Deleted 1 year ago
Late reply! You may already know this, but I wanted to clarify to others that in plenty of American states, the age of consent is 16, while in others, it's 17 and 18.
However, when it comes to sexually explicit content in fiction stories, the universal minimum age is 18, as long as the content is written to titillate the reader, versus adult fiction where explicit sex may be included as part of the plot and not for titillation. All fiction texts are protected speech in America and therefore not illegal, but credit card companies still avoid that kind of content. As a result, virtually all sites that offer a payment system won't touch erotic content involving underage characters because payment systems are generally tied to credit card companies in some form or another.
Now, when it comes to illustrations, it's definitely illegal in America if the characters are under 18. So, the illustrations (not the text) were most likely the reason for the old version of the story being banned on Steam and not even available on itch. That is, assuming the old version included sexually explicit illustrations of underage characters.
I hope this helps!
Hi, thank you for your clarifications, they might be useful for some players.
However:
1. There's no "old" version, since the build hasn't been touched since 2017. This is the same version that was accepted into Steam back in the day.
2. The images are not explicit, as warned on the game page: genitalia is always off-screen and there isn't full nudity, not even censored.
3. The sex scenes are very few, and are there for the sake of the story, not being the focus of the VN at all. In fact, whoever plays this only to find sexy scenes will probably be disappointed, since they'll be forced to read 2 to 5 hours of novel before reaching any sexy stuff.
4. There are no adults involved with the protagonists. The story themes are friendship, first loves, and coming of age.
Hope this helps to decide whoever is on the fence between downloading the game or not, since I, as the author, wouldn't like readers to open the game blindly, without any warning about the content.
Hate replying to this years later, but I have to correct this. No, "Now, when it comes to illustrations, it's definitely illegal in America if the characters are under 18." is absolutely false (unless it's a photographic recording or can be reasonably assumed to be painted - or nowadays more easily applied a filter - over such, with the US unlike many other countries having no "private use" exemptions for legal couples under 18). It's the same nonsense of US payment providers bowing to conservative pressure groups (and nowadays disturbingly also pseudo-progressive social media mobs). In other countries, however, such stupid laws do exist, but they are always in accordance with their general age of consent (as if the characters were real life human residents), which for the those that actually matter as markets ranges between 14 (Germany) and 16 (UK), so legally the game would've been in the clear either way.