GOG, a PC storefront that offers games DRM-free, has in recent years been one of the first stops for games unfortunate enough to be banned from Steam over its raging bias against Japanese anime bishoujo games. However, they now seem to be following Steam in unfairly discriminating against anime games.
Tokyo Clanpool, a Vita game by Compile Heart that was recently picked up by Eastasiasoft for an English release on Switch and PC, has so far faced censorship on every platform it has tried to release on. First getting banned from Steam, then being censored and having its release restricted by Nintendo on Switch.
Initially, Eastasiasoft tried to submit a censored version of the game to Steam, likely with the intention of releasing an off-site patch. However, since Steam banned the game anyway, they then submitted the censored version to GOG, initially merely out of paranoia since they had already been banned from Steam. They then eventually went back and tried to patch the game's content back in. Unfortunately, their initial paranoia proved well-founded as GOG refused to host the game's uncensored content. The content in question is a mildly erotic minigame called "Ether Induction", which involves using the controls or touch screen to rub the girls to gain stat bonuses in the main dungeon crawling gameplay. This type of minigame was typical of Compile Heart releases of the time. Steam, Nintendo and GOG all have other games featuring similar content that did not have to be censored. GOG in particular has full H-games with explicit loli content either uncensored or with on-site patches. Yet suddenly they will not allow this Vita game that was likely sold in general stores in Japan to have its content uncensored. It's seemingly indicative of a shift in policy towards Steam-level bias against Japanese games.
For games like Tokyo Clanpool, options for release are becoming increasingly narrow as all four mainstream gaming platforms now block or censor them and even smaller PC storefronts like GOG are now joining the anti-anime, anti-ecchi bandwagon. Companies that used to specialize in such content like Compile Heart are now preemptively neutering their content in response, to the ire of long-time fans who are increasingly rejecting the sanitized content, manifesting in declining sales across the board. Eastasiasoft too, once one of the few remaining publishers proudly flying the flag of ecchi fanservice, are now throwing in the towel and declaring they will no longer publish games like Tokyo Clanpool. Their most recently-announced significant release is an otome game, indicating the direction they are likely to take, leaving the fans of Japanese ecchi games they once catered to hanging and reeling. All this while gacha games like Snowbreak and Brown Dust 2 taunt fans of old otaku bishoujo games by offering similar content on mobile, provided you are willing to sell your soul to the GaaS mobage model, of course, like a twisted siren song calling the once-loyal subculture of games like Senran Kagura, Gal*Gun and Neptunia to a soulless, predatory model of content that encapsulates almost all the worst trends of gaming in recent years.
1 post and 1 image omitted.