Steam game about raping women will test Valve’s hands-off approach - Sensationalist Headlines

Literally this though is the point. They only get involved in extreme, fringe cases. Everything else doesn't need to be dealt with.

With that principle in mind, we've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling. Steam Blog Almonds activated

Imagine being mad that your troll game isn't being allowed on a store market that has had a history of troll games that it wants to stamp out but doesn't want to tread on others. Glad Valve grew a pair but it still has a long way to go and it needs to have some better definitions.

Hmm, something happened here because this thread had nine unread posts but only Taliyah's is showing up.

I had great hopes for Valve's indie "revolution" with welcoming indies to the store and the Greenlight program... then they just spent the better part of a decade fucking up their own house from neglect and "genius" ideas. I hope nobody at Valve is surprised that the boundaries are being tested. It's going to keep happening until Valve's forced to commit to a well-defined shape of policy. The event log is the only trace of what happened and that's intentional.

The banning of this game gonna send a message to developers of sexual games that the "taste police" still exists and only scare them off like what happen some months ago when HuniePop and other games were about to be removed from Steam. Valve really needs to start communicating with developers, tell them what they can and they can't do on Steam, and maybe help them to make their game on the platform more "correct", in that way both parties gonna be benefited.

That was a lot of false information being spread around about what was happening and why.

Steam should pay me to go through all games that get submitted to Steam and sort them out and make sure they're kosher.

This statement doesn't do a good job answering why they took the game down. "Unknown costs and risks"? What the hell does that mean? It feels like they're avoiding giving any definitive reasoning in an attempt to dodge scrutiny and possibly for it conflicting with their previous policies. From what I've seen the game does look like "trolling" and that would violate Steam's guidelines, but why isn't that the answer given for its removal? FFS Valve have some consistent standards and try to communicate with your partners more effectively.

The emails that Valve sent to the developers were very real, and that was the reason that adult games are allowed now on Steam uncensored, they made that post about the stop being the taste police for this very reason.

They'll probably (rightfully) remove it due to being publicized under the guise of not allowing "Straight-up trolling" Hasn't this thing happened before? Yes it has. Some crap shovelware unity game called "School shooter simulator" IIRC

why did you have a list of games on steam about rape this readily available

Some made a throwaway account insulting us and the mods as "defending pedos and dog fuckers". His account probably got nuked which deleted his post and my response to it, not sure about the third one. So no, nothing scandalous.

I see no problem with the game in concept however if it exists purely as a troll then it shouldn't be there.

I think trolling is a fairly loose descriptor for this. What decides what makes it trolling? Just being provocative? Quality clearly isn't a problem given other games that are shit asset flips. If the game works, at what point is it unquestionable?

Valve themselves have said that it can't be easily defined, but my guess is that it encompasses low-effort trash made with the sole intention of inciting a reaction. From what I've seen, Rape Day could be considered that.

I’m curious to see if Rape Day will try to or can appeal this. If anyone sees updates on the devs response please post them here

Not an update but the dev's webpage said that if his game got shot down he would make alterations to make it more acceptable to Steam's guidelines. It's a bit weird, but he seemed sincere when he said that he wasn't trying to troll people or make anyone upset and that his game was just a dark comedy. How he expected people not to get upset with a name like Rale Day is beyond me. In fact, here is his response (from his website), Q: Your Game was banned from Steam, now What? A: First step is setting up sale for the game somewhere else. The next step is reaching out to other quality developers whose game(s) were banned, which include pornographic content and nothing illegal, to organize a niche site where you can purchase porn games that are too morally reprehensible for Steam. This will take a little time, for example finding the right payment processor for such a project. But don’t worry… it will happen.

man who cares if you fuck off and sell it on your own storefront shitty porn games have done that for YEARS I want the seal of Steam

Are "porn games" not allowed on something like Itch.io? I know they have an adult tag, and it would seem like the perfect other avenue to go to if your game is "too hot for Steam." Aren't there also already websites that are dedicated to hosting porn games already? Why not just put this game there?