Rant: Steam doesn't need quality control

[TrishaCat]

Every week or so there's someone  complaining  about  some asset flip meme game being uploaded onto the Steam store. And every time it happens, a bunch of people start yelling at Valve for them to curate their store.

Let me give a few examples of some of the random awful games on Steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/791750/President_Trump_The_Way_In_Uganda/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/743110/Shit_Storm/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/712810/Fallen_Times/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/585780/Miner_Ultra_Adventures/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/512430/Make_America_Great_Again/

People want Valve to disallow and remove terrible games like these from being on the Steam store. A popular youtuber by the name of Jim Sterling (who I personally find extremely unbearable but that's a discussion for another time) regularly does videos complaining about the various terrible games on Steam, constantly asking for their removal. And people typically agree with these people saying this. And it infuriates me.

Now, there's a certain degree of understanding I have with regards to these complaints. Steam is cluttered as a store and that makes exposure to true gems or perhaps just interesting niche's get hidden and thus results in less exposure. From a consumer standpoint, if you use the store to find out about games, this can limit what you know of and keep you from playing what might be good. From a developer/publisher standpoint, this may result in receiving less sales in games. Steamspy, a tool for viewing how many people own a particular game, as well as statements from publishers with regards to game releases on Steam, have  confirmed this to some degree.

That said, the constant complaining about the need for curation is driving me insane. Its bugs me to no end and also scares me a little. I absolutely believe Steam needs to improve, but I don't believe curation itself is the answer.

From a personal standpoint, its difficult for me to see any gain from Valve doing such a thing and only seems to threaten what's possibly made available to me. I primarily get my game news from Gematsu, which I visit daily. Otherwise, I hear about games through hear-say and word of mouth on internet forums and the like. Websites like 4chan, Tumblr, and Twitter give me plenty of exposure to games I might not have otherwise noticed. I do not use Steam to find out about games. I see Steam as a store in the way I do most stores; I go into them to get the things I already know I want, and then leave. So a lack of exposure isn't really an issue. And as Steam has a refund system, game reviews, and requires in-game screenshots, and as gameplay videos for games are very easy to find, there are so many protections in place to ensure that one can avoid scams that being scammed isn't even an issue in this regard. Since one doesn't have to buy anything that's put on Steam, and since all these protections are in place, its hard for me to see how any form of curation would benefit me.

On the other side of things, there are ways curation can be harmful. I do not believe for one second that Valve is well equipped to properly curate games. Sure, its easy for people to look at games like Deus Ex and the Witcher or even Final Fantasy and say "Yes, this is something that should be on Steam" generally speaking. However, when it comes to niche titles, I'm not so confident. What makes anyone think that, in the hypothetical instance that Valve curates games, they would be able to tell a low effort visual novel from a good one? Or perhaps tell the difference between any other number of highly niche titles. The average person wouldn't see value in the majority of smaller niche games. If a person were to hypothetically look at LiEat, Corpse Party, World End Economica, or perhaps even Criminal Girls, would they actually be able to consider them as games of value? They're games that have the appearance of (or in the case of LiEat, actually are) small RPGMaker games or games with still images, with Criminal Girls looking like something that's just this + waifu pandering for weeb bucks. Its already been done on other websites with stronger curation processes; GOG, another digital distribution site dedicated to releasing games DRM free, rejected the CAVE shmup Mushihimesama on the basis of it looking like a game that they didn't think would be very successful on their platform. CAVE is a renowned developer among fans of shmups, although the actual genre itself is extremely niche. As a result, the game is not available anywhere DRM free. The crime of this and hypocritical nature of it is that GOG hosts a few other shmups on their platform that, according to Steamspy numbers, are significantly less popular and less successful games. For example, the game Raiden Legacy has around 2300 owners on Steam. Mushihimesama? 41000. GOG basically did not have members among their curation staff that actually knew anything about the niche, and as a result could not properly curate their own storefront. So who's to say that Valve can on Steam?

This is what scares me. As it currently stands, should curation become a thing, games that I might like and otherwise enjoy might be put into a position where I cannot purcahse them. Steam is such a monopoly in the PC gaming market that some games only exist in the West translated and/or only get ported to PC because of Steam. If curation threatens these games from being on Steam, it could result in games these games no longer being made available to the niche markets interested in them. That's what makes the idea of curation horrifying.

