tetris-like dating sim with actual gameplay

Steam: "Destroy it"

>Walking simulators like Firewatch, where you can't lose and have no gameplay features but still costs half a AAA title because "the moments"

Steam: "Let's keep it"

Pretty much this. Sad really, I’d rather the walking simulators be ditched then games like Huniepop which have, gasp, actual gameplay.

Ashki wrote:

Pretty much this. Sad really, I’d rather the walking simulators be ditched then games like Huniepop which have, gasp, actual gameplay.

"But games with any sort of gameplay other than walking are too hard" -some video game developer

Joking aside turns out this group is the same group that thinks all porn is sexual exploitation. This group has a fair bit of political sway, cause they're the assholes responsible for that British law that is going to go into effect soon where you have to buy a porn permit to watch porn online. So yeah they're actually a threat.

Ben Gunn wrote:

https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2018/05/ncse-takes-credit-steam-censoring-removing-ecchi-games-visual-novels/59126/

"What’s interesting, however, is that games like Ladykiller in a Bind have not been affected. In fact, Valve broke their own guidelines regarding sexual content appearing in a game by allowing Ladykiller in a Bind to release on the platform uncensored. This is mostly because the developer, Christine Love, is part of the Social Justice Warrior indie-game clique, and has regularly been promoted by friends from the Leftist-media, including Polygon, Kotaku, and Vice."

>Trusting One Angry Gamer who's pretty much the Alex Jones of gaming.

chowzburgerz wrote:

>Trusting One Angry Gamer who's pretty much the Alex Jones of gaming.

What not to trust? Game is still avaliable in steam, as you can easily check, and features hardcore pornography.

Ben Gunn wrote:

What not to trust? Game is still avaliable in steam, as you can easily check, and features hardcore pornography.

One Angry Gamer is a radical GamerGate blogger who often writes articles about how "SJWs ruin everything" or something like that. As much as I oppose SJWs, I also oppose annoying anti-SJWs with that type of bias in their reporting.

chowzburgerz wrote:

One Angry Gamer is a radical GamerGate blogger who often writes articles about how "SJWs ruin everything" or something like that. As much as I oppose SJWs, I also oppose annoying anti-SJWs with that type of bias in their reporting.

Nice ad hominems.

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chowzburgerz wrote:

One Angry Gamer is a radical GamerGate blogger who often writes articles about how "SJWs ruin everything" or something like that. As much as I oppose SJWs, I also oppose annoying anti-SJWs with that type of bias in their reporting.

Nice community too.

"Ad hominem, short for argumentum ad hominem, fallacious argumentative strategy whereby genuine discussion of the topic at hand is avoided by instead attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself."

chowzburgerz wrote:

One Angry Gamer is a radical GamerGate blogger who often writes articles about how "SJWs ruin everything" or something like that. As much as I oppose SJWs, I also oppose annoying anti-SJWs with that type of bias in their reporting.

To be fair, I have yet to see a "SJW" not attempt to ruin everything.

Anyways, seems to me adult media could really use a decent (but separate) system like Steam.

Last edited May 19, 2018 at 03:13PM EDT

So apparently the boycott against Valve is starting. What the idea this turn is to spam Valve's inbox and cost them money reading all those emails. When Valve tried pushing paid mods they quit that shit was people were sending millions of emails and they have to read that cause they have to keep it open for help and support questions.

There's two ways this'll end: Valve gets tired of wasting millions of dollars have to wade through a tsunami of spam to answer legitimate help and support questions and cave to people OR Valve shuts down their entire help and support department entirely to stop the emails from coming in.

Tldr;

Allow asset flipping and you've annoyed gamers, push paid mods and you've made them angry, but take away their anime tiddies? Oh boy are you not going to like what's coming.

Last edited May 19, 2018 at 05:10PM EDT

YourHigherBrainFunctions wrote:

The thing is about this is that a sjw group openly admitted to being behind this and to being working with valve on this.

Oh well Valve has been going to shit the past couple of years anyhow. /-9999999 votes
Joking aside I mean that in a financial standpoint; after they removed their quality control for new games they've only seen single digit growth year after year. If you're hosting 5000 new games a year but then you do something and allow 10000 new games a year but you're only making 10% more profit you're doing something wrong financially. Valve has done the same thing that killed cellphone gaming, they removed quality control for their stores but despite the store hosting twice as many games it's only making 10% more revenue. The law of diminishing returns is a bitch. If your store has twice as many brands of products that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to generate twice the revenue.

The people behind it are National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), a puritan lobbying group. They're currently celebrating this and they plan to go after Mass Effect and The Witcher next.

