Steam lifts its ban on adult games!

[Mwanted]

I guess I will revive this thread with this game being released on Steam:

You must be registered to see the links

It's summary on Steam: "This title features mature content that may not be suitable for all all audiences, including fictional depictions of graphic violence, polygamy, drug use, hypnotism, assault, and incest; both consensual and non-consensual graphic sexual scenes between adults featuring men and women, women with other women, multiple partners, machines, and fictional creatures."
It seems like typical Alicesoft game with rapish aproach and RPG systems. If it goes well anything can be sold there as Alicesoft is quite a huge player in erodev and they have a lot of extreme fetishes in their games. Maybe we can even expect Rance on Steam.
That's a good sign for devs like @Lust&Passion (A Wife & Mother), @T4bbo (Babysitter) and others with high enough quality to go for it, allowing them to develop their games in a much less restricting fashion than it is on Patreon for much bigger income.

Wow. I have to say I was so skeptical about steam possibly having less restrictions (reads moral hypocrisy) than Patreon that I didn't even check the new game section. But if it really allowing the content in the description then they just need to implement a subscription option and we can trow away Patreon and their SWs for good.
The other alternative I'm pointing at is

You must be registered to see the links

 

[Chel]

But if it really allowing the content in the description then they just need to implement a subscription option and we can trow away Patreon and their SWs for good.

Subscription content on steam? Pls no...
The thing is, it would give Valve far too much work. The amount of people who already farm pennys with fake games or achievement hoarder games.
Plus, most early access games would then transfer to that model, and trust me, most don't even deserve it.
Plus, it would just make the amount of people who pirate games a lot bigger, which is the last thing Steam and Valve wants.

 

[Mwanted]

Chel are you kidding me? Trust me, if the Patreon tards can do that, Gabe can do it 10x better.
Also it doesn't have anything to do with piracy, exacly like it happens with Patreon: it's always a choice, on one end there's the developer deciding which option to take, and on the other the customer that decides if to support him or not.
I don't like the "game as a service" concept either, trust me, but it seems to work pretty well for developers working on adult content and starting out from nothing.

 

[Chel]

Chel are you kidding me? Trust me, if the Patreon tards can do that, Gabe can do it 10x better.
Also it doesn't have anything to do with piracy, exacly like it happens with Patreon: it's always a choice, on one end there's the developer deciding which option to take, and on the other the customer that decides if to support him or not.
I don't like the "game as a service" concept either, trust me, but it seems to work pretty well for developers working on adult content and starting out from nothing.

1. You would need to lose the mentality where subscribers get updates first. Operating automatic updates that happen on steam like that would be hell.
2. Then explain to me why it took them to long to nail the customer service? I mean, even they themselves said that it was shitty for too long.
3. You are saying that there won't be piracy, but have you noticed where we are? On a porn game piracy website...

 

[Ignazzio]

Subscription model won't be a thing on Steam when there is still an early access. To be fair I find monthly updates model terrible and it's not something that's really necessary. I've heard about couple devs from here that want to migrate there and I'm sure that in financial terms it's much better move than to stay on Patreon. Japan doesn't need subs and their market is incomparably better than our. I believe Steam might bring some decent changes in our model of development and we just need to wait for that now.

 

[Mwanted]

1. You would need to lose the mentality where subscribers get updates first. Operating automatic updates that happen on steam like that would be hell.
2. Then explain to me why it took them to long to nail the customer service? I mean, even they themselves said that it was shitty for too long.
3. You are saying that there won't be piracy, but have you noticed where we are? On a porn game piracy website...

It seems you didn't understand what I wrote. Oh well..

 

[Mwanted]

Subscription model won't be a thing on Steam when there is still an early access. To be fair I find monthly updates model terrible and it's not something that's really necessary. I've heard about couple devs from here that want to migrate there and I'm sure that in financial terms it's much better move than to stay on Patreon. Japan doesn't need subs and their market is incomparably better than our. I believe Steam might bring some decent changes in our model of development and we just need to wait for that now.

Uhm, Idk. I mean, keep in mind that with steam you're selling your product *once*. That's something that has several cons for multiple reasons, that's what worries me the most.

