Behind the Scenes: Steam Issues Takedowns to Eroge Titles

Before I start, I'd like to thank everyone for your patience! As there were a lot of moving parts in this article, which I wanted to be 100% sure I was documenting properly! This took a bit more time than I was hoping, and I apologize for the wait.

• Original Title: Steam’s Policy Changes Turn The Heat Up On Erotic Game Developers
• Publication Date: 6/16/2018
• Author: Samantha Ferreira

This was, without a doubt, one of our most ambitious articles in recent memory. With more than four thousand words and a lot of painstaking copy-editing, it was probably the biggest indicator of where I envisioned Anime Herald as heading in the future. I’ve been trying to put forth pieces like this and our Anime Matsuri article (published in January), as they present something more valuable than the daily churn of the news desk.

Still, I’m still a bit embarrassed to say that this came out a lot later than I intended. I’ll get into that in a bit but, for now, we have more important things to discuss.

The First Tip

To be honest, I was first tipped off on the Steam situation by a friend, in the early hours of the incident. She pointed me to the initial tweets by Lupiesoft, which announced that Mutiny!! was issued a takedown notice by Valve Corporation.

This raised a few eyebrows, given that Steam is pretty notorious for being a cesspool of content. I mean, we’re talking about a marketplace that hosts countless pieces of lazy asset flips, half-baked “tech demo releases”, or flat-out offensive content. So, to see Valve outright banning a game that’s been following the rules and selling for nearly a year? Something didn’t smell right.

The Research

With the help of a colleague, I gathered a list of companies and developers affected, and just started reaching out. One after another, I started sending emails, sending Tweets and Facebook messages to those affected. More than two dozen communiques went out over the course of the next day, and we were pretty sure we had caught everybody that was affected (sadly, we did miss one developer. Apologies to the A Kiss For The Petals - Maidens of Michael staff! That was 100% not intentional!).

Over the next 24 hours or so, the replies began to roll in. One after another, we received responses from Lupiesoft, Top Hat Gaming, MangaGamer, and so on. Some referred us to prepared statements, others happily answered our inquiries. But, by the time that things were finished, we ended up with something like 30 emails and more than 15 pages of on-the-record comments. 

It was during this waiting period that L.B. pointed out a second narrative that was spinning up. He noted a healthy number of people who were spitting fire and brimstone at Dawn Hawkins, Senior Vice President at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Hawkins had published a blog post celebrating the news, and tweeted out a link on her feed. This had the sad effect of bringing in the trolls, and the more reactionary members of the community. 

At this point, mind you, we still didn’t know what caused the takedowns.
And, to be honest, looking into the actual impact of Hawkins’ organization? They didn’t exactly do much! Their big campaign was little more than a letter writing campaign, which was mildly impactful at best. 

Still, the public had their witch; blame was cast, and Hawkins was harassed by a legion of anonymous figures were identified by little more than handles and avatars.

Still, I took down what I could, and whatever research I was able to glean before the entire blog was taken down in a cyberattack.

By the evening of May 18, I was ready to roll.

The First Draft

The original vision for the article was actually vastly different than its final, published form. The piece was supposed to be contemporaneous, outlining the big events in a blow-by-blow as they happened. We… were a little late to that party, sadly.

I began work on the first major draft on May 18, about 24 hours after the initial inquiries went out. At this point, I began wireframing the piece, setting the core points, and creating the general overall flow. 

For articles of this nature, I like to set things up in a methodical manner. I build out a series of key items, using strong data and verifiable quotations to create the major focal points. From there, I like to build up support. I’ll flesh out these points with background information, supplementary details, and other information that will help to deliver a more complete story for the reader. One of my journalism professors called it “nib to copy.” This method is a bit more time consuming, but the overall end product feels far more complete, and gives a better understanding of the issues at hand if handled properly.

The first draft was written up in about six hours, give or take. It was complete, readable, and captured the current slate of elements well. But, given that I hadn’t edited the piece and it was 2AM, I decided to wait on publication.

Yeaaaah… that was a bad idea in retrospect. By the time I woke up, the narrative had changed entirely. 

The Second and Third Drafts

On the 19th, we started seeing news that titles were receiving re-review notices, adding a new development to the overall narrative. At this point, publishing an incomplete article would be irresponsible, so I started reaching out to parties again, catching groups that I hadn’t talked with before, and basically repeating the research phase in its entirety.

With new information came a new draft, which meant that the wireframing would begin anew, taking in the new details that had been gathered. And, to be honest, I didn’t have it in me to keep writing until 2AM again - I ended up splitting the work between the two days over the weekend, with plans to edit on the Monday.

By the start of the work week, though, the narrative had evolved once again. Players were beginning to announce partnerships with new platforms. MangaGamer teamed up with GOG, several had begun moving to Fakku!, and we started to see this fascinating spread as developers and publishers created new pathways to customers.

I ended up waiting until roughly midweek to continue my work, as things were ramping up on the news desk. And, unlike before, I was unable to devote more than an hour or two a night, due to these increasing pressures. Still, I had a draft ready for editing on May 27, and I spent the rest of the week polishing and editing the overall presentation.

On June 2, Anime Herald went through its big redesign. The plan was to spend that Sunday typesetting and preparing for final publication, with a lunch-time drop on June 6.

Finally, this chapter was over, and things could be published… right?!

The Final Draft, AKA Samantha is Cri

Truly, if there is a god of destiny, he is fond of plot twists… and making overworked journalists cry.

On June 6, Valve Corporation changed the game entirely. In a blog post, the company announced that they would no longer police their platform at all. They would only remove games that were intentionally offensive or breaking copyrights. Users would tailor their own Steam experiences going forward, with filters (coming soon).

If you heard a faint, high-pitched wail that day, it was me. At that point, I had enough. My stress-addled brain couldn’t take another draft. I ended up walking away from it all at that point, and just trying not to break down.

Mind you, this was all happening at about the same time that I was visibly burning out. The layout change, the new formats, the months of nonstop work at the news desk took their toll, and I just couldn’t cope for a while. 

Instead, I stepped away. I let the article sit for a few days, and basically let everything play out. 

Three days later, on June 9, I finally picked up work again, carefully updating the story, and rewriting points to support the final version of the truth as we knew it. I used the third draft as a base, because I wasn’t about to spike this article a fifth time.

I took things slowly, writing through June 14. Editing took one night, on June 14. By June 15, all remained was typesetting and publication.

It seemed surreal, but we did it.

Conclusion

Overall, the article took more than 100 hours of labor from my end, from research, to writing, to editing, to typesetting. Six drafts were written (two were spiked almost immediately - I didn’t discuss those, just know that they’re awful), and more than four thousand words (8 pages) were published. 

In plain English, the article was nearly seven times the length of the average New York Times piece. While I was fairly late to the party on this one, I’m happy that I took the time to do things correctly. By avoiding the shortcuts, and doing proper field work, I was able to put together a piece that will be readable and reliable for some time to come. 

It’s not a perfect article - I do with that I could have tweaked a few things, and I do go off on a tangent or two - but it’s the type of journalism that I’m proud to be doing… as frustrating as things can be at times.😛