Last edited May 19, 2018 at 08:01PM EDT

@Silent
I just read. Honestly this whole situation smells a lot like rogue employees being given too much freedom. Some shit from a ex employee at valve a long time ago pretty much said that the problem with valve is they give employees too much freedom to the point employees can choose what they do, which can be good but at the same time we have shit like this where employees are given the ability to do whatever the fuck they want before going through any sort of higher ups.

YourHigherBrainFunctions wrote:

@Silent
I just read. Honestly this whole situation smells a lot like rogue employees being given too much freedom. Some shit from a ex employee at valve a long time ago pretty much said that the problem with valve is they give employees too much freedom to the point employees can choose what they do, which can be good but at the same time we have shit like this where employees are given the ability to do whatever the fuck they want before going through any sort of higher ups.

I mean I don't think they were responsible but I definitely think they were a factor. Theresa May herself is quite the authoritarian puritan. She's been pushing for this kinda shit for years, even before she was PM.

In the end though, yeah, this definitely sounds like it could be some rogue employee shit. We'll see.

ballstothewall wrote:

I'm just confused as to why non-anime-esque games with sexual content such as the Witcher or GTA 5 seem to be given a free pass here. I would be more accepting if there didn't appear to be this double standard; it seems more like an anti-anime or anti-culture-we-don't-like thing than an anti-porn thing.

Date the anime girl bad, but fuck and then opt to kill the prostitute fine, apparently.

I don't know about The Witcher, but Grand Theft Auto 5 gives you the option to engage in sexual activities. Hunie Pop and the like is a game that doesn't give you that option and instead uses it for the main theme.

You're comparing an action flick with a sex scene to a porno here. You can skip the sex scene if it makes you uncomfortable but you can't with a porno since it's the entire premise.

YourHigherBrainFunctions wrote:

@Silent
I just read. Honestly this whole situation smells a lot like rogue employees being given too much freedom. Some shit from a ex employee at valve a long time ago pretty much said that the problem with valve is they give employees too much freedom to the point employees can choose what they do, which can be good but at the same time we have shit like this where employees are given the ability to do whatever the fuck they want before going through any sort of higher ups.

This is actually probably the result of an algorithm going rogue. Big companies like Valve rarely do their own curation. While there are people who are maliciously trying to get these games removed from the store I think Valve would have used an algorithm to pick out games with questionable content and flag them for removal. All this backlash is going to force someone to actually look at whether the games fit the guidelines or not.

BravelyDefect wrote:

This is actually probably the result of an algorithm going rogue. Big companies like Valve rarely do their own curation. While there are people who are maliciously trying to get these games removed from the store I think Valve would have used an algorithm to pick out games with questionable content and flag them for removal. All this backlash is going to force someone to actually look at whether the games fit the guidelines or not.

Uhhhh… Valve isn't one of those companies that relies on bots. The reason why it's not is that a problem a lot of tech companies are running into is called the hallucination problem where because current ai operate too much like a neuron it's often times unpredictable because sure those bots can handle objectivity it can't handle subjectivity well. To phrase this another way: if this was cause of a rogue bot said bot should be randomly flagging video games and marking them.

Considering this specifically hit anime games no it wasn't a bot, it was a person. If this was cause of a bot it should have been randomly targeting games like say A Hat in Time or such as well.

How to spot a rogue bot:

Last edited May 19, 2018 at 09:40PM EDT

The problem with bots tech companies are having is current ai programming wise operates too much like organic brains. The way you can spot the difference between a rogue bot and a rogue employee is that humans fundamentally have numerous contradictory morals, political beliefs, religious views, economic views and such that constantly conflict with each other and rather than admitting that they don't make logical sense will rationalize it away pretending to be bastions of logic and rationality in order to pretend to not be animals acting out on emotions and bias. Current bots because we don't have sapient ai whenever they break in random and totally unpredictable manners and act sporadically because they don't have any actual intelligence to them so they can't compartmentalize contradictions in logic.

"This wasn't because of rogue employees nor 'if you touch your peepee you go to hell' crowd it was cause of bots"
"Then why did it ONLY target anime games? Whenever bots break they randomly attack everything rather than just one thing in particular. If say Skynet was real then it wouldn't target military installations and would randomly bomb random locations without any rhyme or reason"

Tldr;

Last edited May 19, 2018 at 09:51PM EDT

YourHigherBrainFunctions wrote:

The problem with bots tech companies are having is current ai programming wise operates too much like organic brains. The way you can spot the difference between a rogue bot and a rogue employee is that humans fundamentally have numerous contradictory morals, political beliefs, religious views, economic views and such that constantly conflict with each other and rather than admitting that they don't make logical sense will rationalize it away pretending to be bastions of logic and rationality in order to pretend to not be animals acting out on emotions and bias. Current bots because we don't have sapient ai whenever they break in random and totally unpredictable manners and act sporadically because they don't have any actual intelligence to them so they can't compartmentalize contradictions in logic.

