Hey Netherholics!
How are you? Thanks for your amazing support since the release, and we’re so glad you’re enjoying the game! ːsteamhappyː
1) Steam content categories situation
As you may remember from previous updates, we delayed our official release on Steam one week because, in order to approve it, the platform made us upgrade 2 of our previous content rating categories:
From “Some Nudity or Sexual Content” to “Frequent Nudity or Sexual Content”
From just “General Mature Content” to “Frequent Violence or Gore”
1.1) Crossroads
We faced a difficult dilemma:
On one hand, we considered the new categories didn’t match the current content of the game (0.51% of potential nudity or sexual content + 1.18% stuff that could be considered violent or “gore”… between black pixel non-human creatures).
One of NetherWorld's sex QTE minigame. We included a “NSFW filter” in game settings just in case Youtube or Twitch banned gameplays for that… It was not the case.
On the other hand, our release (Sept 12th) was planned between 2 indie monsters: Silksong (Sept 4th) and Hades II (Sept 25th). If Steam normally took 5 days to answer our messages, each feedback was getting us closer to Hades II, increasing the possibilities of being overshadowed even more by them.
1.2) Decision
After talking to our publisher, we agreed to upgrade the required categories just to have the game approved and released to then, once out, continue our appeals to lower the content categories to the ones we already had.
However, that decision was bad for visibility too:
Having a “Frequent Nudity or Sexual Content” tag implies being considered something close to a porn/Adult Only Sexual game, so it makes your game disappear even from people who’s 18+ but has “no-porn” filters. We also know there’s people who had NetherWorld on their wishlist who didn’t receive any release notification.
The game was also hidden from Steam main page; the game’s page asked to log in with a user account, all images and updates were blurred, and NetherWorld’s discussion forum was tagged as “Adult Only” even if our game was not considered that in the upgraded categories.
1.3) Conclusion
After 2 months of appeals, last week we finally received a (bittersweet) final answer:
Remove “Frequent Violence or Gore” tag: YES.
Remove “Frequent Nudity or Sexual Content” and keep only “Some Nudity or Sexual Content”: NOPE HONEY.
You can check your account preferences here:
https://store.steampowered.com/account/preferences
After knowing Steam’s opinion, we ask the same question to you: Should a 0.51% of game content be considered “Frequent” or "Primarily" content?
We’ll be glad to hear your impressions about it!
2) Future ahead
After 9 years of development, it’s kinda sad to be in this situation. We created NetherWorld as an 18+ experience with sex, drugs and absurd/dark humor, but not as hardcore as Steam thinks it is lol. However, there’s not much more we can do rather than:
Explaining the situation;
Asking for your support if you think the game is worth it, and
Letting people know NetherWorld as it is: a satire about life, love and how people face its darkest side to get through difficult situations. And, as life itself, sex is a part of it, but not its focus (unless the game was a brothel management simulator -it’s not-).
Despite this setback, we haven't stopped working on the game:
We’ll post an update soon with new content!
Thanks so much for your support in this situation, and see you VERY soon!
Hungry Pixel team
Other stuff you may be interested in:
Did we say we have a Discord Community to share fanarts, screenshots, jokes, chat with the devs about this visibility sh*t or report bugs so we can fix them quickly?
Wanna get physical? Order your Nintendo Switch physical edition here!