I think, if anything, Valve should find a way to simply hide unproven bad games from the eye while still hosting them on the storefront. For example, if some new publisher who has never published a game before comes and puts something on Steam, it shouldn't show up on the front of the store. Perhaps Steam could be split into sections based on proven and unproven publishers and let people who want to go visit the unproven section, find the good games, and wind up getting them popular enough and successful enough to move into the "proven" section. Perhaps this idea has some flaws; the main point is that I think Steam shouldn't curate games out, but simply make bad low effort games not as noticeable so that way those who actually do use Steam to find out about games can still find them.

Nonetheless, for the time being, every other week I suffer these complaints and I get scared that one of these days, Valve is going to actually do it.

Please.

PLEASE

Stop complaining about how the storefront is littered with bad games and asking Valve to remove them for your own sensabilities. I don't want Valve to start deciding for me what games I want to play.

 

[Faust]

But the Steam store IS curated. Just put a pair of naked boobies in a game and you'll find it doesn't last long.

It's a good thing that violence isn't as immoral and reprehensible as the human body or there'd be no games on there at all.

-F

[Vae]

I kind of had a feeling this thread was going to devolve into whiny bitch rants about violence versus sex in games, like the second it was put up.
And lo and behold, it only took an hour.

Good job, team. We did it.

[Faust]

@VaeYour depiction of Jesus offends me!

There, now it's about religion too. Satisfied?

[TrishaCat]

Valve is extremely relaxed when it comes to games containing nudity and/or pornographic content when its all said and done. There are tons of porn VNs on Steam, and plenty other games in general that contain nudity of some sort. Granted, most of them are censored, but they almost always have official uncensor patches so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Its extremely infrequent for games to be removed on this basis (although it does happen, and it too annoys me. Especially when people complain about porn VNs being on Steam)

[Tsuujou]

I just want Valve to actually implement tags properly.

[Faust]

15 hours ago, Battlechili said:

Valve is extremely relaxed when it comes to games containing nudity and/or pornographic content when its all said and done. There are tons of porn VNs on Steam, and plenty other games in general that contain nudity of some sort. Granted, most of them are censored, but they almost always have official uncensor patches so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Well, 'censored' kind of means 'all the dirty bits removed' in Steam's case, and the censor patches have to be distributed off-site, and there again they do distribute the PC version of Witcher 3, which is well known for its sex scenes - which makes me wonder two things:

1) Why do they bother in the first place
2) Why the double-standard for so-called triple-A titles?

Not that the answer isn't obvious. 1) to fend off the 'moral majority' (ha ha) and 2) because nobody kicks a big lump of gold out of bed.

But returning to the topic more closely, in all honesty you can see why some people make these requests for curation. Some of those games are really awful. And then on the other, other hand, there is a free ranking system that they clearly don't censor, so it's not like bad games don't get flagged up (although I do think the simple like / dislike ranking system lacks granularity, clarity and sometimes fairness.)

[Socketosis]

Don't forget this gem.

[Conker]

As someone who is getting ready to launch a game on Steam, I disagree with you. There should be more quality control than "is this actually a virus pretending to be a product?"

I'm stuck competing with a ton of shitass asset flips, single-level games hoping for a quick buck, and buggy nonsense because Steam has no quality control. Niche market or not, you can tell when a team/person put work into something and when a team/person bought assets, stuck them together with some public-domain sound loops, and then put it up on the store.

Because there's a middle ground between quality control and "that niche shoot-em-up is going to get rejected because it's niche."

Quote

For example, if some new publisher who has never published a game before comes and puts something on Steam, it shouldn't show up on the front of the store

I'm already unlikely to make money, but that would cripple me. It also greatly benefits asset flippers and people with no quality control standards. Guy buys a brick-break pack, posts it as game one, changes the background, posts it as game two, changes the background, posts it as game three, etc. That's actually happened. Before Digital Homicide killed themselves by being absolutely insane, they were doing that exact practice.

[Faust]

Ahh that reminds me of the early days of the Apple iPhone store. The so-called 'top ten apps' didn't change for years at a time because it was based on download figures, and being in the top ten was really good advertising. Once you got in there, you stayed there more or less forever. And that's how Angry Birds was born.

