Lately, everything goes on Steam, from big AAA game to small 2Mb game from some nameless independent studio in Japan. However, everything doesn't mean everything. Valve (owner of Steam) would kick out any game that is just straight trolling or illegal. Some obvious examples like MILF and Big Dick, which are indeed sex games or spam have been sent packing by Valve.
Following some inside developers, we have got the news that Steam is now going after child porn and “child exploitation” games. So basically, every game that has nudity or sex games with the child or student like characters are the targets of Steam.
The blacklisted games
Steam has been removing game pages for a few visual novels game already over the last month. The list includes MaoMao Discovery Team with cat girls, Hello Goodbye a visual novel in a Catholic school setting, Cross Love a yaoi cross-dressing romance and Imolicious. All the developers of these titles said that they have received emails from Steam say that their games couldn't go on the platform.
In the email received by developers of Cross Love - Top Hat Studios, Valve says that their game is banned from Steam, because of its child exploitation contents.
We couldn't help but notice some common points in all the games that have been banned: 1) All of them set on a school environment/ setting 2) Not only they all contain adult content, but they also have main characters in anime-styled who are young or student.
The developers' opinions
But still the developers of these game have protested on various social media channels, they say that Valve has misunderstood their games. According to them, they have been trying to reach Valve since the bans but Valve hasn't replied anything yet. Top Hat Studios says that the students in their game are of age, and in their game, they have taken various measures multiple times to ensure that the players would know that. When talking about players who specifically looking for child characters, Top Hat Studios confirmed that their game isn't for that type of player and they made no attempt to deliver such content.
The question is more unclear for other games. The developer of Imolicious said that there aren' children but school girls in their game. But when we questioned them that "Aren't school girls are children ?", Yume Creations replied that they aren't, school girls are teenagers. However, the majority of girls in high school still are minors, so Yume Creations did not have a point there.
Valve is absolute on Steam
To the main subject of the whole matter: Steam belongs to Valve, it is a Valve store, and Valve has the right to decide for its store. If Valve determines that this character's appearance is too young, then it is too young. However, Top Hat Studios believes that their characters' appearances are surely above the "too young" standard. Moreover, Top Hat says that this policy is a double standard from Valve because other games with and romantic/sexual themes, young/child-looking characters, school settings, like Material Girl, Nekopara Extra, A Piece Of Wish Upon The Stars, and Sakura Sakura have still remained on Steam. Top Hat feels that Valve was unfair with them because these games are maybe even more egregious than their game but they still stick on Steam, but others like theirs were banned.
Where will they go?
Kotaku has asked Valve for how and base on which criteria, Valve choose games to ban, but no answer so far. Yume Creations the developer of Imolicious has already given up on the Steam platform and will try to release an uncensored version on Fakku - a capital internet entail platform. In a post, MaoMao’s developers sound like they are giving up too. Finally, Top Hat has put their game on Nutaku and Itch.io, but they still hoping for a come back on Steam.
According to Top Hat Studios, Steam is a major game distribution platform, it is THE WAY to get your game to the world, so they had lots of players who are ready to purchase and play their game upon its release. Their game was in the wishlists of thousand players, and it had hundreds in the community group. This is a huge player base for them, and losing is a major hit for Top Hat Studios. Quite a hit at the year's end.