Developer Blames "American Culture" for Greenlight Ban

[axlryder]

Pure sex games are, by and large, synonymous with overly-simplistic garbage designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. This game appears no different. Steam has some semblance of class and quality, no reason to resort to selling crappy sex games you'd find on Newgrounds. Just as I don't want to be browsing a mall and have sex posters shoved in my face, I'd rather not have to see that stuff on Steam.

 

[StriderShinryu]

I do find this rather odd given that it was on the Greenlight service. The whole point of the service, as I understand it, is to see what the Steam uaer base supports and wants to see on Steam itself. From what I've seen and read about the game, it wasn't particularly offensive, and If the game was bad or not wanted it would never have made it onto Steam anyway.

If it's going to start cherry picking games for Greenlight content wise, I think, at the least, Valve needs to be more explicit about what they deem "offensive."

 

[LadyTL]

I do find this rather odd given that it was on the Greenlight service. The whole point of the service, as I understand it, is to see what the Steam uaer base supports and wants to see on Steam itself. From what I've seen and read about the game, it wasn't particularly offensive, and If the game was bad or not wanted it would never have made it onto Steam anyway.

If it's going to start cherry picking games for Greenlight content wise, I think, at the least, Valve needs to be more explicit about what they deem "offensive."

They can't make a list of what is offensive because the moment they do some jerk will make a game using everything that isn't on the list and then throw a fit about how it should be allowed because it wasn't on the list.

 

[axlryder]

Maximize your relationship score with one of the four main female characters and you win the game, getting yet another erotic cut scene as a reward.

Women are a sex vending-machine; max our your points, put in enough friendship tokens and you get to have sex with them!

*sigh*

Not far off from people in the real world, really. *take to dinner* *be witty* *buy nice purse* *get sexed*
Sure, there are a few more variables to consider, but the general mentalities are hardly all that different.

Art imitates life.

 

[Jobbie]

I am sure you could find other ways of selling your game. It just won't be on steam. I wouldn't label all of America as prudish. Have you seen the AVN awards? Sex is everywhere in the US and it's never been stronger. It's Valve's company, it's Valve's choice. Get over it.

 

[axlryder]

Maximize your relationship score with one of the four main female characters and you win the game, getting yet another erotic cut scene as a reward.

Women are a sex vending-machine; max our your points, put in enough friendship tokens and you get to have sex with them!

*sigh*

Not far off from the real world, really. *take to dinner* *be witty* *buy nice purse* *get sexed*

Art imitates life.

Ironically, I would imagine people that attempt to treat meeting a partner like that wouldn't get much sex.

You'd sadly be very wrong. Of course, money and looks help quite a bit.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Not only was the game made by a woman, I'd be willing to bet all my sex tokens that over 80% of the audience of this type of game is female too.

Burden of proof is on you for that one, buddy. Until then, your numbers don't mean anything.

Oh and not that it matters, but the game was co-written by a woman. But, again, why would the gender of someone behind something make it any less fucking stupid >_>

Women account for 74% of casual gaming: http://www.kefsensei.com/blog/game-industry/casual-games-report-2007/
The average social gamer is a 43 year old female: http://www.conceivablytech.com/426/products/the-next-frontier-female-gaming-demographics
"Snack-based" casual gaming appeals to women: http://www.news.com.au/technology/women-fuel-4bn-casual-games-industry/story-e6frfro0-1225935831836
Most casual gamers are women: http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=1414
70% casual gamers women: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/tech/Video-Game-Moms-142869815.html

Besides all that, vacuous 'relationship' based social games, in the same way as 50 Shades of Gray, are bait for lonely females. I can't see too many teenage boys being attracted to this stuff, or older men for that matter.

 

[Entitled]

Has anyone here actually tried the game yet?

Because it seems like some people are simply jumping to conclusions that it has sex in it, therefore it is a trashy sex simulator with no merit at all.

