Community MetaSteam | August 2022 - Remember Ringo, With Great Power Comes No Regional Pricing

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All these japanese banned VNs have to do with Valve's Campo Santo adquisition time ago. ; ).
And usually banning reviewers are the same two.
The better can japanese devs do is release the game on steam with only japanese language or (even only chinese) and then update the game few months later with other languages.
Chinese only vns with schools assets are overlooked by reviewers.


I hate this so much, I still remember when Valve banned one the first VNs to suffer Campo Santo's review "The Key to home" (Ie no kagi) just because artist was MUK_MonsieuR, a well known hentai artist, even this game has none porn CG frame and it's fierce criticism of child prostitution (quite good and harsh/sad plot).
Wait, wait... dial back, is this verified? The Valve personnel flagging all these VNs and blocking their release are employees integrated from the Campo Santo acquisition? :frowning-face-with-open-mouth:

Do you have a link? This is honestly the first I've heard of this..
 


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I still wonder why they are still doing a Dead Island 2 when Dying Light pretty much surpassed the original formula. The "brand" can't be that much in demand all these years later and they still have that "Dead Island Riptide-torso" media debacle tied to the brand name.

Is the Dead Island brand still sought after 10+ years after it's initial release? Is anyone still waiting on Dead Island 2?
 
I still wonder why they are still doing a Dead Island 2 when Dying Light pretty much surpassed the original formula. The "brand" can't be that much in demand all these years later and they still have that "Dead Island Riptide-torso" media debacle tied to the brand name.

Is the Dead Island brand still sought after 10+ years after it's initial release? Is anyone still waiting on Dead Island 2?
Dunno, I'd probably buy it as I liked the first one a lot. I don't actively want a new game though, if it was just "there" then sure. I also hated Dying Light. I might eventually have liked it but dropped it because the controls really pissed me off.
 
Wait, wait... dial back, is this verified? The Valve personnel flagging all these VNs and blocking their release are employees integrated from the Campo Santo acquisition? :frowning-face-with-open-mouth:

Do you have a link? This is honestly the first I've heard of this..
I’ve never heard of this either.

Do we really think the small Campo Santo team moved from making games to being Steam gatekeepers?

There’s clearly some policy specifically for VNs, but I’ve seen no evidence it’s Campo Santo. The only thing I’ve found from a cursory search is a 4chan /v/ conspiracy theory blaming the “Campo Santo f*****s” for it, and, well, that’s hardly reliable.
 
Where did you see this?


There is an edit from 2022-08-13
Steam Mods banned me from DOMINA forum for a week (ostensibly for strong language, but if you hold a mirror up to the world 80% of them will throw a brick at you)

Exactly zero human beings have the balls to put their name to the ban. Cowards. Clowns.

What a stupid company to work at. It must be so sad collecting so much money from people who actually create something, and then banning their opinions.

I wonder how many stomach ulcers are at Steam/Valve? How much prilosec is prescribed to them?

Zero cocks among them, that's obvious.

What a pity.
 
I’ve never heard of this either.

Do we really think the small Campo Santo team moved from making games to being Steam gatekeepers?

There’s clearly some policy specifically for VNs, but I’ve seen no evidence it’s Campo Santo. The only thing I’ve found from a cursory search is a 4chan /v/ conspiracy theory blaming the “Campo Santo f*****s” for it, and, well, that’s hardly reliable.

How many Campo Santo people are even still at Valve? I know of 3 and I can't imagine (Valve's structure blahblahblah, I know, I know) any of them sitting there and reviewing upcoming games.
 
Wait, wait... dial back, is this verified? The Valve personnel flagging all these VNs and blocking their release are employees integrated from the Campo Santo acquisition? :frowning-face-with-open-mouth:

Do you have a link? This is honestly the first I've heard of this..
Oh this was confirmed by her on twitter.
Some people got puzzled when anime style games visual novel ban became a trend on Steam. Old OAG site made some great article about this, maybe is still up on archive.
She was one the employes:
I cannot remember the other employee but there is a forum screenshot over, too.
Most of sources are shadowbanned by google. XD
 
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Oh this was confirmed by her on twitter.
Some people got puzzled when anime style games visual novel ban became a trend on Steam. Old OAG site made some great article about this, maybe is still up on archive.
She was one the employes:
I cannot remember the other employee but there is a forum screenshot over, too.
Most of sources are shadowbanned by google. XD


This?
 
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I still wonder why they are still doing a Dead Island 2 when Dying Light pretty much surpassed the original formula. The "brand" can't be that much in demand all these years later and they still have that "Dead Island Riptide-torso" media debacle tied to the brand name.

Is the Dead Island brand still sought after 10+ years after it's initial release? Is anyone still waiting on Dead Island 2?

raises hand

I finished both Dead Island and Dying Light and to be honest I liked Dead Island more. I enjoyed the more elaborate melee combat in Dead Island.
 
Blossom Tales 2 is out now.

I wonder how it will do sales wise.

On one hand there are more Switch systems out there now compared to years ago, but at the same time making a game like that, may not actually sale nearly as well. Even on Era they talk about how it's from that time period of when there where not that many big name first/third party titles and it was just a few indie games.



From what I remember the PC version (Steam only I think) sold less than 20k copies, meanwhile the Switch version managed to sell something like 500k (maybe it was actually 350k), the point being that it sold very well on the Switch. From what I remember at the time after just 1 or 2 sales the devs/pub for the PC version just stopped caring about the PC version and hadn't put it on sale (period for it's last sale to when it was released on Switch).

Blossom Tales 2 publisher isn't the same of the previous games so maybe they will invest a bit more in marketing this time.



It's amazing how JoyMasher always manage to nail the looks of their games.
 
