Valve is back to their old ways. Valve employees Jason Ruymen and Arisa Sudangnoi have been on a two-person ban spree lately, blocking games such as The Key To Home, which was rated ‘T’ for Teen, and Imolicious from being released on Steam, citing the exploitation of minors. Another developer has been hit in the form of Top Hat Studios, whose Cross Love – Episode 1 has also been banned from release on Steam for “child exploitation”.
The news comes courtesy of an e-mail that developer Top Hat Studios shared on Twitter on December 4th, 2018.
Hey @steam_games, do you want to explain this one to us? There is nothing in the game which could remotely be seen as having children – there are events in game which literally state the characters’ ages as being over 18. pic.twitter.com/fr7nXRPRSq
— Top Hat Studios, Inc (@TopHatStudiosEN) December 5, 2018
If you’re unable to read the message, it states…
“We will not be able to ship your title, Cross Love – Episode 1 on Steam. While we can ship most titles on Steam, we found that this one does feature themes of child exploitation. Because of that, the app has been banned and cannot be reused.”
If you check the Steam Database it confirms that the game has been removed from Steam.
The game is themed around a young man named Yuu who crossdresses in his sister’s clothes and ends up catching the attention of boys at the school. This results in Yuu getting involved with having hardcore sexual encounters with the boys at the school while crossdressing as his sister. You can check out the trailer below.
I did reach out to Top Hat to inquire if Jason or Arisa was involved with banning the game, but they couldn’t confirm it, noting that the sender used a default e-mail from Valve.
They also criticized Valve on Twitter for stating that the game somehow contains minors even though the main characters are over 18.
You can ship whatever you want on your platform – sure, we understand and respect that. But can you at least be honest about why you don’t want us on your platform? We’d respect that for future reference.
— Top Hat Studios, Inc (@TopHatStudiosEN) December 5, 2018
Cross Love – Episode 1 now joins other games banned from Steam featuring visual novel content, such as Maomao Discovery and The Key To Home. The difference, however, is that Cross Love doesn’t feature any depictions of underage characters, as they’re supposed to be 18 and older.
Despite the ban, you can still purchase Cross Love from the NSFW Nutaku store or from the official Top Hat Studios website.
I did reach out multiple times in the past to ask Valve about any additional changes in their content policy and why these games are suddenly being banned, but I have not received a response.
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