I can't deny that, because I haven't read it either, but on it's own, the argument sounds awfully similar to Fox News's "Mass Effect is Star Wars meets Debbie Does Dallas", or to the same claims that you can see on forums regarding many Japanese visual novels, that also have sex scenes, an also happen to be some of the most compelling narrative stories I have ever read.

 

[faefrost]

I find it odd too how they glossed over they weren't going to get the votes to get on Steam even if it had stayed because half the people who voted for it downvoted it. I guess the Steam community too is a bunch of prudes? Or they made some really nasty assumptions about gamers and sex...

I think they were counting on this whole thing. From some of the earlier articles, it is obvious that they knew the didn't have a prayer of a chance of getting the game approved or seen through the regular Steam channels. They were well aware of this. They then attempted to sneak it in under the Greenlight program, just using some screenshots and descriptions, and keeping the actual gameplay elements close to the vest.

Basically they were deliberately courting controversy, seeking to stir up nerd outrage over Steam black listing their internet fan fic porno game. That was the intent all along. That is blatantly obvious from the snide developer remarks concerning Americans. Don't feed the troll, and certainly don't promote this type of marketing bullcrap.

And yeah, it is kind of refreshing to see such a large number of Steam Greenlight participants recognize this for exactly what it is and negatively vote it. Well done Interwebz.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Maximize your relationship score with one of the four main female characters and you win the game, getting yet another erotic cut scene as a reward.

Women are a sex vending-machine; max our your points, put in enough friendship tokens and you get to have sex with them!

*sigh*

Not far off from the real world, really. *take to dinner* *be witty* *buy nice purse* *get sexed*

Art imitates life.

Ironically, I would imagine people that attempt to treat meeting a partner like that wouldn't get much sex.

you'd sadly be very wrong.

Is there no place left in this world for romance?! ;-;

There is, when you're too young to realise it's nothing more than youthful folly.

 

[axlryder]

Maximize your relationship score with one of the four main female characters and you win the game, getting yet another erotic cut scene as a reward.

Women are a sex vending-machine; max our your points, put in enough friendship tokens and you get to have sex with them!

*sigh*

Not far off from the real world, really. *take to dinner* *be witty* *buy nice purse* *get sexed*

Art imitates life.

Ironically, I would imagine people that attempt to treat meeting a partner like that wouldn't get much sex.

you'd sadly be very wrong.

Is there no place left in this world for romance?! ;-;

*shrug* I guess it's easier to have mindless sex than to make a relationship work. A lot of people are just hedonistic though.

 

[Doom972]

They certainly don't seem to have problem with the explicit sex scenes in The Witcher 2, so I guess that Steam has a ban on games where sex is the main goal. Which is a shame.

 

[Frankster]

Women are a sex vending-machine; max our your points, put in enough friendship tokens and you get to have sex with them!

If there's anything Japanese games taught me, you also can't have sex with the girl until you pass a pop quizz consisting of 5 questions on her weight, blood type, favorite hobbies and mensurations. Hence why succesful guys in the dating game are the ones with the best memories.

In other news i've been single for over a year now, no relation i'm sure :'(

 

[StriderShinryu]

I do find this rather odd given that it was on the Greenlight service. The whole point of the service, as I understand it, is to see what the Steam uaer base supports and wants to see on Steam itself. From what I've seen and read about the game, it wasn't particularly offensive, and If the game was bad or not wanted it would never have made it onto Steam anyway.

If it's going to start cherry picking games for Greenlight content wise, I think, at the least, Valve needs to be more explicit about what they deem "offensive."

They can't make a list of what is offensive because the moment they do some jerk will make a game using everything that isn't on the list and then throw a fit about how it should be allowed because it wasn't on the list.

I don't mean an itemixed list of what is and isn't acceptable. You're right, that sort of thing would just be asking for trouble. I mean a basic statement or ToS like pretty much every message board has. Spell it out in vague but obvious terms like "sexual content" or "religious content." Simply saying "offensive" is useless because everyone is offended by different things. As others have noted, there's no shortage of violence out there in gaming and many people find varying levels of violence offensive so, by Valve's own terminology, any violent games should not be on Greenlight either.

