Latest clarification on Taste of Seduction on Steam

Hello, seducers,

We'll start with some not-so-good news, but we'll tell you up front that the Global Games Network team is not going to give up and we'll provide maximum transparency to let you know the situation and finally we need your opinions and recommendations.

As you all know, on April 14, 2023, our team sent the latest version of the Taste of Seduction build to the Steam team for testing and verification. From April 14 to May 2 we communicated with the Steam team very well and we were asked to make small changes to the build, very minor things, to add the game to Early Access, we received a few recommendations, things and discussions absolutely normal and solvable.

After 3 weeks of discussions in which things were going well, out of the blue, a person from Steam named Nadin, sent us the following message without much explanation:

"Hello,

After review, we will not be able to ship your game Taste of Seduction on Steam. While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us, we found that this title features themes, imagery or descriptions that we won’t distribute.

Regardless of a developer's intentions with their product, we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.

While every product submitted is unique, if your product features this representation—even in a subtle way that could be defined as a "grey area"—it will be rejected by Steam.

For instance, setting your game in a high-school but declaring your characters are of legal age would fall into that category and be banned.

This app has been banned and cannot be reused. Re-submissions of this app, even with modifications, will not be accepted.

Best,
Nadine"

Throughout the discussions, we were not informed of any problems related to any character and we discussed with a person named Kisha from Steam, but suddenly this Nadin appeared, who without any explanation took this absolutely wrong and erroneous decision. To interpret absolutely everything..

After which the game and the Steam page were deleted for absolutely no real reason. In the wishlist we had 10k people, which was not easy for us, an indie company, in which there was really a lot of work on all departments both for game development and marketing, and we put all our hopes in Steam. This message and this news came to us like a bolt of lightning after 3 years of work.

The Global Games Network team since the very beginning had the goal of launching Taste of Seduction on Steam, this was the main objective. We are a company registered absolutely legally in Romania, in parenthesis I will launch a link to our company ( https://www.listafirme.ro/global-games-network-srl-42962183/ ), we are tax payers, which we have paid so far to the comma and we respect absolutely all laws and regulations imposed. Our company has invested 100.000$ in this project and we can prove this legally and fiscally. Discussions with all employees of this company have been clear from the beginning, we do not want to make absolutely no compromises and exceed the legal and moral limits on this game. With the writer of the game we discussed from the beginning to make a clean story, without interpretations, without illegal content that could bring us criminal damage. Also with our character artist we discussed that all the characters he created should look like adults, so there is no trace of interpretation that a minor could be in the game. In the hundreds of meetings we have had with the whole team we have always discussed keeping the game within a legal framework, and never, but absolutely never could any member of this team have thought of exceeding legal limits. From the administrators of the company to the last employee, and there were about 15 of us in total, things were always clear to everyone about the limits of the game, plus the fact that we morally never agreed with promoting extreme content in a game.

For our team, this news came as a shock, because no one on the team would have ever thought that one of the characters could be played as a minor. With all due respect, as we have conveyed to Steam, we will also write here, absolutely no sane person would ever interpret that a character in our game would be underage and under the age of 18. Both visually and in terms of story, absolutely no information can lead you to interpret such a thing. How such a response, lacking logic, but without clear information, can be sent, we do not know to this day.

It is also worth mentioning that in May 2022, we sent the demo build for verification and we received a negative response, on the grounds that there is interpretable content in our game, not compliant with Steam rules, more specifically that, according to the person who verified the build, there is sexual behavior in the game involving a minor. After receiving the negative response from Steam support, we were informed that the Taste of Seduction page will remain visible on Steam and that we will be able to return with the full game when it is completed, if there are no further issues.

After another year of work, we managed to complete the game, and as I wrote to you above on April 14, 2023 we submitted the full build for review. Knowing the disappointing experience with the demo build where we were rejected, although we still maintain that even then we were unfairly rejected, we had dozens of meetings with the team where we tried to find any interpretable element where sex could be associated with a minor.

For this reason I have taken the following decisions, I will present a small part of them:

- rereading to the comma and modifying any line of dialogue, however slightly interpretable

- adding a border at the top left of the screen with each character's name and age

Though effectively, I had moments in this vetting process where I didn't actually have anything to edit/add because I absolutely never went into the story with the idea of presenting a character as minor. How could we have done this, given that we registered our company in the country we live in? Do you think we're being oblivious? Creating a company, developing a game with prohibited content that could get us into legal trouble with international or even national laws? It doesn't make sense.

