A few hours ago, I received a long-awaited response from customer support. They apologized for the lengthy review and identified two issues with Deep Russian Depression that need to be addressed before submitting the game build for re-review.
Valve Corporation takes financial matters seriously, and the first issue is that their employees don't fully understand the programming aspect of the current distribution and monetization system for user-generated content in Deep Russian Depression.
The other issue is that the process of creating modifications is not as simple as advertised on the game's store page. A buyer may get the false impression that they're dealing with a visual novel constructor. Deep Russian Depression is not a constructor, as there's no special functionality within the application for creating modifications.
Both claims are justified. Customer support doesn't oppose my innovative ideas, but they require a build where all the game's features are available for use within the application without any external interactions.
Unfortunately, creating such a build in a short time is difficult considering my skills and the initial data. In order for the game to be released, the previously announced features will be adapted to Valve's requirements.
The ability to create modifications based on Deep Russian Depression will remain unchanged, but it will reluctantly cease to be a key feature of the application, resulting in changes to the game's page on the Steam store in the near future.
As before, users will be able to upload their additional stories, sprites, and backgrounds to the Workshop to share them with the community, but only on a non-commercial basis: monetizing such content through Steam will not be possible.
The in-game store and Steam inventory will be temporarily disabled: in some project development scenarios, this functionality may be useful in the future.
Once all necessary changes have been made, I will request a re-review of the game build. Considering that the last review took almost three months, the next one may be equally lengthy, although this is unlikely.
I will definitely notify you of the results as soon as they become available.
Deep Russian Depression is Available to Purchase!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1858710/