arewar
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Brandon's route will not be included in the base game.
🕑 Added 2022-08-20 17:51:10 +0000 UTCHello everyone. I ran into a problem. TLDR at the end!
So.... this may be a shock to some people. I know, I'm sorry! But... teenagers have sex.
Calm down! Take a deep breath! Have some water. Please don't faint. If you have teenagers, I'm sure they're the one exception to this rule! Your kids wouldn't be such vile sinful heathens. Never!
But, it happens.
The problem is... well... the stores are not okay with that kind of content. Even if it's two sixteen year olds consenting in text only, it's can still get a game banned off the store. They have basically a zero tolerance policy.
To anyone that wants to point to a game that successfully gets away with it, all my research agrees that Steam is very inconsistent and subjective with the policy. Still, I don't want to risk it. Given the OTHER content in this game, I feel like the odds of them scrutinizing PoR more than others is high. And this may be a problem in other stores as well.
I've learned how strict this is after completing the first steps towards setting up the Steam page for Particles of Reality. I thought initially avoiding explicit sex scenes would be enough, but it's not.
But I'm glad I found out sooner rather than later.
So... alright. I get it. I don't love it, but I get it.
However, that's a huge issue for Brandon's route.
Brandon's route is very timeline specific. Certain things happen when they are children, then in high school, then Monika moves for college. Changing the timeline would require huge rewrites that would include changes to the other routes.
If I censor out 100% of the physical content.... Brandon and Monika's complicated relationship doesn't make any sense.
Steam makes it clear that simply claiming they are 18 won't fly. Context will determine their age.
I sincerely was considering scrapping Brandon's route entirely, and I was really upset about that. I've finished writing the entire route and I think it's really good stuff.
Gaiv and WelsLynn (thanks y'all) suggested a solution: an off-store game patch.
And I think that's the only possible solution here. I can still create the content (and as a bonus... censor a lot LESS, because I was being very cautious). And because that content won't be included in the game files, it won't pose any issues. I've seen this done in one other game.
After looking into it, I think that's not too difficult to do. (Update: It's implemented now!) It'll take a little time to get it implemented, but it'll be good practice for the next worlds.
So... I'm going to do that. This patch will be completely free (but will require the base game), because I still consider it to be a core part of 'Obsession'.
This also means that no more of Brandon's content will be available on the demo version of the game. There will be no achievements for Brandon's route either.
Also I want to take a moment here to appreciate that all this shit (and more) is A-OK with stores as long as it's marked as mature content. But teenagers having sex? YOU MONSTER!
TLDR:
- Steam will ban my game for the content in Brandon's route.
- To avoid that, Brandon's route will not be included in the base game on stores.
- Instead, it will be a free off-site patch you can download elsewhere post-release.
I will be doing research into how to implement this kind of thing and where to host this content (if you know of any let me know!)
Until release all of Brandon's remaining content will be Patreon exclusive.
