It appears either Valve is looking to tighten up on the content restrictions and begin to purge certain loli material and visual novels containing themes that their staff personally dislike, or some rogue employees are taking their vendetta against certain VN and anime-game creators to a whole new level.
Yume Creations, the developer of Imolicious, has reportedly had their partner account banned on Steam. This means they can no longer submit games or utilize the developer tools.
WTF?! It seems my steam partner account got banned? Why??? I hope it’s just a mistake 🙁 pic.twitter.com/Zbiy9PUjNP
— Yume Creations (@YumeCreations) November 25, 2018
This comes shortly after the game Imolicious was banned from being released on Steam due to a claim from the product release manager at Valve, Jason Ruymen, claiming that the game “exploited” minors.
Ruymen is the same one who had Gay Nation banned from Steam, along with the developer Dank Boi Games, back during the late summer. Ruymen’s claim that Imolicious exploited minors was rebuffed by Yume Creations who cited that the characters featured in the game are over the age of 18.
However, another one of Valve’s employees, business development associate Arisa Sudangnoi, also supported Ruymen’s decision to ban Imolicious from being released on the Steam store.
Yume Creations shared the response form Sudangnoi, who informed him on November 22nd, 2018, that Imolicious would not be released on the Steam store due to exploiting “minors”.
Well this not helps at all XD But at least I get a refund for the fee. After that I’ll add Imolicious again with the same changes I made for Nutaku and without Adult Content. pic.twitter.com/oF30v2SwUW
— Yume Creations (@YumeCreations) November 22, 2018
If you’re unable to read the image shared from the developer discussion forum, it states…
“As Jason [Ruymen] mentioned, we won’t be able to ship this due to the game containing content that exploits minors.
“Let me know if you need help refunding your Steam Direct fee for this app.”
I attempted to reach out multiple times to Jason Ruymen to find out why Valve walked back on its word when they said they were “not the taste police”, but Ruymen has never responded to any of the inquiries.
Some other developers who have recently had their games banned also felt as if rogue employees at Valve were banning games that they didn’t like, such as A Key To Home, which is rated ‘T’ for Teen.
But it’s not just Valve banning games with content they don’t approve of. Nutaku and Mikandi also banned the release of Imolicious as well.
On the upside, you can finally get your hands on the game from DLSite or from Fakku. However, since the distributors are from Japan, Yume Creations did have to add mosaic censorship to accommodate the region’s content policies for the release on DLSite.
[Update 11/26/2018:] According to Yume Creations, they will be able to launch the game on JASTUSA without any form of censorship.
Seems like Imolicious can be released on Jast without changing anything. I just have to fix some small bugs. Nutaku also want some more changes like changing school to college and alternate a part where a character can't buy booze because of his age.
— Yume Creations (@YumeCreations) November 21, 2018
(Thanks for the news tip zac za)