Hi guys! Sorry for taking so long to post about this. Jake and I have been having a rough couple months, but we're ready to address the elephant in the room: Steam.

(This post got a little long, so TL;DR at the bottom.)

So, you might be asking yourself, what is a Steam? Experts have been pondering this question since the dawn of time, but we fear we may have finally found the answer.

Steam is what will make or break any game's launch. It's the biggest player in the industry, for good reason.

Steam is also a lawless and chaotic land where any old Joe can pay $100, put up some screenshots, and squeak past the reviewers watchful eye to publish a fake page for Minecraft, the most popular game of all time.

An undisputably solid system, surely.

As for our Steam experience, welllll... if you're here, you probably already know, but here's the full picture:

A few months ago we submitted the demo for review. A few days later, a reviewer picked it up.

They then spent a whole 4 and a half hours combing through 30 minutes of content... Shortly after, the game was banned with zero chance of appeal.

From what I can gather, there's a rogue reviewer on Valve's team who hates adult games. We'll call them "Mary". Mary scours for any reason to ban a game if they're personally against it's content.

Getting Mary'd is all up to luck, and unfortunately I'm just not lucky.

Mary gave us the same cookie cutter ban notice they give every game, so unfortunately we came out of this with net zero information. To add insult to injury, they kinda implied that we're creeps... Ouch.

It takes only one person to determine a game's fate forever, and one of those people really really really hates effeminate lads.

Now, for the kicker— very few VNs have been unbanned from Steam. We didn't even reply to the ticket, because it's pointless. However, the games that did make it back on there all had one thing in common:

Community backlash.

... But those are big words, and we're pretty fixated on developing the game. So maybe we'll try organizing something in a few months, but for the time being—

TL;DR: Game got banned by power-abusing Valve reviewer. If you want to increase the slim odds of the game being unbanned, spread the word and contact Steam support about it. Be sure to mention the game's Steam ID (3393080).

If the game somehow gets unbanned, we'll have to do something special, right? 'Cuz that would be nuts. If it doesn't, fear not. It'll release on Itch like nothing ever happened. 

(Unless Jake gets hit by a bus or something.)

Cheers!

— Jack

(P.S. New release on May 24th? $5 for access to every future update? Wow...)