Lilith and Infini-Brain Inc., are trying again with Taimanin Asagi and attempting to put the game back on Steam. This comes months after Valve originally banned the game from the digital storefront. A brand new store page for their second attempt has gone live, and it currently has a release date that’s “TBA”.
The store page for Taimanin Asagi 1 is up and active with a few screenshots and a trailer, and it’s labeled as a “Trial” version. It’s also tagged as Adults Only, just like it was the first time it appeared on Steam. So this will be the R18+ version of the popular visual novel.
According to the SteamDB entry, Lilith and Infini-Brain only just recently had the store page approved to go live on November 22nd, 2019. So either someone at Valve forgot that they banned the game back in September, or they had a change of heart.
For those of you who don’t remember, Taimanin Asagi episodes 1 – 4 were supposed to release on Steam. However, a month after the game was announced for a release on Steam, Valve then went and banned the game.
The reason for the ban? Because the characters were apparently young looking, as reported by Niche Gamer.
Even normie outlets were perplexed by Valve’s decision to allow the game to have a store page and then turn around and ban it. The whole saga was covered quite thoroughly by YouTube outlet Inside Gaming.
Now we don’t know for sure if Valve has had a change of heart and given them the green light to release Taimanin Asagi on Steam, or if Lilith has taken the liberty to try again.
There have been some games that Valve banned in the past that they later allowed to release on Steam, such as Hello, Goodbye, which was originally submitted as an all-ages release but was still banned. After a lot of media attention and some frequent pressure from the publisher, Valve later reversed the decision months later and allowed Hello, Goodbye on the Steam store. Many other games weren’t so lucky, and are still banned from appearing on Steam, as noted via the Waifu Holocaust 2.0 banned game list.
So far Lilith has yet to make any mention about the trial version of Taimanin Asagi 1 appearing on Steam. They’re mum about the whole ordeal if you check their official Twitter account; but they’re probably waiting for confirmation from Valve first before making any public announcements.
We’ll see what comes out of it when they update the page or if the game gets banned again.
(Thanks for the news tip GameZard)