Nutaku comments on the difficulties of marketing and distributing adult games. But is their upcoming adult gaming store the silver bullet they say it is?

As part of their effort to promote their upcoming adult gaming store, adult game publisher Nutaku commented on their official blog about the difficulties of marketing and distributing adult games. They implicated systemic bias against adult games, and positioned their store as the solution to these problems.





In Nutaku's eyes, the main culprits are ratings agencies like the ESRB which de facto limit where games can be sold, and the financial network that processes payments (including banks, credit card companies, and intermediaries). While rating agencies and payment processors certainly play a role, the problem is actually far more complex.





Steam sells games that aren't rated by the ESRB, but they refuse to carry games with explicit adult content. Beach Bounce developer AJTilley commented that the main obstacle to selling adult games on Steam is the tangle of regional laws regulating sexually-explicit content, which Valve isn't ready to tackle at present. Developers circumvent Valve's ban on adult content by releasing non-adult versions on Steam and then posting links to adult content patches in the Steam forums, but as Nutaku pointed out this doesn't work for games where sexual content is a core part of the experience, like Lightning Warrior Raidy III or arguably even Song of Saya





Mass media also plays a role in suppressing information about adult games. For example, I approached RPGFan about Yumina the Ethereal , and they refused to review the game--refused to judge it!--simply because it contained sexually-explicit content. Siliconera also wasn't interested for similar reasons, even though they'd covered games like Kara no Shoujo



