This Is My Story was originally banned from Steam back on March 28th, 2019, along with Fap CEO and Sakura Tempest. Developer Lunisky Studio didn’t take the ban lying down, though. They decided to rename the game from This Is My Story to Interworlds Academy and attempt to launch it on Steam… again.
There’s a new store page that’s currently live for Interworlds Academy, complete with screenshots and a gameplay description.
As noted in the original article, This Is My Story was not an R18+ visual novel, so Valve obviously didn’t ban it due to the subject matter. However, it did take place within a school. However, I don’t know if changing the name to Interworlds Academy would help their cause much. But the game still isn’t listed as an Adults Only title, so it doesn’t contain any R18+ content.
The mature rating description is also identical to when it was submitted as This Is My Story.
The only major difference I’ve spotted is that the screenshot featuring the one loli character that was on the archive of the old store page has been removed on the new store page. You can see the screenshot below that was removed from the new store page.
It’s possible that Valve told them to remove the character Kira and then resubmit the game for approval. This was something that they originally pitched to HappyHand for Niplheim’s Hunter, before recanting the request and stating that it was a “misunderstanding“.
However, Valve did the same thing again with Simon Creative’s Food Girls, telling them that they had to remove a loli character from the all-ages version of the game. So the title was indefinitely delayed until they removed the character.
We don’t know if that’s exactly what’s happening here with Interworlds Academy, but it could be a contributing factor. This is reinforced by the fact that the new store page removed the old trailer for the game, which also featured the loli character, Kira.
Given that Valve seems to despise lolis, it’s possible that they wanted Lunisky to remove Kira before approving it for launch.
The visual novel is about a character who ends up at an academy that’s in between worlds; a place situated at the corner of life and death. Players will have to discover the mystery of the academy as well as discover why the inhabitants of the academy are there. It’s also possible to bud a romance and fall in love.
The story sports more than 180,000 words, and features a multi-choice dialogue system along with the ability to craft the story around the main character using an editor to modify certain character traits. The game also sports multiple endings depending on how you interact with the different girls and the relationships you develop with them over the course of the story.
What we don’t know is if Lunisky Studio’s re-application of This Is My Story under the title of Interworlds Academy will net it safe passage under the pervasive eye of Valve’s content curators, or if it will get banned again, which is what happened to several other games that attempted to do the same thing.
Valve hasn’t been very consistent with their policies, and it’s not readily clear what will get a game banned or not. A variety of games have already been banned even if they’re the all-ages version or contain no adult content.
We’ll see if Lunisky Studio will get a pass a second time around or if Valve will ban the game again.
(Thanks for the news tip StarKitsune)
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