 

[Chel]

Uhm, Idk. I mean, keep in mind that with steam you're selling your product *once*. That's something that has several cons for multiple reasons, that's what worries me the most.

But why not:
1. Get in-development funding from patreon or any other crowd funding site.
2. Then put the finished game up for sale on Steam.
3. Give the guys who supported you in-development a game key for free.

 

[Ignazzio]

Uhm, Idk. I mean, keep in mind that with steam you're selling your product *once*. That's something that has several cons for multiple reasons, that's what worries me the most.

Yeah, it's a one time payment but succesful dev will earn much more that way and he's not addicted to patrons' wishes. I know it's not a perfect comparison but vast majority of even mediocre devs on Steam has much higher budgets than our biggest games and that's for a reason. Price your game at 20$ and sell it to 10k people = 200000$ without taxes and revenues. That's just how real market looks like. Some games could easily go early access and still release updates monthly but on a much healthier rules. It seems like big japanese developers are starting to migrate to Steam so I trust their judgement.

 

[GuyFreely]

But why not:
1. Get in-development funding from patreon or any other crowd funding site.
2. Then put the finished game up for sale on Steam.
3. Give the guys who supported you in-development a game key for free.

Pretty much this. If a dev needs ongoing funding during development, develop the game on something like Patreon and then go to Steam after it's complete. As long as the patrons gets the full game without having to buy it again, I think it's fine. If you are successful with creating completed games, you might find you don't need to do it this way after a while.

 

[Hadley]

Subscription model won't be a thing on Steam when there is still an early access. To be fair I find monthly updates model terrible and it's not something that's really necessary. I've heard about couple devs from here that want to migrate there and I'm sure that in financial terms it's much better move than to stay on Patreon. Japan doesn't need subs and their market is incomparably better than our. I believe Steam might bring some decent changes in our model of development and we just need to wait for that now.

Thats one of the major problems on Patreon. When Devs get paid monthly then they have very little reason to push out the Game as fast as possible.

Just release it into Early Access and its fine. I'd rather pay 1x 20€ than 5€ each Month for a Year. That sounds probably like Devs would lose out on Money, but being on Steam alone will make them so much more money because Steam has Millions of Users and you can actually search for Games on Steam while on Patreon there is no way too search for Adult-Games which means its very hard to get some attention for your Game.

 

[james steele]

searching for fetishes or excluding certain content isn't really possible with steam right now, so on the adult content side of things it has some ways to go.

 

[W65]

searching for fetishes or excluding certain content isn't really possible with steam right now, so on the adult content side of things it has some ways to go.

I don't think Valve really wants to be a platform for adult content. I don't expect they'll ever actively support filtering by content like fetishes. For them, that's probably taking much too active of a role in the promotion of the content. I'm betting their mindset is probably the Silicon Valley "we're just a platform" mentality, and the folks who buy from them already know exactly what game they want. If the users go on to tag something as Incest or whatever, that's something the users have done. Valve's just giving them space in their market to sell their content, but they're not going to try to actively try to displace DLSite or anything like that. I'm frankly a little surprised the non-industry media hasn't already started to explore or report on their decision. It seems like the kind of thing that would generate attention, except that the video game industry is not something that the news at large seems to pay much attention to.

The fact that they're allowing adult games at all is, I'm guessing, a combination of greed and the mentality I mentioned up there. They won't let folks actively break the (USA's) law on their platform, but other than that their policy seems to be to put up a curtain and ignore what people do behind it, just as long as they pay for the space and don't do anything that could get them in trouble.

EDIT: I guess I should say this: If Steam WANTED to support something like search-by-fetish, they have the experience and the staff to have already implemented it. It's not like they're some backwater amateurs trying to slap something together. If they really wanted to be the dominant adult gaming distribution platform, they could have done so already.

 

[james steele]

I don't think Valve really wants to be a platform for adult content. I don't expect they'll ever actively support filtering by content like fetishes. For them, that's probably taking much too active of a role in the promotion of the content. I'm betting their mindset is probably the Silicon Valley "we're just a platform" mentality, and the folks who buy from them already know exactly what game they want. If the users go on to tag something as Incest or whatever, that's something the users have done. Valve's just giving them space in their market to sell their content, but they're not going to try to actively try to displace DLSite or anything like that. I'm frankly a little surprised the non-industry media hasn't already started to explore or report on their decision. It seems like the kind of thing that would generate attention, except that the video game industry is not something that the news at large seems to pay much attention to.

