[paoda]

While I can appreciate their dedication to Linux, I find their application process arbitrary and random, if not confusingly prejudiced towards certain types of games.

It's honestly a dice roll whether a visual novel will be accepted or rejected from Steam. Whatever reason used will weirdly not apply for titles already released and even titles that will apply after you. It doesn't matter if youre an indie game dev or Square Enix publishing a game set in the same universe as the widely loved Steins;Gate. You're still subject for a ban and for what really? Square Enix at least has the ability to talk behind the scenes to have the game approved.

This all matters so much because visual novels are already a niche. If you want to turn a profit you must sell on steam. This means that in response to an imprecise, contradictory policy it's in your best interest to self-censor as much as you can because you can not afford to have your game rejected.

[tadfisher]

I thought they got rid of any game content policies a couple years ago. The line was, "everything is allowed except malware and obvious trolling".

[optionalsquid]

Their actual content policies are described on the SteamWorks page and they include quite a lot more exceptions than malware and trolling:

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/onboarding...

Visual novels and similar games with young (looking) characters tend to get rejected for sexualizing those characters (rule 8). But there are also plenty of examples of tame games getting rejected, while similar but much more risque games were permitted, so it's hard to figure out exactly what Valve objects to.

[paoda]

If that's their policy, they genuinely make zero effort to follow it.