Steam Rejected My Upcoming Visual Novel for Having “Adult Content” That Doesn’t Even Exist
Banning random eroge from the platform wasn’t enough, apparently.
Hey, ya’ll. My name is Jacob Cumiskey and I make Higurashi inspired visual novels about how much living in Florida sucks. The answer, of course, is very much, but that’s not why we’re here today. Those in the community that know about Siren’s Call: Escape Velocity already know. What matters for today is that I make visual novels and, hey, maybe you do too. In which case, I love you. And because I love you, I don’t want you to get crushed by the giant boulder that’s rolling towards us. I don’t want you to get hurt.
Cause this shit hurts bad. Really bad.
Even though I’m furious at Steam right now, please remember what I’m about to say here comes from a place of love. Not love for Steam and how they seem to ban games from their platform for seemingly no reason (CHAOS;HEAD NOAH two months before it was set to come out...cough...cough…), but love for you as a developer or you as a fan of the medium itself. Thank you for believing in visual novels and letting them change your life for the better in the same way they’ve changed mine.
Now, please, learn from these mistakes of mine as my life’s work gets crushed by Steam into complete vaporware.
A few weeks ago, I completed the beta for my second full length game, Siren’s Call: Second Wind. I was thrilled; play-testing had been going well and the general verdict was that it improved upon the mistakes of my first game, Escape Velocity, considerably. Other than writing the script, it was significantly easier to make Second Wind than game #1, as I had really learned the engine I was using inside and out. As such, it only took two years to make and 11,000$ (thank you assets from the first game) as opposed to Escape Velocity’s five years and around 25,000$.
I don’t like talking about those gross game development numbers typically, but I feel like it’s important to mention them so that the weight of this boulder rolling towards us can be felt properly. Perhaps your game cost less to make financially. Perhaps more. The money doesn’t really matter that much, other than me no longer being able to justify to my in-laws this “career path” of mine. Cash is just a means to an end, that end being making more visual novels. I need to make more visual novels. It’s a compulsion. To quote someone I love very much, “I gonna keep writing until I die!” Or, at least, I want to.
What matters more than the money, to me at least, is the time spent making the game itself. That time spend making a game is the crystallization of your soul. Your love.
But does any of this matter to an AI Steam Chat Bot?
Of course not. Siren’s Call: Second Wind got flagged for having adult content that doesn’t exist. Even though Steam spent a median time of 36 minutes playing a 10 hour game.
Please note that in Siren's Call: Second Wind, there is not a loose nipple to be had. No sex scenes. Nothing of that ilk. And no, that doesn’t mean I’m “against” eroge or anything stupid like that. Aoi Tori in particular might be one of my favorite visual novels of all time (Judith looking main heroine + religious overtones sold me immediately), I am just famously bad at writing sex scenes and have more fun making games without them.
Maybe it was the mature looking, all adult-aged cast that did it though? Or the fact that it’s a story about marriage and all that entails? Yeah, maybe it’s just a little too “adult” even though there is no nudity or sex to be had? The main character does use the word “masturbate” at one point! Maybe it’s that. So I’ll just get this totally-human Steam person to tell me what the issue is and then maybe I can…
...oh.
Right, 36 minutes median playtime.
Across 7 people (not 8 cause one of them was me play-testing on Steam).
Over the course of several weeks of “reviewing.”
What the fuck are we doing here Steam?
Legitimately what is the excuse?
Tell me what to "fix" with my game.
Tell me what is so over the line that my game needs to be paired with legitimate eroge/hentai games that I can’t possibly compete with. Tell me WHY you want me to falsely advertise my game with an “adult only” label that I cannot rip off?
But that’s when I remember that a boulder has no mouth to speak with. It just rolls forward and crushes everything in its path that doesn’t know any better.
So learn from my mistakes. I’m not saying you need to lie to Steam during your content review if you’re making a visual novel. Just remember that they are now flagging games with no nudity or sex scenes in them as “adult only.” Cult of Takumi for Hundred Line and Persona 5 are totally fine with their crew though. Remember that. Learn from it.
Before this point, I was spending about 25$ a day running Reddit adds to direct people to Steam and generate wishlists so that I had enough groundswell for people to, you know, be aware that my game exists when it launches. It was going well. As you can see from the above picture, we got like 3,000 wishlists since I launched the Steam page in January. Given that 10,000 is the metric for a “successful” pre-launch, a few more months of this would have put us within striking range.
But yeah, not doing that anymore. Steam might be the only way I can realistically recoup my 11,000$ loss from this game and keep making visual novels, but I don’t want to put more people in front of a fucking boulder. I don’t have much social media, but I’m gonna do what I can to just link people to itch.io instead from now on. I’ve emailed JAST about potentially bringing my games to their platform, because I heard they are compassionate people that give VN developers that have had their games purged from Steam a good home. I’m hoping they write back. I respect their legacy.
Really, the whole situation with Chaos;Head should have made this kind of thing obvious to me. But I was blinded by love. I wanted to keep making games. I still do. Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you’re a human with a heart in their chest that loves seeing how people react to the stories you need to tell.
But the human element doesn’t matter to Valve. To them, games are a product. End of story.
If I release a patch for Second Wind on Steam, I won’t be able to be vocal about it on Steam itself. They remove entire accounts for things like that. So, visual novel fans will see the black bars covering content I can only guess Valve considers to be “adult only,” get (reasonably) pissed, and then tie that negative feeling to the game. It makes sense. I’d be pissed too. The whole pipeline leaves a sour-taste in one’s mouth. Maybe a good publisher can smooth over that process. I don’t know. All I know now is that the feeling of joy I felt for getting my second visual novel in 7 years completed feels like a distant memory.
Maybe if I find more money, I’ll add legitimate porn to the game. I can become the game Steam thinks I am. Crowdfund some hentai after I’ve already done two crowdfunding campaigns. My Mom would understand. My Dad would think it’s funny. But I’d think of Aoi Tori and how much worse the porn in my game would be. Purple Software is too high of a bar for me. At least on that front.
No matter what happens though, please be aware that this is happening. The boulder here is only getting bigger. And we’ve gotta a find a way, as visual novel fans/developers, to either shatter that boulder to bits or, more realistically, circumvent it altogether.
Please be safe. Remember you are loved.
