Valve has once again arbitrarily ousted a game from its store, forcibly expunging visual novel “The Key to Home” from the Steam Store whilst claiming the game’s main demographic are “pedophiles.”
Henteko Doujin, the game’s developer, reportedly received an email from Valve demanding details regarding the game’s plot and intended audience; after receiving Henteko Doujin’s response, Valve sent an additional email stating “We are not interested in shipping this title on Steam” – which drew criticism as the visual novel possesses no actual H-scenes with its child characters.
The Key to Home’s Steam store page also had no suggestive images or videos and yet the game was seemingly removed solely for having child characters; Henteko Doujin naturally sent Valve another message asking why the game was removed, to which they responded “because we think this novel’s core audience is pedophiles.”
A PV for “The Key to Home”, which has been bombarded with dislikes:
Henteko Doujin subsequently posted on the Steam community forums to explain the situation, claiming that the visual novel’s main premise is the exact opposite of Valve’s presumption and that it has no sexually explicit content whatsoever:
Henteko Doujin’s brief summary of what the game is about:
This novel game is aimed to raise social awareness of child and school related social issues through a story about four troubled heroines who, under unexpected circumstances, join forces with a young hapless teacher to fight against an evil organization that means to exploit children.
This work is fiction, but linked with real problems regarding children in the real world. Another theme of this work is fighting against real life evils through the use of fictional “Hentai”.
Some of the complaints made via the Steam community forums are due to the game’s artist MUK who has been known for drawing rather risque erotica, though Henteko Doujin stated that his participation in the game’s creation had an “important meaning” and could only be understood by playing it.
Other internet dwellers have also been quite fixated by a quote on The Key to Home’s store page: “This is a visual mystery novel for all gentlemen and gentlewoman who love little girls!” – a mistranslation of a Japanese slang expression:
“This is a visual mystery novel for all gentlemen and gentlewoman who love little girls!” Has caused many more information: after reading the steam discussion page, it has become clear that many people’s interpretation of the phrase: Some confusion.
In this context, the word ‘Gentleman’ or ‘gentleman’ is a Japanese internet meme which is used when referring to people who like children in a normal and clearly non sexual way.
I apologize for having included this phrase before making sure that its true meaning was as clear as possible.”
This however did not stop Steams truculent masses from brigading the game:
Valve has yet to respond to this backlash; those interested in giving the visual novel a try can still purchase it via Melonbooks.
Whatever, I’ll just keep playing my Steam copy of Littlewitch Romanesque with actual pedophilia in it.
Now delete the store pages of every single game where it’s possible to kill someone because those games clearly cater to murderers.
Steam caters to SJW morons.
Censorship is so real here.
Not enough blood and guts to make it past the censors. Maybe add a few decapitations and mention those in the game description and it will give them a reason to pass it through.