My idea is two steams. One where you have proven you are 18 or older (or whatever age is required for where you live). In the settings you can check to have both the normal titles on Steam and then the hentai/etc with the games or would you want to have them managed as Adult Steam and Steam (just making up something). That way the hentai titles don't fill the store up with titles that are just growing to large in number to be able to find what you want. However in almost all anime titles women usually have well sizes that are as realistic. There are some games that have to say there is nudity to meet the guidelines of the ESRB or PEGI or whatever your country uses for grading games. The problem is that a brief image could move titles accidently over to the adult section and then you have to find those titles among the more hard corish sex and nude games. So something would have to be made to determine if a game goes to one side of Steam or the other.
I am not against those games being sold, just not among games and sites that aren't focused on catering too. So GOG has never really been about hentai and other nude heavy content, so lets try to keep it that way. Allow other sites or a few gaming distribution sites that sell mostly just these kind of titles.
Yes choice but is that what you want to add to your store to sell?
Yes there are many shoveling of low quality or unplayable games that don't involve nudity and sex getting into game distribution sites but at least you can decide for yourself without having to see what you would for these adult freakshows of games.
Moving titles that deviate from what is normally sold, I don't view as censorship. It is simply acknowleding this is a group of titles most users would prefer be elsewhere on the site and not part of the mainstream catalog. Plus it will allow for more stringent verification when it is put as a different site or offshoot as those who really want to buy these titles can get verified and not just asked if you aren't 18 you can't view these titles (well don't say you are under 18, after all who will know). It is about asking for content that isn't what we associate with gaming not to be mixed in. I don't see censorship as the games can still be bought and can be developed but they allow game distro sites from having to deal with questions of how good is their age verification or users like myself who feel these aren't titles I need to see and have to go throw (and with no way to filtering them out without some games being filtered out that aren't an adult porn for gamers - if you call those titles games to begin with). Is a local store censoring if it doesn't provide adult magazines sold in its store? No. They simply don't want to promote the material in their store.
If these titles I refer to had a feature to disable sex, nudity and whatever, then how playable will the game be??? I think the rating systems help to keep us partially up to date as to what is in the game. Mentioning content much like movies on cable tv to help you decide if this sounds like something you do or don't want to watch. Creative Assembly for example sells the real blood as a DLC for its title. For me I find that a really cheap way to get more money from people, when it should be an option in the game menu instead. Not sure how to respond to the comment about gog being for adults. No, it isn't, after all it is helping to showcase to those who weren't even born when old games were released and now they can see gaming of the past and the good games that still can be fun to play even if they don't require ray tracing or 3d glasses.
It is a first amendment issue because it will end up in the courts and would be made a political issue, just as what happened to Steam when it made public it was going to limit certain titles. For Americans anytime, any site, store or whatever doesn't sell and tells you why it isn't interested in selling it becomes a big deal about nothing. Look at what happened when Wal-Mart stopped selling firearms or ammo (don't know if they stopped selling ammo) everyone screams 2nd amendment rights, so yes 1st amendment as people will feel content not sold because of what is in it is depriving them and people will complain.
It degrades the store in several ways. It gets titles that are not wanted into the catalog and without a good filtering system no way to remove them. Second, all companies should have an ethical and moral compass or something that says what they stand for. They haven't really sold much of these type of titles in the past and GOG is still going strong so why add those titles. Let Steam meddle in that business. Degrade, hey not all customers on this site are over 18, so parents see content like that appearing they could decide to block the site from their kids (even though some would say violent games should be blocked, however a kid will see violence in almost any tv show these days, they won't see naked woman with outrageous proportions unless they are watching Keeping up with the Kard). Every company has a feel, a style, a class. For example those who live in the USA, compare Kmart to Nordstroms or stores that sell anything that comes from anywhere on this planet with no attention to carrying products that are of decent quality and instead are cheap and break/wear out fast.
What we are saying is not that people shouldn't have the right to buy it. We are saying is this the kind of titles GOG wants to be known for selling. Are these the titles that start to fill up the gaming catalog and users (I don't know the % obviously of who just simply don't see this class as games and don't want to have to waste their time going through and having no way to push them off to somewhere else, or people like me who think these are tasteless games or games that don't need to be on GOG as they don't match the company image.
No I haven't played VenusBlood, never played BloodRayne, never played the older Tomb Raiders, not that the newer ones aren't still selling a woman, but things are a little more closer to reality.
Well quality, simple, it is depending on sexual depictions, simulated nudity and sex and other content in order to sell the product. The game sure isn't being sold based on its story or great acting.
How do we determine if a game should be viewed as one of these type of games I am talking about, I don't know. However some are very obvious and don't require you to be smart or 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or 80 years old to see the obvious goal. So there would be a problem of when a title crosses the lines into the titles that we don't need. Now so far most of these titles have been easy to pick out of the crowd. Almost any company looks at what it wants to sell before it puts it on the shelf. Simple common sense in business, you have limited shelfing or ad space so you go with what isn't going to cause problems with people. So going forward dealing with how to determine these type of games will become more difficult if the developers try to hide their actual content.
LootHunter, saying that if they allow the Witcher games they would be two faced by not allowing others is missing the meaning. Witcher games are developed with the intent of selling the title based on sex and nudity. That is one major difference. The title I saw on the front page that caused me to make this post I don't consider it in the same league as the Witcher or Cyberpunk as those games have gaming as the priority and the adult content just is part of adding a little realism. However the titles I am talking about, sex, nudity, etc. is their major selling point and when their screenshots show this, I think it is obvious that GOG is being a hypocrit. Now if in witcher, every time he kills a monster they have him simulate sex with the female character and ripping her clothes off or whatever, then I can see being hypocritical. However Witcher isn't about sex or nudity or the content in the games most of us would wish not start appearing here.
This discussion is actually showing the complexity behind the entire gaming industry. Yes I wanted to see it stay mostly about games, but then it also shows that it can actually offend people. For example, many of the "hero" games since probably 9/11 have potrayed the bad guy as someone from the middle east who practices islam, which people who practice Islam don't understand why they are being depictied in that way and so companies in the middle east are making games where you go after the Israel or western countries their goals. Games that show women as nothing but sexual objects and toys obviously is going to offend women. Now some have taken the debate beyond what was intended. However it shows even when those who are offended speak up, like women, we find ways to marginalize what they are saying and trying to find ways to get around the issue they bring up, at least when it comes to game content and what the game is really about. Call of Duty titles, should we show more sensitivity towards who the enemy is in the titles, honestly don't know. However if a game is there to mock a religion, sexual orientation, gender, things like that, then yes it does have an impact.
