Visual novel developers who have mature-themed games on Steam are reeling from what developer MangaGamer is calling Valve’s “sudden and abrupt policy shift.” Valve, which owns and operates the Steam PC gaming service, has notified MangaGamer and certain other developers that they have until the end of the month to remove pornographic content from their games. This is a reversal from Valve’s publicly stated position that it does not want to decide what its customers can buy or not as well as its desire to remain transparent to its development partners.
Valve’s new policy (or its newly enforced policy) affects almost exclusively games with anime-style characters and artwork. MangaGamer’s Kindred Spirits line, for example, is a visual novel about setting up couples in a school. The developers of these games all admit that they deal with sexuality, but most argue that they are not pornographic. That is MangaGamer’s position regarding its products on Steam.
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