Industry was using Steam, the publishers sold much less or were using Kickstarter, which is much riskier and much On the platform, and these sales wouldn’t have been possible otherwise without Steam. Great example of this is the release of Clannad: when it came out on steam it was the 3rd best selling game Steam has been stabilizing the Visual Novel industry and lead to sales numbers otherwise impossible.
Steam eroges Pc#
General use other platforms to sell their games? You already know that answer: Visual Novels are and have beenĭependent on the PC platform for decades at this point and when people buy PC games in the West, they get the gameįrom Steam. It is at this point where you might ask - Why can’t Eroges and Visual Novels in Whims of a platform owner, the risk is even higher.
Without transparency, a platform cannot be trusted: here’sĪlready a level of risk to quit your day job and put your heart and soul into what you love, but now because of the Valve takes the higher road and explains their decision. As a fan of Visual Novels, a fan of PC gaming in general and a fan of the platform as a whole, I hope that EvenĪs a detractor of these games though, it’s clear to me that this is a terrible thing for the Visual Novel industry asĪ whole. I’m not particularly fond of ecchi Visual Novels and have been on record forĬomplaining about them because of this exact stigma they put on the entire Visual Novel medium/genre as a whole. Visual Novel devs can see their livelihood and income disappear in an instant. With a completely arbitrary decision, and even if you follow Steam’s rules, In the future this could easily extend to anyone who even makes visual novels no matter how ‘sexy’ they might appear to be. Games are being pulled simply because they look a certain way and there is a stigma behind the look of a game. This take down is only of Visual Novels, and sends a message to Visual Novel devs that they aren’t welcome on the platform. There is a complete lack of transparency here, and what this means is that if Valve doesn’t like your particular game, it can now just use it’s power as the holder of the platform and take down your game from the platform. Hell, Lupiesoft’s publishers Mangagamer meet with valve in person and asked if ecchi material was OK on the platform, but have now done a complete 180. Both of these games on steam are censored so neither of these games are actual eroge, they haven’t violated Valve’s guidelines, and Valve has not specified what in particular caused these games to be taken down. TL DR though: Both of these devs got warnings that games will be taken down because of reports of “pornographic content”.