"This wasn't because of rogue employees nor 'if you touch your peepee you go to hell' crowd it was cause of bots"
"Then why did it ONLY target anime games? Whenever bots break they randomly attack everything rather than just one thing in particular. If say Skynet was real then it wouldn't target military installations and would randomly bomb random locations without any rhyme or reason"

Tldr;

Valve has curating algorithms much like YouTube's that are supposed to sort out all the games on the storefront and recommend relevant ones to you based on your preferences. Valve has hundreds of games going up on the store weekly sometimes even a hundred of games going on the store daily; the sheer volume of which precludes any meaningful Human oversight for any more than a few of the games. And like Youtube's system, Valve's is riddle with imperfections that causes all sorts of fuck-ups.

I am not denying that their is some deliberate malicious intent with the games being removed from the store, just that there is the possibility of some gross incompetence on top of it, after all they love each others company. Either way someone needs to get fired for this.

Ultimately, this is all a problem of Valve being to large to sustain itself at times. Valve is the slumbering giant, unwilling to do anything until someone lights a fire under their ass at which point they'll jettison their content creators in order to save themselves. And then it is up to the consumers, the people who should be their actual earners, to right them. As far as I know GoG hasn't had any complaints, both of Huniedev's games and the entire Witcher series are still there.

@BravelyDefect
"Valve has curating algorithms much like YouTube's that are supposed to sort out all the games on the storefront and recommend relevant ones to you based on your preferences."
I'm not trying to be rude, but this shitstorm was 100% caused by a rogue employee. It wasn't caused by a bot or such. If it was caused by a rogue bot it would be randomly targeting games not specifically and only targeting anime games.

Plausible deniability only works if the person you're trying to debate is a moron.

Last edited May 19, 2018 at 10:40PM EDT

Carrie Enright wrote:

I don't know about The Witcher, but Grand Theft Auto 5 gives you the option to engage in sexual activities. Hunie Pop and the like is a game that doesn't give you that option and instead uses it for the main theme.

You're comparing an action flick with a sex scene to a porno here. You can skip the sex scene if it makes you uncomfortable but you can't with a porno since it's the entire premise.

I can accept that as a fair counterpoint, aye. I see the difference between the kinds of media you're talking about when you compare it to movies and porn.

A Wolf wrote:


I accidentally predicted the future again. My bad.

Back onto the matter, it seems as though Valve has hit up some game developers via email regarding the graphically sexual nature of their games, warning them that unless they're adjusted, the games themselves are subject to removal from the platform.
A bunch of developers have been hit other than Huniedev, meaning that this isn't a localized issue, and could possibly affect all future titles on the platform.




Now, I know nothing of these games, nor do I want to know anything about them, this is kind of out of nowhere for Valve to do, as they've never really been one seriously police their site like this, and this specific genre is a weird pick out of all the other ones that could potentially be violating Steam's guildlines as of right now. Something must have happened for this to suddenly show up.

Time for my OPINION, not that it matters coming from a fucking furry haha.
I don't like anime, like, at all, and I won't be sad for these games to go, and I don't or can't sympathize with the developers because of it. This is either something Valve just woke up and realized, or they're fucking up somehow. Honestly, I don't think these types of games really belong on Steam, since they're more marketed as lewd stuff than actual video games that are meant to be engaging (AND YES THIS INCLUDES AMOROUS). I always say "if it takes two hands for me to play a porn game, you have failed at making a porn game."
My actual hope is that this is Valve's stepping stone into actually policing their marketplace so it can cull all the shit it constantly gets flooded with every day. This might just be a start for that. It's not a good one, and could probably be handled better, but it's a start. Lastly, I think this will just pass by and nothing will change, because there's simply too many weebs fans of these games for Valve to simply ignore.

Also this is just really funny to me. Huniedev made a hashtag for this whole situation, and it is just… wow.




EDIT: Added a tweet. Also, fuck I missed a few words in the title. It's supposed to be "Steam appears to be"

i like anime although the things i like aren't anime tiddies….this is concerning. like i'm not mad, but if a art game wanted to do sexual content, it's gonna have a hard time.

So in response companies are releasing their anime games on GoG. Steam has managed to piss off the video game industry enough they're starting to release their games elsewhere.

@ewolf Protip for the future, try not to quote the OP, as it tends to lead to page stretching.
Then again, it's been hidden due to low karma, so I guess that negates the stretching part in this case.

Skeletor-sm

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