Valve pulling a lot of Visual Novels for "Pornographic content" other games might also be removed

[Notional]

17 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

yeah I'm with you on the frontend side of things ._. I still have this "distribution company full of game devs who refuse to do human interface support" stereotype with them

 

that being said my interest of game genres rarely encounter that issue, but it still exists when i click a few certain recommendations

Indeed. But age verification isn't just present on NFSW games, but also action games like Borderlands and Dishonored where there is no nudity.

[Humbug]

44 minutes ago, Notional said:

Valve is starting to piss me off royaly. Everytime I try to watch a game on their store, I need to go through an age verification. Why isn't age baked into your profile, so the store can auto verify? It's so stupid.

 

My point? Well with age verification baked into the profile, you could add a setting for NSFW content. Like accept nude games/sex or not. It's idiotic to outright wipe out sexual content on the entire platform. Does this mean Metro Last Light will be banned as well? Or hell, The WItcher 3 is much worse in terms of nudity. 

This is true, I don't know why steam can't remember my birthday.

[ARikozuM]

3 minutes ago, Humbug said:

This is true, I don't know why steam can't remember my birthday.

It used to remember the last date you put in, but I agree that this would be a good thing to put in as an auto-bypass. 

 

Another thing to note is that some of the games that may be affected already have a disclaimer saying that the content may be ill-suited for audiences. 

Spoiler

 

[DrMacintosh]

How to lose a Customer real quick? This. 

 

Do you you want me to directly support the developers? Because this is how you get people to directly support the developers.

 

Guess Valve hates money if they want to cave to this religious group. I wonder how many games their group buys at all compared to the group that buys these games? What do they have over Valve? What would they be able to do if Valve legit just said:

“No.”

? 

They have 0 leverage since everything is behind an age wall and if you let your kids get past that, it’s on you parents! Not Valve!

 

Thankfully most of my favorite games offer their own clients.....

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

I'm going to guess these "visual novels" go through ESRB certification? If they are rated AO then I don't see an issue as most retailers won't sell AO games. But if they are rated M then it's an issue. As they should treat all games with in a rating class the same. 

Nah most of them aren't ESRB rated. In fact most games on steam aren't ESRB rated. You only need a rating to sell physical content in brick and mortar store's, and getting rated is prohibitively expensive and difficult for small indie developers.

 

Hell even a lot of nindie content on the Wii, 3DS, Wii-U and switch aren't ESRB rated, they just go through a review with Nintendo before being published.

[TimeOmnivore]

Some updates from a couple of the Developers of these games:

 

 

Seems Valve may be reversing at least some of their decisions - hopefully they will realize they were being complete idiots and not ban games (that have actual, working executable files and aren't malware) because a few prudes got their granny panties in a bunch.

[DrMacintosh]

21 minutes ago, TimeOmnivore said:

because a few prudes got their granny panties in a bunch.

 

[ARikozuM]

23 minutes ago, TimeOmnivore said:

because a few prudes got their granny panties in a bunch.

I'm gonna be the bigger man here and ...

 

[BANNED FOR STATING GENDER]

[Jito463]

I love how people are complaining that Valve shouldn't be allowed to curate what's on their platform, yet they never think through the consequences of what they're asking.  I've seen it argued in this thread that since there are people who will buy it, then it should be permitted.

 

What about rape games?  There's a market for them, should they be permitted?  What about games with pedo content?  There's a market for them, should they be permitted?

 

When your standards are lax, then it's the same as having no standards.  If Valve wants to adopt a standard that says these games aren't permitted, then so what?  It's not like they're blocking the ability for people to buy the games at all, just from buying them through Steam.  They (sadly) survived long before Steam permitted them onto the platform, I'm sure they'll find a way to survive if they get booted off.

[D13H4RD]

What I find hilarious is that games with mildly ~CENSORED~ stuff are considered inappropriate while games that openly show it alongside other heavily suggestive themes are like an open tollbooth.

 

The hypocrisy is laughable 

 

If you want to control content, fine, but do it in a way that does not punish those who actually want to play it (yes, some of us are weird dudes). 

