Steam’s lopsided ethics policy has once again shown its hypocrisy through enforced censorship of Grisaia: Chronos Rebellion.
Grisaia: Chronos Rebellion’s PC release is a visual novel that is simply based upon the story from the RPG defense mobile gacha game of the same name, removing everything barring the story. It’s effectively a spin-off slash continuation of the infamous Fruit of Grisaia series that I personally happen to be rather fond of.
It’s important to note that the visual novel itself is an all-ages VN.
There’s multitudes of games that have stemmed from the Grisaia series available for purchase on the Steam Store, such as the mainline series of visual novels (Fruit, Labyrinth, Eden) alongside additional side-stories in the forms of Leisure, Afterglow and Melody. Steam is also home to various Grisaia spin-off games dubbed “Grisaia Phantom Trigger” of which there are 9 separate Phantom Trigger titles available on Steam.
Now obviously it needs to be said that the MAINLINE visual novels of the Grisaia series do in fact contain nudity, sex and mature themes, however the Steam releases of them are in fact censored as the Steam renditions are actually ported copies of the same titles released on the PlayStation Vita, they contain no actual scenes of sex but do however come with “Vita exclusive” scenes instead.
Steam’s policy regarding games featuring sex and nudity is a complete mixed bag, Gabe and his cronies absolutely hate Japanese developers and any sort of Japanese game that depicts young, petite or “child like” characters whether or not they are sexualized, contain sexual themes or scenes or the games themselves happen to take place in a school setting.
Erotic game developers can in fact push their products on the Steam store completely uncensored and rife with nudity and sexual imagery, but this generally only applies for western developers pushing degenerate cancer shovel ware in the form of “Hentai Vs.” or “Sex with Hitler”, yeah.
Steam will allow western developers to peddle hardcore gay BDSM sex with Adolf himself but will turn around and block Japanese developers from releasing their game on the Steam Store because the characters within said game appear too young or are represented in a school setting.
Unless of course the hentai game happens to be published by Kagura Games, then and only then do they actually make it to release on Steam. However while Steam is immensely opposed to “lolicon” games being promoted on its storefront, coincidentally enough they seemingly allow Kagura to squeeze out a plethora of games that depict underage / little boys.
Games such as Summer Memories, My Naughty Summer Vacation, Succumate, TRATRITLE are just some of the games available on Steam that contain nudity and or sexual relations with fictious underage boys, because apparently that’s wholesome.
Why in gods green earth am I bringing up shota smut in relation to Grisaia? Well that’s because Chronos Rebellion, a barebones port of a MOBILE gacha game has been censored on Steam due to their so called “ethical standards”.
The official Twitter account of recently announced that the Steam release will have some differences compared to the original Japanese version. Specifically, there will be changes in the “CG artwork and presentation” while the story itself will remain unchanged.
Although the specific CG scenes affected by Steam’s imposed censorship were not mentioned, the reason behind these changes was attributed to Valve and their so called “ethical standards”.
If I were to speculate, it seems that this specific CG scene (courtesy of VNDB) featuring a suggestive shower scene might be among those that were considered “problematic” by the BDSM obsessed Hitler fanatical gay moralists at Valve.
Actual gamers and those with so called “taste” already know that Valve and their garbage Steam Store is to be avoided at all costs if you wish to actually own the software that you are purchasing, buying the game through CD key websites such as Green Man Gaming, Indiegala and Fantatical which is more morally correct than to give Valve your money in return for censored garbage, alternatively it’s ideal to support the developers directly if at all possible.
You’re able to purchase Grisaia Chronos Rebellion on other storefronts such as DLSite and DMM.
Though if I were to throw it out there, if Grisaia: Chronos Rebellion contained hardcore gay anal sex then it probably would’ve been able to launch on the Steam store completely uncensored.
