Sol Press Discussion Thread
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@terrence A year and a half minimum. ;)
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@terrence I've done computer typesetting. The answer is, "How long do you need it to take?"
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Under One Wing, the visual novel, is inbound.
https://solpress.co/blog/559/under-one-wing-releasing-february-28th
From the STEAM page:
"All characters portrayed are over the age of 18"Interesting. Haven't touched any of the Sol Press stuff yet, but maybe I'll give this a try.
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@terrence said in New Challenger Approaches! Sol Press Shines Down with Two LN Licenses:
From the STEAM page:
"All characters portrayed are over the age of 18"Suuuuurrre they are.
And I read the terms and conditions before clicking on "I agree". -
@doublemangekyo said in New Challenger Approaches! Sol Press Shines Down with Two LN Licenses:
@terrence said in New Challenger Approaches! Sol Press Shines Down with Two LN Licenses:
From the STEAM page:
"All characters portrayed are over the age of 18"Suuuuurrre they are.
Oh. 1000 year old dragons or "altered" ages? =[
I was going to post the other day asking if any of the Sol Press stuff has characters over 18 or the full game is all ages.
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@terrence The only reason the "over 18" disclaimer exists for that game is to appease Steam guidelines (which are a mess and many VNs have been banned even with such disclaimers in place). Heck, in the Senran Kagura games the girls' ages are nowhere to be found IIRC.
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@doublemangekyo Isn't that disclaimer just a gimmick to avoid some legal repercussions. Steam is right to ban such materials that damages their business and image.
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@renofury said in New Challenger Approaches! Sol Press Shines Down with Two LN Licenses:
@doublemangekyo Isn't that disclaimer just a gimmick to avoid some legal repercussions. Steam is right to ban such materials that damages their business and image.
The problem is, Steam was specifically targeting visual novels and anime-inspired games, while allowing plenty of other games with similarly problematic sexual content, to say nothing of the droves of low-quality games that they refuse to quality-control. It makes it look like they're specifically picking on Japanese stuff, and that ruins their image in a different way. (Honestly, the moment there is a good distribution platform for visual novels and anime-inspired game, I'm fine with abandoning Steam entirely.)
Anyway, yeah, that "all characters are over 18" disclaimer is pretty much on every Japanese game with ecchi content, to try to dodge these sorts of problems (as long as no actual ages are given, you can just claim that all those school students just look young and got held back several years for reasons).
MAL
Beneath the Tangles (the blog I write for) -
@renofury Sure, it's within their rights to ban stuff. Just as it's the right of fans to get pissed off at them for it. What I find really ironic about the whole thing is that, despite Steam instituting adult filters on their store (filters that can only be lifted from a registered user account's settings), and despite them saying they will not be the "taste police", the amount of VNs and other weeb games (whether they have 18+ patches or not) running into trouble actually increased.
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@stardf29 I do not want to generalise, each product should be vetted on its own merit, but from my own experience with Japanese media, there is a propensity to sexualise underaged girls maybe that is why they are more strictly vetted. I do not think they have problems with erotic content, even after the media clamour they kept selling Mass Effect, but they do not want to be associated with that.
@DoubleMangekyo Recently I watched a GDC lecture about Indie games, and during the presentation it had shown that VNs are doing really well on steam. That's all well and good however allowing certain titles that feature underaged girls on their platform would only be detrimental to their business, with possible media scandals and reputation drop. Such niche products maybe should find home on a smaller platform maybe one that specialises on just VN.
I do not want to pretend I am expert on VN, I only know the most popular titles and even then at a maximum I would have only played their intros. In my post I am assuming that steam is only banning title featuring girls that look younger then 18 and not generic adult titles.
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@renofury said in New Challenger Approaches! Sol Press Shines Down with Two LN Licenses:
In my post I am assuming that steam is only banning title featuring girls that look younger then 18 and not generic adult titles.