Make a simple exercise of imagination, why someone would create a 100% legal company, in which to invest $100,000, with employees, taxes and fees to create a game with prohibited content, specifically content in which there is child pornography, punishable in Romania from 1-5 of imprisonment, I attach in parenthesis link to the law in Romania related to child pornography ( https://legeaz.net/noul-cod-penal/art-374 ) To lose money and end up in jail?

Not to mention the fact that in the "Adult Only" category on Steam there are games with very serious problems, we won't name names because we don't want to hurt anyone, but it took us 5 minutes to find 5 games with very big legal problems. We believe that more than 80% of the games with adult content on Steam have big problems, which are not in accordance with Steam rules and legislation. We have found adult games on Steam that even from the pictures of the game on the page, the characters don't look older than 14, just from the pictures and the game banner you can tell this. I wonder on what criteria the Steam people make the selections of games that pass the checks or not? I wonder if Steam are correct? That remains to be seen.

We requested a review and verification of the last build that was banned, or at worst some additional and professional explanation why a project after 3 years of work, absolutely legal was banned permanently. Not just assumptions and personal opinions. After 9 days I received absolutely no answer.

We will treat this issue as legally and seriously as possible. Although most likely Steam will continue to treat us with a lot of ridicule, as has been the whole experience with the unprofessional and extremely disappointing collaboration on Steam, with very delayed, robotic responses, without helping the developer to achieve their goal of making the game public on their Steam page. I also told them to raise this issue with a competent person within Steam and to treat this situation seriously, but as you have well anticipated, their response has not appeared so far.

The Global Games Network team would like to start the legal process of contacting the legal team of lawyers and attorneys to start the documentation and subsequently take Steam to court. They have caused us both financial and image damage, plus we want to address the fact that on Steam in the "Adult Only" category there are many games with serious problems, but our game, an absolutely normal, legal game was banned for no reason. We are an ant in front of Valve, and probably few people believe in us, but as long as we know that the project is 100% legal, we have sacrificed and worked 3 years, we can not leave things like that, and we are not the only ones who complain about these abuses created by Valve, read on Reddit to see how many developers have been excluded, banned on invented reasons, why? Because we are too small? Someone needs to hold him accountable or at least regulate their "Adult Only" category or exclude it and stop giving false hope to developers, because that can be a detriment too. People risking their money, their work to create a game to sell on Steam, and they, through a standard, copied message mock all that work in an instant.

Remember, this indie company managed to create a wishlist of 10k people, a very good number, for this level, but unfortunately in vain. This number could have raised our project a lot, would have brought us a higher financial level and automatically we could have developed it better and better. Plus the development of the team, and the development of animations with costumes and actors.  The game is currently in Early Access and we have a lot more to offer and show.

Also you, our backers have been waiting for this game on Steam for months, both those on Patreon and those who added the game to the wishlist, another damage to our image and the game, plus your disappointment, and rightly so.

We need your opinions and recommendations. We really are at an important moment and are looking for as many comments as possible. Please answer us as honestly as possible, have we ever given you the impression that there is a minor in the Taste of Seduction game? That the story is about a minor character? How do you feel about wanting to legally document this case and sue Steam? You are our supporters, the people who have given us confidence that we can pursue this project, and we very much want to get as many honest answers as possible, we need you more than ever.

We are aware that this message is very long, but we wanted to be as transparent as possible with our community, as we have always been. If we do sue Steam, we realize that it will be a process that could take years, so don't worry, we'll come up with the first good news.

Following meetings with our team we made the decision that the Taste of Seduction project will continue only on Patreon, under a subscription system. We were going to sell the game on Steam for 20$, but don't worry, Patreon subscription prices will remain the same and you will have access to the build. Tomorrow we will post on Patreon the Taste of Seduction build that was supposed to be on Steam. You will need the minimum package of 10$ to have access to it. So stay tuned!

We also have some good news, the Global Games Network team has made the decision to continue developing the game, so we still need your support.

So don't worry, you'll soon have access to the Taste of Seduction version which should be on Steam, development will continue and the project is alive and stronger than ever.

Again, please remember that we need your opinions and recommendations, so we expect as many of you as possible to respond to this message.

Everything we have presented in this post we will prove to you to the comma, by screenshot, exactly the discussions we had with the Steam team in the verification process, giving you 100% transparency.

Finally, thank you very much for your patience and support, you are special, and we apologize for being late with these explanations. We have seen all the messages, including on Discord, but we wanted to take our time with this message and still wait for a response from Steam, but after 9 days, we realized that it is unlikely that we will receive any response. Thank you very much and together with you we will take this project to a better and better version!

- Global Games Network Team