Our team is designing an original Western visual novel with a heavy focus on character psychology, development, interactions and sentimental complexity. This I say to make it clear any 18+ elements are not a priority aspect of the work itself; they are completely secondary and, what's more, optional for the player, as they're restricted to specific routes. In fact, I'd say that, even then, the game should be about 90% SFW even when exploring all the possible outcomes. The only visual manifestation of 18+ elements is during the aforementioned NSFW scenes, which are rather brief, if anything.
We know Steam has been fairly trigger-happy in the past with this kind of work. I have a few questions that have been bugging me about this:
- Is it absolutely necessary to release a censored game? I've heard of many VNs needing to release external NSFW patches, while some others seem to have released that type of content through DLC. Can anyone offer clarification?
- Our VN, when it comes to NSFW elements, is fairly vanilla. The strongest, and actually the only extraordinary sexual theme depicted is incest between two consenting adults who, for the record, also have the proper appearance of adults. Unlike many other works in the genre, this detail is actually psychologically relevant and developed in-depth, and doesn't intend to appear as a wink to fetishists or general thirsty players. Recently, though, we've been worried this may trigger some clause in Steam content control, and as such we just want to know: are these themes 100% forbidden? Is there any attention to the specific nature they're shown in? Are they fine by Steam's standards?
- We're a loose team. We're mostly passionate amateurs working together, and as such we'd like to know what's the best way to let Steam know that when going through the paperwork needed to publish the game. What type of legal entity are we, really?
