[Update: 6/10/2018:] Neko Climax Studios have reversed course on the censorship, initially implementing the changes out of fear that Valve was cracking down on their game and re-reviewing Deep Space Waifu due to the flat-chested girls in the game. The developer — due to a lack of communication from Valve — jumped the gun out of fear of having his title removed from the Steam store, similar to Maidens of Michael. In a forum thread, they write…

“We understand the comunity complaints and our mistakes in this whole situation . We miscalculated the importante of these changes and we are reverting it. “The drama is on us because the way we choose tô take action.

If we are unconfortable on the plataform because of the lack of guidance and the warning emails from Valve, we Just need to choose Other course of action. “The best course of action was tô remain with the original content here and make another one with changes If asked by Valve. “We will consult Valve about the dos and dont s in this matter. We really sorry for choose the wrong way tô approach our fears with the flat theme and we will understand the people that will not support us from now on.” [sic]

[Original article:] This is probably one of the most bizarre forms of censorship we’ll ever have to write about, but Neko Climax Studios, the developers behind Deep Space Waifu, had to censor the game’s loli artwork and make their breasts bigger. Yes, censorship through mammary maximization.

In a thread posted on the Steam forums, Neko Climax Studios explained why they censored the lolis and how they’re trying to navigate through Valve’s opaque policies, even after the company stated that they would only be removing troll games and illegal titles…

“Despite the recent statements of Valve saying that they will allow everything that they find that isn’t illegal on their platform, we are being prevented from launching our third title due to obscure policies that they are not telling us. “We chose to be more comfortable working on this platform now and in the future, and so we had to change the 6 flat chested girls that were an issue. We as creators want to feel safe to build a franchise of 100 or 200 girls in the future. That’s the nature of our choices here. “It’s not a political statement, not a pressure from external groups, it’s a choice that we have to make in order to have a more secure future on Steam in this whole situation and lack of communication.”

Deep Space Waifu had originally launched on Steam in a censored format. These new changes were specifically to alter the flat-chested girls in the game.

Back on June 6th, 2018 Valve had stated that they wouldn’t be censoring or curating games, only removing illegal content and troll games. SJW journalists in the media – many of whom were part of the GameJournoPros – were furious that Valve was not censoring the games that offended them.

While some people saw this as Valve opening the floodgates, situations like the one involving Deep Space Waifu and Neko Climax Studios newest game seems to indicate that Valve is still operating in clandestine ways when it comes to their content policies.

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MangaGamer has also still been left in the dark when it comes to the reasons involving A Kiss For The Petals: Maidens of Michael being banned from Steam.

Valve did note that it would take months for them to fully implement their new content policy, which involves giving users more tools to weed out the games they don’t want to see on the Steam store. However, user curation tools still doesn’t explain the vague policies preventing some games from appearing on Steam, or some of the content policies that has governed the decisions of certain titles already on Steam or attempting to come to Steam.

According to Neko Climax Studios, Valve notified them that they would be reviewing their games one month from now. They also stated that alternative distribution outlets like GOG.com aren’t guaranteed alternatives…

“[…] we can reach out to other platforms to distribute the game, but its not a promise since they also have their own policies. “Today we receive a e-mail from valve stating that one month from now they will review the contents of our games.”

We’ll find out if Valve will really only focus on removing illegal or trolling content or if there are deeper machinations involved with the censorship tendencies that still persist.

(Thanks for the news tip Hiecchi)