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, Jito463 said:

When your standards are lax, then it's the same as having no standards.  If Valve wants to adopt a standard that says these games aren't permitted, then so what?  It's not like they're blocking the ability for people to buy the games at all, just from buying them through Steam.  They (sadly) survived long before Steam permitted them onto the platform, I'm sure they'll find a way to survive if they get booted off.

They don't really allow those kinds of games and, when they fall through the cracks, those games can be reported for review. You're also producing a fallacy by saying rape games are the same as HuniePop and others which are between two or more fictional, consenting adults. 

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

They don't really allow those kinds of games and, when they fall through the cracks, those games can be reported for review.

It was an example, as to why Valve should be allowed to curate the store as they see fit.

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

You're also producing a fallacy by saying rape games are the same as HuniePop

And you're arguing a fallacy, because it was already addressed previously that the aforementioned game isn't included in the ban.  Also, I never said they were the same thing.  Do you not understand the practice of using examples to emphasize a point?

[D13H4RD]

If Valve doesn’t want minors to get their hands on games that are considered suggestive, then they would need to do it in a better way.

 

I know it’s not easy, especially when you need proper verification, but banning them outright isn’t the way to do it because it creates a win-lose-lose situation. The ones who want it banned win while the developers lose out on a large potential userbase and said userbase have one less place to get it from. Granted, that userbase and the devs would probably find another place to give them their business but I digress.

 

Steam isn’t a lovey-dovey playground for kids. It’s the single largest digital distribution platform when it comes to PC gaming and it has a large content offering of all types. Obviously, there’s some regulation but we can safely say that it’s pretty lax especially when a kid can put a random old birthdate to gain access to the GTA V storefront and buy it 

 

I also have to state that while a game like HuniePop gets warned, games with more obvious suggestive themes like GTA are seemingly left alone.

Edited May 20, 2018 by D13H4RD2L1V3

[Humbug]

Huniepop devs must be enjoying a nice sales surge right now.

[TimeOmnivore]

17 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

When your standards are lax, then it's the same as having no standards.  If Valve wants to adopt a standard that says these games aren't permitted, then so what?  It's not like they're blocking the ability for people to buy the games at all, just from buying them through Steam.  They (sadly) survived long before Steam permitted them onto the platform, I'm sure they'll find a way to survive if they get booted off.

If Valve wanted to just get rid of all games on their platform that had any sort of suggestive content, that in and of itself would be fine - incredibly stupid and shortsighted, but fine. It's the double standard of saying games like The Witcher are fine, but then trying to ban suggestive games with an anime art style whilst only citing "pornographic content" as the reason is the main problem here. Curating their store with strict guidelines isn't a problem, but when you do that completely subjectively and seemingly randomly, you get to the point where developers don't have any idea what is and isn't allowed on the storefront - that's the problem.

 

Don't get me wrong, people would definitely be up in arms if Steam did implement such a drastic change in policy, but Steam would have a much stronger argument if they enforced those changes across the board, without picking and choosing what got to stay and what didn't.

[CyanideInsanity]

29 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I love how people are complaining that Valve shouldn't be allowed to curate what's on their platform, yet they never think through the consequences of what they're asking.  I've seen it argued in this thread that since there are people who will buy it, then it should be permitted.

 

What about rape games?  There's a market for them, should they be permitted?  What about games with pedo content?  There's a market for them, should they be permitted?

 

When your standards are lax, then it's the same as having no standards.  If Valve wants to adopt a standard that says these games aren't permitted, then so what?  It's not like they're blocking the ability for people to buy the games at all, just from buying them through Steam.  They (sadly) survived long before Steam permitted them onto the platform, I'm sure they'll find a way to survive if they get booted off.

So anime boobs are evil but not nuking a town, or going to town shooting up the populace? Postal and hatred are fine with their sole purpose being to murder, but if the sole purpose is bobs and vegana it shouldn't be allowed?

[Jito463]

Just now, CyanideInsanity said:

Postal and hatred are fine with their sole purpose being to murder

Can't stand either of those two games, either.  However, that's not the topic of discussion.

[CyanideInsanity]

6 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Can't stand either of those two games, either.  However, that's not the topic of discussion.

