The censorship against media entertainment continues, this time with Google coming down on mystery game maker Winter Wolves Games, known for their Vera Blanc titles. The apps have been removed from the Google Play app store and Winter Wolves Games have had their developer account for Android apps shut down by Google.

This occurred on July 19th, 2019, and they made a post about it in the Winter Wolves forums.

as I posted in my own forums… pic.twitter.com/LriM3Aa4rY — WinterWolves Games (@pcmacgames) July 19, 2019

If you’re unable to read the image, it states…

“So… rather hilarious to be honest. They shut it down because of “multiple violations”. Some “violations” were showing women with SOME cleavage (not even that much!). Women in BIKINI (which is of course an obscenity!!!) and then a false copyright claim (they were wrong since someone claimed to be the Bionic Heart author haha). “Anyway, today they blocked me, I can’t access the developer account anymore. All is gone. I’m not even bothering to get it restored to be honest since it was a mega pain every time I wanted to update something… “On iOS they’re still there, not sure for how long/if they will follow the Google censorship madness. But I don’t plan on to release new games on iOS either. “I’ll probably focus on PC only which is a MUCH MORE developer friendly environment than mobile.”

It’s true. If you attempt to visit the Google Play links for the Vera Blanc games, it simply says the URL isn’t found at the server, this includes Vera Blanc: Full Moon and Vera Blanc: Ghost In the Castle.

Winter Wolves followed up with another tweet explaining that even if they appealed the suspension they would likely get banned again for some minor infraction. They also posed the question of why Google couldn’t simply have filters in place for mature content like Steam? While Valve is sometimes inconsistent with the way the adult content is enforced, at least the option is there.

note that I understand completely the need to protect minors and such. But why they couldn’t have done what Steam did? a specific adult content (even if my games WERE NOT!) category with possibility to filter/block it. Doesn’t take much…🤔 — WinterWolves Games (@pcmacgames) July 19, 2019

meanwhile the same identical apps are available both on Apple itunes and Amazon appstore. But I think at this point I’ll setup an itchio store since you can’t rely too much on those sites, they change their mind on a whim — WinterWolves Games (@pcmacgames) July 19, 2019

honestly beside the lost money (though mobile sales were collapsing “luckily”) what pisses me off more is all the people who bought the games and now they have nothing thanks to this crazy censorship — WinterWolves Games (@pcmacgames) July 19, 2019

For those of you unfamiliar with Winter Wolves, they made the Vera Blanc titles, which were removed from the Google Play app store due to some of the images containing cleavage shots and some of the images containing females wearing swimsuits… specifically a bikini.

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This censorship hit Winter Wolves back in February of 2019, but they weren’t the only ones. Various other developers have also had their titles hit with Google’s censorship due to having cleavage on display as well, including but not limited to Dodge Club Pocket, the music-rhythm game Zyon, and even the ArtStation app.

Winter Wolves still seems to be in a good enough mood to at least poke fun at the situation, even though they lost about 13% of their revenue due to Google’s censorship policies.

They linked to a few examples of the imags that Google pointed out as being in violation of their terms of service, which are basically the aforementioned images containing a bikini shot and some cleavage.

haha those are a few examples of my apps suspended and the culprit images. I’m leaving them here just for a laugh at this point pic.twitter.com/kEZ6BYGXq1 — WinterWolves Games (@pcmacgames) July 19, 2019

Expect the censorship to keep escalating, and eventually it will hit the sort of games that the Left-wing activists on Twitter actually care about, at which point they may actually start to actively campaign against Google’s policies. But until then, Google will continue to keep forcing developers to censor their games or ban them from the app store, much like what they’re doing to various websites and users across the Google search engine and on YouTube.

Nevertheless, you can still purchase the Vera Blanc mystery games from over on the official Winter Wolves website or learn more about their projects over on the Winter Wolves Patreon page.

[Update 7/23/2019:] The Bionic Heart games were also removed from the Google Play store. The images that supposedly violated the developer app policies can be viewed below.





Winter Wolves discovered the images were in violation after attempting to appeal to see what Google would say. In the forums they explained…

“So they rejected my appeal but at least in that email I got some more info. It seems that the dangerous images were from Bionic Heart 1 & 2, […] “in summary just to be more precise:

– all the cleavage and bikini were wrong to show in the game page, but were OK (I think?) inside the games

– the last two pictures above instead, they weren’t allowed at all in the apps “What happened is that I removed that picture in the game and resubmitted, but I forgot that it was also reused as thumbnail in the “gallery screen” (where you can see achievements and replay scenes). Which means that counted as twice, and probably triggered multiple violations. “At this point if even such tame (for my country/culture) images aren’t allowed, at least I understand the ban more, since aren’t just cleavage/bikini. “It’s probably for the best that I don’t do mobile ports, since I would need to strip down the original games so much that would be a lot of extra work! And on the next time I was updating Loren, it would have get banned too since there are similar pictures even in the censored game.”

As mentioned, you can still acquire the Winter Wolves titles from their main website, but not from the Google Play store.