[RTDragon]

On 1/29/2018 at 11:18 AM, Battlechili said:

Valve is extremely relaxed when it comes to games containing nudity and/or pornographic content when its all said and done. There are tons of porn VNs on Steam, and plenty other games in general that contain nudity of some sort. Granted, most of them are censored, but they almost always have official uncensor patches so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Its extremely infrequent for games to be removed on this basis (although it does happen, and it too annoys me. Especially when people complain about porn VNs being on Steam)

Did'nt we go through this before in my thread about the death of steam greenlight. Even so you forget that you won't be able to stream such games on streaming sites such as twitch. https://phoenix.corvidae.org/topic/5260-the-end-of-steam-greenlight/?do=findComment&comment=202800

Those complaints about porn vn on steam is legitimate, as well as assetflips. It makes finding games that are good a lot harder and eventually it's going to get to the point that steam reputation will suffer even more for it.

 

[willow]

8 hours ago, RTDragon said:

 It makes finding games that are good a lot harder and eventually it's going to get to the point that steam reputation will suffer even more for it.

 

This was basically what I was going to say. I can't see how telling people they need to do better if they want to put games on Steam is such a terrible idea

[Toshabi]

tl;dr

 

But I will say, people who actually enjoy Jim Sterling are people you don't ever want to associate with.

[WileyWarWeasel]

46 minutes ago, Toshabi said:

tl;dr

 

But I will say, people who actually enjoy Jim Sterling are people you don't ever want to associate with.

Why not?

[Victor-933]

2 hours ago, Toshabi said:

tl;dr

 

But I will say, people who actually enjoy Jim Sterling are people you don't ever want to associate with.

I had no idea who that was and had to look it up...

...and from a quick glance at his channel, without even loading a video, just... something about it told me he would be really fucking annoying.

[Tsuujou]

On 2/9/2018 at 11:43 PM, Victor-933 said:

I had no idea who that was and had to look it up...

...and from a quick glance at his channel, without even loading a video, just... something about it told me he would be really fucking annoying.

Hes retarded. Says incredibly cretinous nonsense. Hes not as bad as "Mr. Framerate Police" TotalBiscuit. Though. 

[TrishaCat]

Bumping this because in a curious bit of news, Steam is actually doing exactly what I wanted it to. This comes in light of recent news where a couple weeks ago they threatened a bunch of visual novel devs and a few other devs including the creator of Huniepop to censor their games or else they'd get removed (regardless of whether or not they were already censored or even contained pornographic content to begin with). Said news got a ton of backlash, and they went back on that and apologied to the devs. And now, as of yesterday, we now have a blogpost from Valve explaining what they will and will not allow on Steam, and basically, they're saying they'll allow almost anything:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082

The best part:

Quote

With that principle in mind, we've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.

I'VE WON

THE NICHE WEEB GAMES ARE SAVED

On 2/3/2018 at 7:20 PM, RTDragon said:

Did'nt we go through this before in my thread about the death of steam greenlight. Even so you forget that you won't be able to stream such games on streaming sites such as twitch. https://phoenix.corvidae.org/topic/5260-the-end-of-steam-greenlight/?do=findComment&comment=202800

Those complaints about porn vn on steam is legitimate, as well as assetflips. It makes finding games that are good a lot harder and eventually it's going to get to the point that steam reputation will suffer even more for it.

Why bring up Twitch though? I don't understand; Twitch is a different platform from Steam. Its a streaming service, not a game client.

 

[Faust]

Hmm, 'Except for things we decide are illegal'.

This raises a few questions: 

1) Does this differ from things that actually ARE illegal? i.e. are they saying 'we'll take down stuff that is against the law', or 'we'll decide what the law is'?

2) The law of which country? Let's hope it's not Saudi Arabia!

3) Does this spell the end for the Grand Theft Auto franchise? That depicts a heck of a lot of illegal things!

...on the whole I find this encouraging, but I have my doubts as to whether they will actually follow through with it, or quietly continue implementing their usual policy. Let's hope it's an earnest post though. I mean, Humble Bundle never censored anything as far as I'm aware, except for the stuff that was sold by them but provided by Steam of course.

[WileyWarWeasel]

Well Steam allowed "AIDS Simulator" onto their store so their standards do seem to be somewhat loose.

[Faust]

2 hours ago, WileyWarWeasel said:

Well Steam allowed "AIDS Simulator" onto their store so their standards do seem to be somewhat loose.

