dev diary: many censorship battles on the horizon... (Patreon)

i put up the new week with timber build yesterday! i've been thinking about that basically nonstop!!! so i'm writing my dev diary on a weird day now since i have neglected to update in a bit and wanted to write out some of my plans for next month and the future in general...

doing a game jam for august!

i'm planning a nsfw comedy game with a friend (being vague since i don't want to spoil the surprise!). due to its nature, i'm not sure i'll be able to post much about it here! might end up in a sex advice succubus type of gray area. it will be a one-month jam, so expecting it to be pretty short. i expect to mostly be doing the art for it.

i plan to share what i can anyway, and even if i can't share a lot, it's a small one-off project anyway! i'm excited to see how our idea pans out...

planning the next steam release for november!

oh yes, a fun little story i get to tell here...! apparently if valve likes you enough (ie your games earn an arbitrary amount of money for them) they waive the steam direct fee (which is $100, they pay you back if your game earns $1k). previously if i released a free game i couldn't get my $100 back, so i was hesitant to release free stuff on steam because it didn't seem worth the effort. i decided to stop worrying about this when i chose to start my re-release gauntlet earlier this year...

but anyway my account gets free app credits now??!?!?!? probably thanks to BAD END THEATER... so it's not even a factor anymore! i didn't know this was a thing, so the timing was pretty convenient...

i already started setting up for Night with Timber steam version. the reason i'm starting on it way in advance is because i don't know if they'll actually let me distribute it with the story how it is!!!!! like, i'll be pretty mad if they allow rance but not NWT!!!!!!! but i will be submitting a build for them to review pretty soon and get my answer on that... SIGH...... (at least if they reject it i won't lose $100!!!)

i do have a backup storefront in mind if steam won't allow the game as-is. so a deluxe version of NWT with some added scenes WILL exist. considering starry flowers was restricted in multiple countries even for just having the "frequent sexual content" tag (still fighting that btw!), i expect NWT will be even more limited as an adult-only game. it's frustrating, but i can't do much about it...

syrup 1 got banned on steam in russia lmao

i posted about this on my site, but apparently there's a group of russian gamers going around reporting lgbt games to fight the culture war. it's pretty funny to me that syrup and the ultimate sweet is a threat to them, i was so shocked to get the email about this.

unfortunately the tangible effect of this is that my game is available to less people for a stupid reason!!! this sucks!!! i wish it hadn't happened!!!!! but ebihime seems to have it much worse, having most of her games wrongfully restricted in russia. so like, idk, maybe that's what's next for my catalogue. at least BET is still available worldwide, though i definitely still get homophobic reviews on it all the time.

we got hostile comments on our nonbinary coded games event, and it really made me sad at the time. for some reason, i hadn't expected that level of random hate about something so mundane. and now my games' distribution is being limited in various countries purely over having lgbt content. did you know you can't view starry flowers steam page in the UK without a credit card, since that's the way steam does age verification? i have a friend who's older than me whose steam account itself is over 18 years old and she can't view the page because she doesn't have a credit card. it's insanity.

truly did not mean for this dev diary to turn into a vent post, but everything from credit card companies to anti-lgbt gamers to random awful legislation is really trying to get in my way of making the art i want to make! times are tough!!! but the only option is to forge ahead... for timber...!!

i'm seriously making my favorite stuff i've EVER made these days, and i will keep making it for as long as it's fun for me to do so. i mean it every time, but sincerely thank you for your support. my next post will be a more fun one, i promise!

thanks for reading~