Studios are using GOG, itchi.io and Fakku Games as alternatives
Following the takedown notices that adult visual novel studios received from Valve last week, MangaGamer has announced that the visual novel company is bringing its games to GOG.com.
The company announced on its blog that two titles have launched on GOG, Higurashi When They Cry and eden*. More titles, like Kindred Spirits on the Roof and A Kiss for the Petals ~Maidens of Michael~, would be coming soon.
“This opportunity couldn’t have come at a better time. We had been speaking with GOG prior to recent events about adding visual novels as a genre to their retail platform, and with Valve now threatening the livelihoods of visual novel developers everywhere, it’s a huge relief to see GOG opening their doors to these games,” said MangaGamer PR director John Pickett in the announcement.
This is all following a recent situation where the developers behind many of Steam’s raunchier visual novels all received warnings from Valve that said the developers had to further censor their games in two weeks or have their games be removed from the storefront. Valve later followed up with the studios saying that this was a mistake, noting that the games did not have to be changed, but they were still going to have to be re-reviewed by the company.
Many studios immediately started reaching out to other software distributors, once getting the notice from Valve. Within a day, Lupiesoft, the studio behind Mutiny!!, began discussing other options. HunieDev, the makers of HuniePop, also quickly began to consider alternatives for their games.
“I don’t know if it was a matter of pride or what, but I’ve generally tried to avoid ‘porn game’ sites because I never saw HuniePop as a ‘porn game’. To me it’s a ‘real game’ that just happens to have some nice melons in it,” said studio HunieDev in a Twitter thread. “But given this new instability with Steam and frankly the overall growth and improvement and seriousness I’ve seen develop in many of these weeb stores, I’m willing to let that stance go. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on Steam. Far from it. But, the way I see it now, nothing wrong with more options!”
HuniePop and HunieCam Studio have already made their way onto Fakku Games. Fakku also now hosts The Stargazers, another game by Lupiesoft.
There are over 700 games on Steam with the nudity user-defined tag, with a bulk of them being anime-based visual novels, making it the 19th most-applied tag across the store, out of over 680 tags. While many of those games may not have received any notices from Valve, it could be a large group of developers and publishers looking for new platforms in the future.
Polygon has reached out to Valve for comment.