Curses, now I want to see what that trainwreck of a title is connected to!
*EDIT* Nope, it's gone, they removed it under the 'no trolling' rule.

[WileyWarWeasel]

2 hours ago, Faust said:

Curses, now I want to see what that trainwreck of a title is connected to!
*EDIT* Nope, it's gone, they removed it under the 'no trolling' rule.

Easy come easy go ;(((((((((

[RTDragon]

Can confirm that.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/06/aids-simulator-kicked-off-steam-as-valve-grapples-with-trolling-definition/

On 6/7/2018 at 7:04 PM, Battlechili said:

Why bring up Twitch though? I don't understand; Twitch is a different platform from Steam. Its a streaming service, not a game client.

You do know quite a lot of games on steam are streamed to twitch and the fact that twitch is one of the most popular gaming platforms and you were told this before.

[Vae]

This just speaks to me of laziness. Instead of clearly defining rules, making sure Steam's staff understand those rules, and enforcing them accordingly, they pretty much straight-up admitted that it was too difficult. So they're going the easiest route possible.

Weasyl did the same thing with their "moderate" category.

I can't really respect the decision, but I'm not surprised by it either. Never underestimate laziness.

[TrishaCat]

11 hours ago, RTDragon said:

You do know quite a lot of games on steam are streamed to twitch and the fact that twitch is one of the most popular gaming platforms and you were told this before.

Twitch still isn't Steam. Run by different companies and used for different purposes. A game being on Steam or not isn't based on Twitch rules. Steam does what it wants. Twitch does what it wants. They might sometimes work together on something. They don't have to though.

Also Steam has its own streaming capabilities now. Albeit more limited.

7 hours ago, Vae said:

This just speaks to me of laziness. Instead of clearly defining rules, making sure Steam's staff understand those rules, and enforcing them accordingly, they pretty much straight-up admitted that it was too difficult. So they're going the easiest route possible.

Weasyl did the same thing with their "moderate" category.

I can't really respect the decision, but I'm not surprised by it either. Never underestimate laziness.

I imagine any rules they might've set and enforced would've upset someone or had a level of arbitrary vagueness to it. Defining quality and effort is nigh impossible, especially for titles that teeter the line like say Goat Simulator. Same goes for offensive content, considering people just recently were pushing for Agony to be disallowed on Steam.

[TrishaCat]

On 6/8/2018 at 2:16 AM, Faust said:

2) The law of which country? Let's hope it's not Saudi Arabia!

Valve is stationed in the US, so I would hope the US. They do have a history of keeping games available that are illegal to sell in certain countries and just disallow selling to that region though if that makes you feel any better. Gal Gun is illegal to sell in New Zealand, and Valkyrie Drive in Germany/Australia, yet they're both available on Steam. Just those countries are region locked out of those store pages.

[Vae]

2 hours ago, Battlechili said:

I imagine any rules they might've set and enforced would've upset someone or had a level of arbitrary vagueness to it. Defining quality and effort is nigh impossible, especially for titles that teeter the line like say Goat Simulator. Same goes for offensive content, considering people just recently were pushing for Agony to be disallowed on Steam.

Not really.

Assuming they were only going to be taking care of obvious porn games, it's not that hard to weed out games that only exist to sell depictions of 14-year-old tiddy.
You gotta be a special kind of blind and stupid not to be able to tell that intention from the rest.

[TrishaCat]

The Witcher 3 has more explicit sex scenes than Huniepop. Conan Exiles has more nudity than Kindred Spirits on the Roof. Yet the latters were the ones threatened while the formers not.

You could talk about intent as a game, trying to say one emphasizes sexual content while the other simply contains it, but some might argue Huniepop's main appeal is it's Bejeweled gameplay and Kindred Spirits it's romantic progression. So then you've gotta think "where do I draw the line" and that gets hazy once again depending on the game. Trying to create defined rules that don't come off as arbitrary and vague for games that could be argued as one way or the other (such as titles that are very sexual but contain other things) make such dealings frustrating without being unfair in some manner or making someone upset. And unfairness or questionable allowance is  bad for a place where people might depend on sales to succeed.

There IS literal nukige on Steam, and I'll admit it'd be harder to defend some of that as anything other than playing pornographic content but...Well, I honestly can't think of any way to defend or justify something like say "Material Girl" as anything other than cheap porn. 