Oh this was confirmed by her on twitter.
Some people got puzzled when anime style games visual novel ban became a trend on Steam. Old OAG site made some great article about this, maybe is still up on archive.
She was one the employes:
I cannot remember the other employee but there is a forum screenshot over, too.
Most of sources are shadowbanned by google. XD
This is all I can find using the keywords "Jane Ng", "Visual Novel", and "Valve":
From the article, it doesn't sound like any of this was Jane's call at all, honestly.
 
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This is all I can find using the keywords "Jane Ng", "Visual Novel", and "Valve":
From the article, it doesn't sound like any of this was Jane's call at all, honestly.
I really don't like this targeting of individual employees, honestly. Especially with former employees.

Valve clearly has an internal hardline stance on this issue, likely inspired by state laws. I think any game with English support just gets more scrutiny, as arbitrary as that is.
 
I really don't like this targeting of individual employees, honestly. Especially with former employees.

Valve clearly has an internal hardline stance on this issue, likely inspired by state laws. I think any game with English support just gets more scrutiny, as arbitrary as that is.
Fully agreed, on all points.
 
The weird thing is that the game has a. eSRB/PEGI rating which should mean it is OK to publish.

this is one of those areas that valve should be making absolutely certain that they have hard rules in place so devs and publishers know where they actually stand.

hopefully somebody like GOG can pick up the slack if their is no possibility of a steam release.
 
Be me

barely play any new releases this year cos of less free time, diversifying that free time amongst other interests, and a general ennui of AAA games in particular

But get excited for Soul Hackers 2 cos weeb

look at reviews

fetchimage
 
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I really don't like this targeting of individual employees, honestly. Especially with former employees.

Valve clearly has an internal hardline stance on this issue, likely inspired by state laws. I think any game with English support just gets more scrutiny, as arbitrary as that is.
Feels more like they have nebulous guidelines and idiots can just ban whatever they feel like if games whose goal is to rape, sell raped girls and ransack towns to rape and sell raped girls are ok but a school uniform in a rated game has them go ballistic

edit: that said I guess until spike-chunsoft officially says the game isn’t releasing anymore it means they’ll try to reverse that although i’m not sure that ever gonna happen.
 
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Cult of the Lamb has 1 million players across all platforms.

Be me

barely play any new releases this year cos of less free time, diversifying that free time amongst other interests, and a general ennui of AAA games in particular

get excited for Soul Hackers 2 cos weeb

look at reviews

fetchimage
Looking at the Open Critic scores and it's a good 10 points lower than I anticipated. Still playing it day one because I'm a Megaten geek so. :shrugblob:
 
The weird thing is that the game has a. eSRB/PEGI rating which should mean it is OK to publish.

this is one of those areas that valve should be making absolutely certain that they have hard rules in place so devs and publishers know where they actually stand.

hopefully somebody like GOG can pick up the slack if their is no possibility of a steam release.
Yeah, I think this is something they can absolutely clean up. Just have clear, specific guidelines on what can and can't be sold on Steam, and make it explicitly clear in their vendor agreement.

That's the fairest approach - if I was a VN/general weeb game publisher like Spike Chunsoft, i'd be pretty angry if I splashed a bunch of money on a PC port, only to find that the product I worked on is suddenly banned from the shelves of the platform's primary sales channel. I counted those prospective PC sales into my budget projections while developing it, yeah?
 
Be me

barely play any new releases this year cos of less free time, diversifying that free time amongst other interests, and a general ennui of AAA games in particular

But get excited for Soul Hackers 2 cos weeb

look at reviews

fetchimage
Honestly not surprised. The team previous work, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, was fun especially the fast-paced combat (better than Persona) but I wouldn't say it's a great game.
 
The other issue I have with valves stance on this is that due to guidelines in Washington State (?) this has been banned across the rest of America and the rest of the World. They could have also geo blocked the affected area and let the rest of us purchase the game.

I am still optimistic this will come to PC in one form or another as this is a series I intend to work my way through.
 
raises hand

I finished both Dead Island and Dying Light and to be honest I liked Dead Island more. I enjoyed the more elaborate melee combat in Dead Island.

Yeah, they are enjoyable enough for me on their own and they can co-exist. Just like there are open world games like GTA and say Sleeping Dogs, they have a similar structure but ultimately feel different.
 
The other issue I have with valves stance on this is that due to guidelines in Washington State (?) this has been banned across the rest of America and the rest of the World. They could have also geo blocked the affected area and let the rest of us purchase the game.

I am still optimistic this will come to PC in one form or another as this is a series I intend to work my way through.
The game is sold at Walmart which I'm sure exists in Washington state and also on PSN/eshop which i'm sure have users in Washington state, so I frankly don't believe that washington state law is the issue.

The issue is Valve guidelines being what they are (or aren't in this case) and causing this situation, which also leads to people pointing their fingers at everything and anything as the cause for this because nobody knows, except the idiot with unilateral power to veto games who reviewed the game in question.

edit: various edits for grammar
 
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The game is sold at Walmart which I'm sure exists in Washington state and also on PSN/eshop which i'm sure have users in Washington state, so I frankly don't believe that washington state law is the issue.

The issue is Valve guidelines being what they are (or aren't in this case) and causing this situation, which also leads to people pointing their fingers at everything and anything as the cause for this because nobody knows, except the idiot with unilateral power to veto games who reviewed the game in question.

edit: various edits for grammar

True, I had forgotten about the Walmart situation as well. It's just a very frustrating situation. Unfortunately, due to the niche nature of VN's as well, there isn't too much of a way to heavily publicise it. I am not really sure if any of the major sites have even picked up on this.

This is one of those areas where Steam being the leader of the pack has come to bite us in the arse. However SpikeChunsoft should remember that places like GOG and itchIo exist.
 
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