The fact that they're allowing adult games at all is, I'm guessing, a combination of greed and the mentality I mentioned up there. They won't let folks actively break the (USA's) law on their platform, but other than that their policy seems to be to put up a curtain and ignore what people do behind it, just as long as they pay for the space and don't do anything that could get them in trouble.

EDIT: I guess I should say this: If Steam WANTED to support something like search-by-fetish, they have the experience and the staff to have already implemented it. It's not like they're some backwater amateurs trying to slap something together. If they really wanted to be the dominant adult gaming distribution platform, they could have done so already.

I get that if Valve wanted to do the filtering themselves they could have, though it would be a rather large undertaking. The question is how long before fans add tags for such, and if Valve will remove or punish games with certain tags.

The idea of being 'just a platform' is actually an idealistic position in the current climate. The greedy position is to do what everyone else has been doing, and what they were doing before they lifted the ban on porn. The credit card networks control digital currency throughout the world (excepting bit coin of course), and Steam being an online platform only deals with digital currency. Those credit card networks have always been against porn, and have been caught strong arming others into not dealing with such in the past (not to mention the poor rates porn companies themselves get when dealing with them if they can at all). This means that Steam has put a target on its back against those with the most power to hurt them, and if push comes to shove the only real recourse is for them to spend a considerable amount to become a network themselves. If this happens this is great news for us, the lowly consumer, but ultimately will take some time to recoup the costs for Valve (if they ever do).

 

[Retro]

You must be registered to see the links

 

[Hadley]

Typical Valve...

It really makes no sense. Snow Daze is fine, a Game where you can fuck and impregnate your whole Family but some harmless Hentai Games are too much? It feels like its random and depends if a Prude American Reviews your Game or a normal Person.

 

[Retro]

Typical Valve...

It really makes no sense. Snow Daze is fine, a Game where you can fuck and impregnate your whole Family but some harmless Hentai Games are too much? It feels like its random and

yup, absolutely

depends if a Prude American Reviews your Game or a normal Person.

 

[Volta]

I wonder if devs will consider releasing games on patreon as they work through them and then when the development is over then release the bug free final product on steam, broader audience and the potential to get paid twice for the same product, hell it can't hurt right?

 

[W65]

You must be registered to see the links

Although I've never really understood the idiom, I think that's the sound of the other shoe dropping.

It'd be interesting to have some insight into what the Japanese indie adult game industry is thinking right now. I'm betting it has changed from cautious optimism ("hey Valve might actually be okay with us") to resignation ("we should've known Valve wouldn't be okay with us").

"Characters who look or seem too young" is probably the hairiest ball that the fledgling indie adult games industry is going to have to comb in the coming years.

 

[khumak]

Would be interesting to see how the economics pencil out for game devs. I would imagine that the revenue per customer for Patreon would be MUCH larger than releasing on Steam, but the potential volume on Steam could still mean higher revenue overall due to volume. The ban on "young looking" characters doesn't concern me since I have no interest in that anyway.

I'm considering trying to make my own game while still retaining my full time job so deciding between Patreon or Steam would be a legitimate problem to solve before doing that. From the sounds of things, Incest is one area where Steam would be superior to Patreon since at least for now they seem to allow it. I don't know if whatever game I start would contain that but it might. Then again, it's pretty trivial to just replace mom/sister/etc with landlady/roommate if releasing on Patreon.

As far as pricing goes I think you could still simulate a subscription model on Steam by releasing your game as low priced episodes or adding regular DLC/expansions for people to buy. I wonder what sort of hoops you would need to jump through as far as verifying IP rights though?

Since I'm currently just messing around with Daz and not trying to make money on it I haven't bought anything. The prospect of having to suddenly go spend thousands of dollars on assets that I already have so that I can prove I own them doesn't sound especially appealing if I'm not sure whether my finished product would be viable. If I knew I really was going to be making some money at it then sure, no problem. So I suspect that my initial attempt would probably go on Patreon. If that was successful, my 2nd attempt might go on Steam.