Sure it is. Its the whole double standard of eroticism vs violence problem. Gore out the wazoo is more than ok but show a bit more skin and you get the boot. Its a bit ridiculous to boot pornographic games but not these ultra violent ones, and you know there's not a chance in hell valve would cut ties to a massive seller like gta.

[Sniperfox47]

2 hours ago, Jito463 said:

I love how people are complaining that Valve shouldn't be allowed to curate what's on their platform, yet they never think through the consequences of what they're asking.  I've seen it argued in this thread that since there are people who will buy it, then it should be permitted.

 

What about rape games?  There's a market for them, should they be permitted?  What about games with pedo content?  There's a market for them, should they be permitted?

 

When your standards are lax, then it's the same as having no standards.  If Valve wants to adopt a standard that says these games aren't permitted, then so what?  It's not like they're blocking the ability for people to buy the games at all, just from buying them through Steam.  They (sadly) survived long before Steam permitted them onto the platform, I'm sure they'll find a way to survive if they get booted off.

A) I'd argue yeah they should be fine as long as they don't have real-life content. Those games while distastful aren't really harming anyone.

 

B) I don't think most people's problem is with them having limits on content, it's that those limits are so arbitrarily and hypocritically applied.

 

As mentioned above, games like HunniePop *did* receive the two weeks notice that their games were being taken down. That's since changed, but only because there was such outcry about it. The fact that they're supposedly decrying "sexual" content by threatening to remove relatively nonsexual indie-ish games, while leaving in places games with explicit sexual content from AAA developers is super hypocritical.

 

The problem is not that they're drawing a line, it's that the line they're drawing is shaped like a jerrymandeering border.

 

P.S. also not sure how it hasn't been brought up here, but there's also the fact that many of the games that got issued notices were *entirely* non-sexual games with queer content. It looks like Valve just got a list of games and sent out blanket warnings of removal to all of the names on it, without doing any checking of their own.

[Donut417]

5 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Nah most of them aren't ESRB rated. In fact most games on steam aren't ESRB rated. You only need a rating to sell physical content in brick and mortar store's, and getting rated is prohibitively expensive and difficult for small indie developers.

 

Hell even a lot of nindie content on the Wii, 3DS, Wii-U and switch aren't ESRB rated, they just go through a review with Nintendo before being published.

Which is surprising considering how much of a bitch fit several senators in the early 90s made. Thats why the ESRB exists is to keep the government out of the video game industry. If that is the case then Valve is in all its right to stop the sale, because they were never rated to begin with, so its up to the retailer to decide. 

[Uzume]

The problem with appeasing religious or social activists is that they will be back tomorrow with even greater demands. As funny as hating on the weebs might be to some, the hate will not end there. There has never been a period of time when gaming has not been the subject of some moral panic or another.

 

That special interest group was smart in targeting a despised sub culture to set a precedent in. You can count on that precedent being leveraged often in further campaigns.

[Xander Cousins]

Ugh I would love to voice my opinion but it kinda breaks the CS of the forum so I can really only say this, 

 

Why do people have to make mountains out of mole hills, Like seriously this Genre of games have been on Steam for Ages!!! and only now they are going hey lets get rid of them due to a company whining at us. In my personal opinion Steam technically have very little to do with who access those games as their is a portal gateway that asks for Age verification (you can lie on it obviously) but that is their  to confirm you are supposedly the right age to vie this content and thus removing Steam from being responsible for what said consumer does after said gateway. As you have token responsibility that you are 18+ and able to be 'mature' and make your own decisions on what you should n shouldn't do. On top of this really, I generally don't like people who go by "if I don't like it then it's wrong". I have many friends that use Smoke/E-Cigs and most I tell them is you may want to stop using them but ultimately it is their decision, I Respect their answer and they respect my despise for them, so usually if I'm around them they either won't smoke or they will stand where it isn't blowing my direction.  So yay

[Okjoek]

 

The corporatocracy likes to scapegoat stuff like porn, video games and similar art forms because they don't receive campaign contributions from them. It's to keep us distracted from bigger issues.

[Silentprototipe]

N O   N O T  M Y  N E P S 

 

[TacoSenpai]

On a pale red horse they came the sound of a million weebs raging on valve.  They know not the horde they have unleashed.

 

But seriously this is stupid.