In mid-August we reported that Lilith and Infini-Brain had plans on launching four episodes of Taimanin Asagi on Steam (you can see an archive of the store page here). The series was supposedly going to launch with its R18+ content intact, as well. However, it looks like Valve had a change of heart, and after initially approving the storefronts for the quartet of episodes, they recently decided to ban the visual novel from appearing on the Steam store after all.

If you check the Steam Database entries for all four episodes, they now read that they’ve been removed, along with the community hubs and the store pages. If you check the developer page on Steam for Lilith, all four entries have been wiped out.

No reason for the removals are listed, but the Adults Only visual novel is effectively banned from the Steam store as of September 4th, 2019.

This news should come as no surprise given the way Valve has been curating content on Steam, despite claiming that they were no longer going to be the “taste police”.

Since implementing the Adults Only filters they’ve actually banned dozens of games, oftentimes using the opaque excuse that the anime-style game contained “child exploitation”. This excuse usually doesn’t hold up to scrutiny given all the Western games on Steam right now that features children in harmful scenarios, especially the Life Is Strange series.

In any case, you won’t be playing the Taimanin Asagi series on Steam.

Maybe if they cut out all of the content worth paying for Valve might allow it on Steam? Then again, some all-ages visual novels were still banned, like The Key To Home. So cutting out all of the graphic content in Taimanin Asagi – especially since it was lionized for its R18+ content – may not even guarantee it a spot on Valve’s storefront.

In any case, it was a pipe dream thinking that Valve would let one of the more notorious visual novels onto their storefront, but at least Lilith tried. You can still grab a digital copy of the Taimanin Asagi series from over on the NSFW DLSite store page.

(Thanks for the news tip Doraggon)