Japanese independent developer Hyogo Onimushi has recently disclosed that he’s encountering difficulties securing approval for a demo of his visual novel on Steam, even though the project is not classified as NSFW. Onimushi is the mind behind Return to Shironagasu Island – an indie mystery title that has surpassed 200k sales to date – and is now hard at work on a follow-up, tentatively named The Distant Circular World.
The Distant Circular World is a sci-fi suspense mystery visual novel that weaves the tale of a detective and a high-school girl with photographic memory across two timelines. After its Steam store page went live in April, the game garnered over 10,000 Wishlists in just three days. However, in a recent update, Onimushi revealed that its demo is stuck in Valve’s approval pipeline, with reasons that seem rather baffling.
On June 17, he penned a post on X, “Even though my game is an all-ages visual novel, I keep hitting roadblocks during review where I’m left wondering, “Huh!? That’s what you have an issue with?” For instance, there’s an image that major gaming publications have featured in their articles without any age checks or content warnings. Yet on Steam, it was flagged as sexual content. Then, there’s another scene that’s been part of YouTube playthroughs for years, viewed by tens of thousands without any removal or age-restriction, but Steam has deemed its inclusion in the demo as unacceptable.”
Although it appears The Distant Circular World is facing issues with several in-game scenes, the most striking example is the one featured in Onimushi’s tweet, which, as you can see, is merely a pitch-black CG. According to the developer, contextually, this scene shows the heroine taking a shower at another character’s home after falling into a river. After Steam raised objections to the original CG, Onimushi claims he swapped it for a completely black image. Even then, the scene was still labeled too sexual, despite there being nothing sexual or suggestive happening in context either. “She’s simply reflecting in that scene, like ‘What am I gonna do now?’, but Steam treated it as ‘too sexual’ and refused to review it, leaving me baffled by the fact that even a black screen isn’t acceptable,” Onimushi added.
Pointing to examples like Aftermath Z: Red Pine Lake, which was initially rejected by Steam for showing a woman in a bathing suit in its key art, only to be approved a week later after public outcry, Onimushi voiced frustration over what seems to be a growing lack of consistency and transparency in Steam’s judgement criteria. “I understand that Steam has its own standards, and I understand that moderation is necessary. I’m not saying they shouldn’t review content, but my problem is that nobody can pinpoint where the line between what’s acceptable and what isn’t lies. The standards being applied in practice are so inconsistent that they’re impossible to predict. The biggest issue is that the decision varies depending on which reviewer you get,” he remarked.
As detailed on The Distant Circular World’s Steam store page, while the game includes non-graphic depictions of violence and perilous situations along with dark narrative elements like self-harm and suicide, there is no nudity nor explicit sexual content present. This makes it all the more puzzling that, of all things, Valve’s review is flagging sexual content as a concern. While censorship of erotic games has been a recurring issue in recent years, the case suggests that Steam’s review process may also be impacting all-ages titles, though this is based on the developer’s account of the review process.
The Distant Circular World (tentative) is currently in development for PC (Steam). Although the game is currently only confirmed for a Japanese release, the developer is exploring options for localization.