Though I never wanted any games to be disallowed to begin with.

Valve's original threatening of games was a bit odd however. It was clear they were going after pornographic content recently, but some of the developers and games they had personally okayed already in the past. Mangagamer asked them if they could put games containing pornographic content on Steam and just have an off site patch and they agreed, yet their games got struck by Valves threat, with A Kiss for Petals: Maidens of Michael even being removed despite another game in the same series with the same content being allowed. Kindred Spirits specifically had already been reviewed in emails and okayed despite containing uncensored nudity (which Valve was made aware of when they okayed it) only to also get hit recently with a threat of removal. It was clear Valve wasn't entirely sure what to take aim at, that they themselves were blind. Anything Valve would've done with stuff like those would have been going back on their word in some cases and leaving a situation of "how come they get away with this but I don't?" in others. 

I suppose one could just ask Valve to put more time and effort into researching these games though so they could know what they're taking aim at and act appropriately.

[WileyWarWeasel]

14 hours ago, Vae said:

This just speaks to me of laziness. Instead of clearly defining rules, making sure Steam's staff understand those rules, and enforcing them accordingly, they pretty much straight-up admitted that it was too difficult. So they're going the easiest route possible.

Not to mention it's much cheaper to take their current approach of letting almost anything through and just going after specific games after they've generated too much outrage from one group or another.

Setting up a proper framework to follow and training/hiring staff to properly enforce clearly defined rules would cost much more than just doing the bare minimum and being reactive.

4 hours ago, Battlechili said:

I suppose one could just ask Valve to put more time and effort into researching these games though so they could know what they're taking aim at and act appropriately.

Don't be ridiculous. That would involve spending

[Vae]

13 hours ago, Battlechili said:

The Witcher 3 has more explicit sex scenes than Huniepop. Conan Exiles has more nudity than Kindred Spirits on the Roof. Yet the latters were the ones threatened while the formers not.

You could talk about intent as a game, trying to say one emphasizes sexual content while the other simply contains it, but some might argue Huniepop's main appeal is it's Bejeweled gameplay and Kindred Spirits it's romantic progression. So then you've gotta think "where do I draw the line" and that gets hazy once again depending on the game.

Witcher has a lot more going on for it than just a few sex scenes thrown in.

Huniepop is very obviously only there to sell jackoff material to lonely-ass nerds.

Like I said, it takes a special kind of blind and stupid to not be able to tell the difference in intent here.
Saying that people just play Huniepop for the Bejeweled stuff is like saying people read Playboy for the articles. If you weren't there for jackoff material, you'd just play one of the many, many other puzzle style games out there.

[RTDragon]

19 hours ago, Battlechili said:

Twitch still isn't Steam. Run by different companies and used for different purposes. A game being on Steam or not isn't based on Twitch rules. Steam does what it wants. Twitch does what it wants. They might sometimes work together on something. They don't have to though.

Also Steam has its own streaming capabilities now. Albeit more limited.

You've really missed my point with this. And don't you dare compare your anime fap-material games with story driven games like the witcher 3 considering that's optional content.

 

[AshleyAshes]

Christ.  There are actually GOOD Visual Novels that I'd love to enjoy that play out like engaging 'Choose your own adventure' anime.  Instead your trying to argue for HUNNYPOP trash that might a well be a power point presentation of anime boob clip art and say 'WITCHER 3 IS JUST AS BAD.  SO BOOBIE TRASH IS GOOD!'.

[RTDragon]

58 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Christ.  There are actually GOOD Visual Novels that I'd love to enjoy that play out like engaging 'Choose your own adventure' anime.  Instead your trying to argue for HUNNYPOP trash that might a well be a power point presentation of anime boob clip art and say 'WITCHER 3 IS JUST AS BAD.  SO BOOBIE TRASH IS GOOD!'.

Unfortunately finding those is hard considering the amount of low quality games that flood the market there.

[AshleyAshes]

28 minutes ago, RTDragon said:

Unfortunately finding those is hard considering the amount of low quality games that flood the market there.

