NCoSE, Steam, Valve · 7:13am May 21st, 2018
WARNING
This Blog does not address any of my stories, and in fact deals with political/religious views regarding video games. This is me essentially ranting. If you do not wish to be party to this, simply walk away. You have been warned.
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If those three words in the title did not make you violently ill on their own, you're either not a gamer, or your parents are doing their job in keeping you away from borderline adult-themed games... and adult-themed games in general.
Look, normally I don't get involved in the political bullshit of the world. It's pointless to try and influence it, and only ever ends badly. This though...
Growing up, video games were my escape from a less than ideal childhood, games, music, writing, and drawing. Do not mistake "less than ideal" with "abusive" though, as that's not the case. I did however have a bit more than my share of issues and conflicts. I latched onto video games as both a distraction and a unique learning method, as video games allowed me to maintain an open mindset towards new things, and not immediately decry something as impossible or wrong because I didn't know much about it.
It's what led to me creating one of my sayings. "Perfection is a point of view, not a fact."
However, with as much time as I have spent within the gaming community, it was impossible for me not to become aware of the ongoing fight against soccer moms, feminists, and political and religious groups all over the world. A lot of people blame video games as the reason a lot of bad things happen in the world.
And, well, I won't say games had no part in it, but that's just it. They were nothing more than a cog in the network of gears that created those problems. Parents also forget that they have a responsibility to keeps adult themed games away from their children. If their children were influenced by said adult-themed games, they can only blame themselves for it, and not the publishers and developers of the games.
Of course, then we delve into policies and lax ability to uphold them on the part of publishers, and then developers making poor choices regarding ratings, and... well, that's a can of worms I'm not opening, not completely anyways.
Suffice to say, the gaming community fights an uphill battle every day just for the right to be creative.
Then we have this... whatever this is, on Steam.
For those of you that don't know, Steam has threatened to remove some specific games that violate their publishing policy on sexual content. And you know what? If that wasn't a load of cow manure, I'd respect them for not going down the dirty road for higher profit. But nope, that's not the case here.
On Thursday night, visual novel studio Lupiesoft said that its fantasy pirate visual novel Mutiny!! was reported for "pornographic content" and threatened with removal "within two weeks." The game features erotic yuri content—or manga-inspired lesbian erotica—but Lupiesoft claims "absolutely nothing in Mutiny!! violates [Steam's] guidelines" and says the game's Steam release was "fully agreed to by Steam" before it launched on the platform.
"In fact Lupiesoft has been one of the strictest developers in terms of following Steam's guidelines, and absolutely nothing in Mutiny!! violates their guidelines," Lupiesoft wrote on its official Twitter account. "After our Steam publisher MangaGamer met with Valve in person, they were told that ecchi content [work with slight sexual overtunes] was fine on steam."
That is a direct quote from the article I learned the details of all this on.
It should be noted that said games being threatened with removal are Mutiny!!!, HuniePop, Kindred Spirits on the Roof, and Tropical Liquor, and more.
Among those games, HuniePop is probably the only one that possibly violates the publishing policy, and even then it would be a stretch. The rest allude to sexual content at their worst, which, by Steam's policy, is okay.
Then there's games that were not threatened that are plainly far more explicit than the games being threatened.
Nevermind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, or Grand Theft Auto V, both games that not only violate their sexual content publishing policy, but interestingly enough are also two of their greatest money makers.
To put a nice pin in the post-it note of this blog, The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCoSE), an anti-porn organization with religious roots, is taking credit for this.
I am not happy about this. I'm all for ensuring children do not access things they should not be accessing until they are considered adults by the law of their land, but attacking video game publishers? That's a line you do not cross. The developers? Fine, sometimes they need a kick up their ass. The publishers though? No. You do not mess with the people who lawfully maintain a site for video game distribution, especially when they already have a pretty nice publishing policy that they (mostly) stick to.
Fight to make parents aware and active in restricting access of this stuff to their children. This I support wholeheartedly.
Trying to ban sexual content itself across the board however is just not going to end well. NCoSE is eventually gonna pit themselves against a much bigger fish in the pond, and... well, you take a guess at what will happen.
Disclaimer
I am not an expert regarding all of these topics. I am not an employee or affiliate of any of these organizations, beyond being that of a consumer. This is nothing more than my opinion, of which you are fully entitled to ignore.
I ask that you not start any arguments within the comments section. I will be policing it heavily. Any debate must be taken to PMs if it escalates beyond two replies. Thank you for your time.
The problem is Valve is a toothless tiger and everyone knows it. They have for years not allowed games like these becuase they felt they couldn't prevent them from getting into the hands of minors and outside groups would make life hell for them if they did. This is why in America no games get rated Adults Only or AO as no retailer will stock them for fear of pissing off these groups.
Parents of a certain generation, who by the way are a majority of the people in power, saw video games as nothing more then kiddy stuff not the vast industry it I see today. In the early 2000’s I was working at a retail establishment that sold video games. We where getting pushback from parent groups about Mature rated games and the company decided to card anyone who was purchasing one of those games. When GTA 3, I think, came out we had to start informing parents why we where asking to see their card about what was in this game. I had a mixture of reactions from the parents from not caring to horror that their “little angel” wanted such a game. Man did I get death glares from some of these kids because they where blatantly trying to sneak them past their parents/grandparents.
Secondly we had a student group try and pull something like this. They claimed they had been in our store and had been able to purchase GTA for the computer without being carded and we should be ashamed of our selves for screwing up our own policy. The store manager was trying to figure out who made the mistake so he could talk to them and I was able to point out information that was on the receipt that not only showed which machine it was purchased on but the cashier as well. The manager was surprised that I knew not only what to look for but he didn't. Needless to say we were able to prove that they where able to purchase it from a person, a kid at the school, who didn't understand why we had to card people of the game.
In the next decade we will hopefully get people in power who have some common sense, but I always believe if you have common sense you stay the heck away from politics.