Note that I'm not trying to throw out silly or extreme examples, I'm just saying that if this is a well thought out business and not something half baked, this is the sort of thing that Valve should be doing. They already shot themselves in the foot once with the late addition of the $100 listing fee, and now they're dealing with allegations of cherry picking software based on unclear content restrictions. Better to go back to the drawing board and nip all of these issues in the bud before the whole service (which isn't a bad idea by any means) gets sunk by ineptitude.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Not only was the game made by a woman, I'd be willing to bet all my sex tokens that over 80% of the audience of this type of game is female too.

Burden of proof is on you for that one, buddy. Until then, your numbers don't mean anything.

Oh and not that it matters, but the game was co-written by a woman. But, again, why would the gender of someone behind something make it any less fucking stupid >_>

Women account for 74% of casual gaming: http://www.kefsensei.com/blog/game-industry/casual-games-report-2007/
The average social gamer is a 43 year old female: http://www.conceivablytech.com/426/products/the-next-frontier-female-gaming-demographics
"Snack-based" casual gaming appeals to women: http://www.news.com.au/technology/women-fuel-4bn-casual-games-industry/story-e6frfro0-1225935831836
Most casual gamers are women: http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=1414
70% casual gamers women: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/tech/Video-Game-Moms-142869815.html

Besides all that, vacuous 'relationship' based social games, in the same way as 50 Shades of Gray, are bait for lonely females. I can't see too many teenage boys being attracted to this stuff, or older men for that matter.

All you did was say women play more casual games than men. You didn't even come close to proving that 80% of porn simulators belong to women.

Porn simulators? It's a social casual game about relationships, just like The Sims. That screams "female gamer" as much as a Mills and Boon book screams "female reader" - no proof needed.

 

[MammothBlade]

Rather ridiculous, moral guardian bullshit. I don't see how it's any more objectionable than a game with extreme violence. Double standards as usual, pushing games with risque content onto the sidelines. I don't see how steam can't be mature about this and have an adult games section with additional age checks - perhaps asking someone to verify their debit card details and password every time they buy x-rated content.

 

[Frankster]

snip
There, there. We just need to find you a boring woman that never menstruates.

My bad, used a french word "mensuration" which means physical measurements (ex:66-40-65), wasn't referring to menstruation in any way xD Though I guess that could be a bonus question in that pop quizz... Anyways, cheers for the hug, hugs are nice.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

If I could prove it I wouldn't have needed to bet all my sex tokens on it, would I?

 

[Tanis]

I...kind of agree.

I can chop the head of a chick, tea bag her corpse, and then use a chainsaw on a dog...

But, side boob?
OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
WHAT WOULD JEEBUZ SAY!

The fact that Americans are so in the closet when it comes to sex is fairly pathetic.

 

[LadyTL]

I don't mean an itemixed list of what is and isn't acceptable. You're right, that sort of thing would just be asking for trouble. I mean a basic statement or ToS like pretty much every message board has. Spell it out in vague but obvious terms like "sexual content" or "religious content." Simply saying "offensive" is useless because everyone is offended by different things. As others have noted, there's no shortage of violence out there in gaming and many people find varying levels of violence offensive so, by Valve's own terminology, any violent games should not be on Greenlight either.

Note that I'm not trying to throw out silly or extreme examples, I'm just saying that if this is a well thought out business and not something half baked, this is the sort of thing that Valve should be doing. They already shot themselves in the foot once with the late addition of the $100 listing fee, and now they're dealing with allegations of cherry picking software based on unclear content restrictions. Better to go back to the drawing board and nip all of these issues in the bud before the whole service (which isn't a bad idea by any means) gets sunk by ineptitude.

If they did that though then GTA wouldn't be allowed, LA Noire wouldn't be allowed, Assassin's Creed wouldn't be allowed, dozens of games wouldn't be allowed. It's much better to do it on a case by case basis.

Also as for the nip in the bud thing, why did they try to put a porn game on a service that never carries porn games? If they had actually paid attention to Steam, I'm betting they would figure out porn isn't on Steam.