I assume the driving force there is the low cost to license, low price point that is attractive to consumers, and the promise of quick access to provocative content.  A lot of the 'big name' visual novels are more like a large investment in time, 20-50hrs to follow all story routes.  Those titles that are a lot more popular in Japan with major console releases and their developers demand higher licensing fees.  So things like Clannad and Steins;Gate on Steam cost a fair bit more and don't offer the same 'instant gratification' as some HunnyPop trash.

But it's pretty sad when the guy arguing FOR visual novels isn't even all about the deep story ones, he wants to talk about 'teh bewbs'.

[RTDragon]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

I assume the driving force there is the low cost to license, low price point that is attractive to consumers, and the promise of quick access to provocative content.  A lot of the 'big name' visual novels are more like a large investment in time, 20-50hrs to follow all story routes.  Those titles that are a lot more popular in Japan with major console releases and their developers demand higher licensing fees.  So things like Clannad and Steins;Gate on Steam cost a fair bit more and don't offer the same 'instant gratification' as some HunnyPop trash.

But it's pretty sad when the guy arguing FOR visual novels isn't even all about the deep story ones, he wants to talk about 'teh bewbs'.

Indeed and my previous thread was the same thing upset about censorship to be honest some stuff is better censored. I'm surprised this person hasn't played story driven gameplay.

[Vae]

Also more proof of my point of obvious intent.
All of these are from recent releases.

[Socketosis]

7 hours ago, RTDragon said:

Indeed and my previous thread was the same thing upset about censorship to be honest some stuff is better censored.

Nah censorship is gay.

[WileyWarWeasel]

6 hours ago, Vae said:

 

 

;V

[Faust]

On 09/06/2018 at 5:45 PM, Vae said:

I can't really respect the decision, but I'm not surprised by it either. Never underestimate laziness.

I think there may be more to it than that. By holding their hands up and saying 'It's too hard!' they may look like lazy bastards, but they neatly avoid being accused of siding with the content creators when someone inevitably posts something that someone else finds offensive, but that doesn't obviously fall into the 'trolling' category. It's like a 'get out of morality issues free' card, they just want to wash their hands of being judged for their decisions.

[Vae]

2 hours ago, Faust said:

I think there may be more to it than that. By holding their hands up and saying 'It's too hard!' they may look like lazy bastards, but they neatly avoid being accused of siding with the content creators when someone inevitably posts something that someone else finds offensive, but that doesn't obviously fall into the 'trolling' category. It's like a 'get out of morality issues free' card, they just want to wash their hands of being judged for their decisions.

I mean, not being able to stick to your initial word because of potential backlash and opting for the easy route still counts as laziness to me. :v

It's being too lazy to uphold your convictions.

[TrishaCat]

15 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

Christ.  There are actually GOOD Visual Novels that I'd love to enjoy that play out like engaging 'Choose your own adventure' anime.  Instead your trying to argue for HUNNYPOP trash that might a well be a power point presentation of anime boob clip art and say 'WITCHER 3 IS JUST AS BAD.  SO BOOBIE TRASH IS GOOD!'.

Huniepop isn't a visual novel. It was just an example since its famous and was threatened by Valve.

Also Huniepop is neither a powerpoint presentation nor is it a bad game. Its a dating sim crossed with a Bejeweled clone, and its pretty fun imo. I even made a review for it. I thought its dialogue was hilarious and irreverant, and liked the art and Bejeweled/Candycrush gameplay. Different girls wanting you to match different things based on their personality was kind of neat, and it was a bit of a challenge to keep up with everyone's traits when it comes to asking them questions and trying to date them. Plus the lewdness added an extra layer of fun to it. I like fanservice.

13 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

But it's pretty sad when the guy arguing FOR visual novels isn't even all about the deep story ones, he wants to talk about 'teh bewbs'.

I like story driven VNs. I recently finished the Danganronpa series, and from what I've played, I really like Zero Escape too. I had full intention to play Steins;Gate, Song of Saya (please oh please let this get a Steam release), and Fate/Stay Night (also localization much needed) once I got the chance (though Zero Escape is top priority for the moment).

I just also like fanservice. And I wasn't bringing up VNs like Steins;Gate and whatnot because said games weren't the ones being threatened by Valve. Stuff like Steins;Gate never had any bearing on the thread as they've always been well within Valve's rules for the platform. Its not because I don't enjoy them. They just weren't relevant to the thread.

