I’m just back from holiday and my podcasting partner in crime Chris has just departed on a trip, so it’s a short episode this time around… but an important one.
If you’ve been paying attention to social media today, you’ll doubtless have seen that there has been some concern over Valve’s apparent change of policy over adult content… or at least titles that have ties to adult content.
Hit the jump for the full episode.
Earlier today, a number of developers and publishers responsible for the visual novel boom on Steam were hit with notices from Valve saying that their products contained pornographic content… and that they should edit said content accordingly or have their games removed from the storefront.
What’s going on? Well, honestly at this point it’s hard to say; but this mini-episode of the podcast outlines what we know at the time of writing, as well as why this is an important issue we should be concerned with.
[UPDATE: Shortly after posting, this, an anti-pornography organisation known as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation claimed responsibility for this incident, though at present it’s not yet known whether their supposed years-long campaign was the trigger for this happening, or just then attempting to ride the coattails of a high-profile controversy. I suspect the latter.]
We’ll have another episode in a couple of weeks… hopefully back to the regular format and cast, and with more positive things to talk about!