Dev Diary, July 25th, 2025 - and some general information.

I spent all week in Ren'Py, even though the render-queue is empty and my render-rig is currently idling.

I was hoping to catch up with the visuals by today, but the free roam of the episode was much bigger than I thought it would be, so I'm still working on it. It's a full game within the game by now.

But, to something else. Last week, I got a question in the comments about the uncertainty of adult games, and the recent ruckus that has been going on.

What's the future of adult games when payment processors give in to pressure?

If you don't know what this is about, I'll give you the rough rundown.

Back in March this year, an adult game was released on Steam. This game was blatantly about the rape of women, and did not try to hide that fact at all.

An activist group picked up on this and launched a campaign to have it removed. Somehow, this started trending on social media, and of course, when things are trending, everybody and their friend wants in. But when a game is trending, it also sells a whole lot more. In a way, you could say the campaign backfired.

What happened was that the developer of this game decided he didn't want any of the attention he got, and withdrew his game from Steam himself. The activist group declared victory, saying that Valve had banned the game on their request.

Fast forward to last week. Valve/Steam added a rule that Rape and/or Incest was no longer allowed, and started removing games with such content from their platform. This was likely due to payment processors having given an ultimatum about it. Yesterday, Itch also delisted all adult games from their platform, confirming that payment processors had contacted them. The game mentioned above was also cited as the reason for this.

Just to state the obvious, my games do not have rape and/or incest, and they never will! So I should be safe from this purge, unless they add a rule that all teddy-bears have to consent to Sea's soft and cuddly kink.

However, if Valve is spending a significant amount of time and resources double-checking all the adult games on their platform, I suspect that their review process for new games will be significantly slower. This is, of course, bad news, since I'm a few weeks from submitting the game and had meant to do testing for both the Patreon and Steam release on the Steam platform. Inevitably, it could cause a delay in the release schedule. But I'll keep you updated on that as soon as I know more, and do my best to avoid it.

You could say this whole mess happened at the worst possible time for me, but I also feel more sorry for new developers out there who were about to put out their release on Itch. Remember, that's where it all started for Leap of Faith. Without it, you probably wouldn't have known about it.

ps: I purposely didn't say the names of the game or activist group mentioned above. Please refrain from asking or mentioning it in the comments. A little google-fu is all you need if you want to know more. Comments and opinions on this whole mess are otherwise very welcome.

Have a nice weekend, and as always, stay safe out there.

// Drifty