So let me go into detail as to why hypnosis is banned on Patreon and other storefronts and such. It's a silly reason, but it
is the reason.
When it comes to things like non-con or dub-con sex in games, the people involved are still able to think and rationalize things without the effect of anything else on them. They have free will of thought and action, effectively.
And then in the real world, hypnosis is something that does work on people, but it only works to improve suggestion; it's not going to make someone go shoot someone by making them think they're seeing a demon in front of them or something like that, except in rare cases where the person already has disorders that would make them hallucinate or something like that.
However,
and this is the key point; credit card companies and other businesses consider hypnosis
in fantasy scenarios to be something that
100% robs you of free will.
This is because in fantasy, hypnosis is often presented as literally turning someone into a mental zombie; they 100% obey whatever they're asked, they don't question it, they get glassy-eyed, turning into effectively a puppet.
As a result of this, Patreon and other places consider hypnosis (and aphrodisiacs, and anything else that affects your mental state as such, including things that would even just make you more okay with exposing hidden feelings) as the hardest form of non-con possible, and that's why they ban it so ruthlessly.
Now to reply to a few other points you made;
a powerful aphrodisiac that exposes "hidden" internal feelings (while sober) that via a consenting situation like a falling out battle turning into a romance scene would keep some of those scenes.
The problem with this is that in our game, none of the characters have romantic feelings for one another or for any of the enemies, besides Vie being into her husband, Seeber. To suddenly make someone in the game fall in love with someone they've spent less than 10 minutes with, tops, would be disingenuous for Talia, Vie, and Faye's personalities, and none of them are lesbians nor have feelings for one another either, so to suddenly place that on them would also be disingenuous and a large break in character.
When we're putting a huge amount of effort into characterization, the personality of said characters, and the worldbuilding of the universe and consistency of it, having a large break in how they would act or do things makes the entire effort worthless.
in a universe where all women are perpetually milked for energy
They aren't, though. It's only willing WORM volunteers and captured Rebels, and in both cases, they're only milked for a standard 8 hour shift. They live pretty comfortably outside of that.
It's not all plants, and the ones in the game that do fuck you are human/plant hybrids; they're not just random plants fucking you for no reason either, as they're intent on getting energy from you to stay alive, as you and Faye are the only two things that can actually give them sustenance outside of the Mega Mutabilis (and I don't mean through things like cum or milk or whatever else).
There are no animals in the game. In fact, there's no animals on the Earth at this point in the in-game universe.
The flavor text writes around most of this but from the surface, hypnosis gas doesn't seem to be the most egregious "total removal of consent" especially if you can rewrite it to be consensual.
You are right in that we can write around it if we reallllly wanted to, and if we wanted to take that risk.
But as I noted in an earlier post, even if there was no risk and no taboo for it, we still would have removed it.
The WORM are heavily against sex with other people, banning it and only allowing people to use gratters (sex machines) to get their sexual urges out, as they believe that actual procreation with people, pregnancy, relationships, etc. are a huge waste of time that could be spent on work instead. They even segregate people by sex, so all the men are in their own facilities with only men, and same for only women.
Having sex with someone else besides a gratter gets you the most severe punishment possible in a society where death has been defeated and you can respawn endlessly to cure any injury; exile to the outside world, outside of the domed and underground cities, broken off from a connection to the Save Pads.
So with government like that, being so bent against sex, it would make no sense for them to put all their time and resources into creating an empowered form of human being meant to combat the Rebels by... making people horny enough to have to masturbate on the spot.
The same Rebels that love and encourage and promote sex, not only for their values, but to produce more soldiers to fight against the WORM.
It would be like the Vatican employing Satan to teach Bible study by getting kids into the virtues of Satanism. Lore-wise, it just makes zero sense with the lore we created as the game's story expanded, so we just axed it.
There's been a lot of other things like this we've cut out, but since they weren't something like this, people just didn't notice.