Your assumption is half-correct. And half-wrong. They do sometimes randomly ban titles featuring girls that look younger than 18 but those are not necessarily adult titles. Hello good-bye's steam-version is an extremely wholesome game, there are no panty shots or risque ecchi content, they don't even kiss in some of the routes and kissing is more or less the most adult it ever gets. Still got banned though. Because steam is just random right now with no clear guidelines or direction. Hopefully they'll be able to create some firm rules of play soon, publishers must be able to understand what they can or can't sell on steam, it's a very important part of the sales, it can't be left to some dumb luck like it is now.
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@novurdim I feel like the devil advocate but I think the following question is important too.
Did the publisher of banned "sanitised" VN previously released patches to enable questionable content; that could be the reason they banned the title.
Honestly if steam is banning innocent titles they are doing a disservice to their customers and developers. I understand why they are angry and frustrated about this unclear policy. Developers losing access to the largest game marketplace after investing a lot of money in adapting and licencing VN titles and customers not being able play the titles after being licenced is very aggravating.
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@renofury said in New Challenger Approaches! Sol Press Shines Down with Two LN Licenses:
I feel like the devil advocate but I think the following question is important too.
It's actually not, if there's one thing that steam has stressed explicitly on numerous occasions, it's the fact that it doesn't care about any patches/mods that are not sold on steam and has no legal relations with those. And it's true, you can't legally bind steam to any stuff that happens outside the platform, they are only responsible for what they carry on the marketplace. Heck, you can just upload literally any game on your steam library even if they don't sell it at all.
But answering your question: some do have 18+ patches in existence, some don't. Which only further shows that steam has no clear guidelines and just randomly bans games for now. There's a rumor that it depends on who reviews your game since there's one weird guy among the stuff (forgot his name) that has some weird vendetta against visual novels and pretty much solely responsible for almost all the bans but it's impossible to know if there's any truth to this rumor.
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@novurdim said in New Challenger Approaches! Sol Press Shines Down with Two LN Licenses:
estion: some do have 18+ patches in existence, some don't. Which only further shows that steam has no clear guidelines and just randomly bans games for now. There's a rumor that it depends on who reviews your game since there's one weird guy among the stuff (forgot his name) that has some weird vendetta againstI can see that happening even thou a rumour. But nonetheless we seem agree that steam should clear up its policies at least to reduce the subjectivity between different reviewers. Also they should setup an appeal board were games gets a second chance to be reviewed by some one else if they didn't already done so.
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Strongest Gamer Volume 2:
Preparing for release
Battle Divas Volume 2:
Preparing for release
https://solpress.co/blog/562/sol-press-weekly-update-02-28-2019
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@terrence Honestly it sounds like a joke at this point after all this time in typesetting. We shall see what happens... 🙄
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Oh boy, I was looking forward to 80k LN next week, but it wasn't on Amazon so I googled a bit and landed here. ...It's delayed? And they haven't even changed the release date on its product page? I didn't know Sol Press was an organizational disaster.
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@nosgoroth said in New Challenger Approaches! Sol Press Shines Down with Two LN Licenses:
Oh boy, I was looking forward to 80k LN next week, but it wasn't on Amazon so I googled a bit and landed here. ...It's delayed? And they haven't even changed the release date on its product page? I didn't know Sol Press was an organizational disaster.
Yes, I really wish JNC had gotten 80K instead since I loved Average and am liking Potions so far.
I'm just hoping it doesn't end up like Lee & Miller's The Tomorrow Log, where a bad publisher messed up things to the point that it's never going to get the planned sequel :-(
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I doubt the English sales of light novels has any bearing on Japanese publisher decisions to cancel or continue them, at least for most series.
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@guspaz said in New Challenger Approaches! Sol Press Shines Down with Two LN Licenses:
I doubt the English sales of light novels has any bearing on Japanese publisher decisions to cancel or continue them, at least for most series.
You're probably right it would just mean we never get the rest of a series translated, at least not until after the rights revert back to the Japanese publisher in X years.
In some ways that would be worse -- knowing there are 10 volumes of 80K but with Sol holding the rights for 5 years. All that LN goodness just out of our reach.