13 hours ago, RTDragon said:

I'm surprised this person hasn't played story driven gameplay.

wew

I've played plenty of story driven games. Danganronpa, Zero Escape, Nier, Drakengard, Cave Story, Solatorobo, Final Fantasy, Tales of, .hack//, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Persona, Shin Megami Tensei, Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear Solid, The World Ends With You, Undertale, Analogue: A Hate Story/Hate Plus....The list goes on. Its just that for the most part discussion of such isn't relevant to Valve's decision. 

[AshleyAshes]

3 hours ago, Battlechili said:

I've played plenty of story driven games. Danganronpa, Zero Escape, Nier, Drakengard, Cave Story, Solatorobo, Final Fantasy, Tales of, .hack//, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Persona, Shin Megami Tensei, Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear Solid, The World Ends With You, Undertale, Analogue: A Hate Story/Hate Plus....The list goes on. Its just that for the most part discussion of such isn't relevant to Valve's decision. 

...We're trying to bring up story driven visual novels and to pad his list he responds with a list that is half JRPGs, plus some action RPGs, even an stealth/action shooter.

[RTDragon]

50 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

...We're trying to bring up story driven visual novels and to pad his list he responds with a list that is half JRPGs, plus some action RPGs, even an stealth/action shooter.

Unfortunately this is Battlechili who loves tits and ass in his visual novels. Not everyone here likes cheap shallow tactics in their stories.

Visual Novels i've played/looking forward to buy.

Narcissu 1st & 2nd going to be buying the 10th Anniversary Anthology Project. for sure on steam. (Played it)

Anything from KEY/VisualArts.

SC2VN - The eSports Visual Novel (Haven't finished this but it's really shows promise)

Invisible Apartment this one a trilogy as well as the prequel. (Definitely going to be buying all of them considering need to continue the story.)

Angels with Scaly Wings (Looking forward to this considering hearing how dark this visual novel can really be with having to unlock both good/bad end routes.)

Nekojishi (Better off with the standard version (On steam+ DLC)  much more story driven plot.)

 

 

[Socketosis]

32 minutes ago, RTDragon said:

Unfortunately this is Battlechili who loves tits and ass in his visual novels. Not everyone here likes cheap shallow tactics in their stories.

[TrishaCat]

2 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

...We're trying to bring up story driven visual novels and to pad his list he responds with a list that is half JRPGs, plus some action RPGs, even an stealth/action shooter.

I talked about visual novels with you. I mentioned Danganronpa, Zero Escape, Steins Gate, Song of Saya, and Fate/Stay Night did I not? While we're at it, you can also throw Occultic;Nine and Punch Line onto that list.

The list I gave RTDragon was in response to his "story driven gameplay" statement which is not limited to VNs, hence the mention of JRPGs and other games as my defense of myself saying I take interest in story heavy games.

This is why I replied with just VNs to you, but a wider variety to him.

I apologize if I misunderstood what he was intending. If that was the case, I'm sorry, however I don't appreciate being told that I don't "appreciate story driven gameplay" or that I was trying to "pad my list". He said story driven gameplay, not specifically story driven visual novels. I realize however that its my bad to bring other games up when the topic at hand involved VNs.

And speaking of more VNs, Net High translation when?

[Tsuujou]

On 6/11/2018 at 1:02 AM, Vae said:

Also more proof of my point of obvious intent.
All of these are from recent releases.

Yeah, I saw a bunch of trash like this the first day it was reversed. I have the anime tag blocked and I still saw a shit load of games like this just flood the new releases. lol

[Faust]

On 12/06/2018 at 8:24 PM, Tsuujou said:

Yeah, I saw a bunch of trash like this the first day it was reversed. I have the anime tag blocked and I still saw a shit load of games like this just flood the new releases. lol

You obviously don't have the boobs tag blocked.

[Silo]

On 6/11/2018 at 1:02 AM, Vae said:

looks good, m8

what's wrong with tiddies?

[TrishaCat]

Imo its the quality of the tiddies that is the problem

Why buy those when you can get Senran Kagura or Valkyrie Drive or Moero Chronicle or Gal Gun?

[Vae]

Why buy any tiddies?
It's the fucking internet. Lol.
Just look that shit up for free, son. There's a wealth of porn to find.

[Faust]

3 hours ago, Vae said:

Why buy any tiddies?

Why buy anything? To support the creators! Tiddies need support!

Of course some deserve support more than others.