Hi! I'm Scarlett Young, the lead developer for Kronos Time Titan. If you're ever interested in doing an interview, please let me know. I'd love to talk to you and share with your readers. <3
I am disappointed about the Evenicle 2 news as well and I agree that it would be nice if Steam made a consistent policy. But I think saying that Steam has been going back and forth for years is making an assumption that Valve functions like most other companies. I don't think there is a lot of evidence that is true. Valve seems to very rarely set actual policies. They seem to give a lot of discretion to individual employees and those employees do what they want to do. So, individual developers or individual games experience something, the developers or publishers talk about that experience, and people make the assumption that a policy has changed that applies to everyone. But I think it is much more likely that an individual Valve employee made a decision and it only applied in that specific case for the employee's own reasons. If a similar situation arose for a different developer or a different game, it might be treated completely differently by a different Valve employee.
Hey JJ, thank you very much for your insightful comment!
I think it's important to understand that Valve is running a multibillion/year business that a lot of smaller creators depend on. The fact that an individual employee is able to make a decision like that is actually terrifying. When a game like Evenicle 2 is denied on Steam, we as game makers have to assume it sets a precedent for other adult games. That's because Valve doesn't have clear policies on what they do and do not allow.
When I say that Valve has been going back and forth on whether they allow adult content or not, I'm saying it would be better for everyone if Valve could clearly outline their expectations. That way, you avoid a company like AliceSoft pouring a lot of resources into a product that ultimately won't make it to Steam. And Valve can preempt a lot of criticism by being able to point to a specific policy that is violated in this case.
Hi! I'm Scarlett Young, the lead developer for Kronos Time Titan. If you're ever interested in doing an interview, please let me know. I'd love to talk to you and share with your readers. <3
I am disappointed about the Evenicle 2 news as well and I agree that it would be nice if Steam made a consistent policy. But I think saying that Steam has been going back and forth for years is making an assumption that Valve functions like most other companies. I don't think there is a lot of evidence that is true. Valve seems to very rarely set actual policies. They seem to give a lot of discretion to individual employees and those employees do what they want to do. So, individual developers or individual games experience something, the developers or publishers talk about that experience, and people make the assumption that a policy has changed that applies to everyone. But I think it is much more likely that an individual Valve employee made a decision and it only applied in that specific case for the employee's own reasons. If a similar situation arose for a different developer or a different game, it might be treated completely differently by a different Valve employee.
Hey JJ, thank you very much for your insightful comment!
I think it's important to understand that Valve is running a multibillion/year business that a lot of smaller creators depend on. The fact that an individual employee is able to make a decision like that is actually terrifying. When a game like Evenicle 2 is denied on Steam, we as game makers have to assume it sets a precedent for other adult games. That's because Valve doesn't have clear policies on what they do and do not allow.
When I say that Valve has been going back and forth on whether they allow adult content or not, I'm saying it would be better for everyone if Valve could clearly outline their expectations. That way, you avoid a company like AliceSoft pouring a lot of resources into a product that ultimately won't make it to Steam. And Valve can preempt a lot of criticism by being able to point to a specific policy that is violated in this case.
Thank you for reading!