There have been a lot of Dev discussions regarding this topic, and from what I've seen, they mostly agree that it sucks but there isn't much that can be done. Also, if I try to resubmit a game under a new title/developer name, I could get a permanent ban from their platform, not just for my game, but for my developer accounts as well! While I don't have plans to work on another game any time soon, I'd rather leave that door open for future projects.Jabbonk, I know that not a sure thing, however, some devs have managed to get their games published despite the first hard rejection of their games by changing the "offending" part of the game (often taking a total guess as to which) and then resubmitting the whole game with a modified title after some time. For instance, Lucie Adult Game by SecretGame became Lucie Adult Game HD and then was released on Steam, Summer with Mia Season 2 by Inceton had been approved as Returning to Mia and will be released sometime in the future, even Astaros3D tried to retify Girl House as Lust & Life, but his work on the little girl seemed to be not enough and was rejected again, which is absurd by the way and, sadly, the same is also for the recent X-Centric works
I don't know, maybe they've just been lucky to not being reviewed by this Mary again with their second submission, however a possibility seems to exists.
For what it's worth, even if I admit that I know nothing about it, I continue to be convinced that greater communication and sharing of experiences among all the developers, especially those who have run into this type of problem, could be useful for everyone, both legally than solidarity. Even simply using this forum in a more proactive way to make these proven experiences better known could be very useful.
And, maybe, the creation of some sort of “trade union” for (small) independent (adult) game developers would not be a bad thing to make their voice count a little more.
Going more into science fiction (but also not), if this Mary is to be considered seriously a "problem", perhaps a way to make those in charge aware of it could be found, I don't know, maybe with a petition on change.org (or a similar platform) with a letter to be sent to the "bigwigs" at Steam, from Gabe Newell to others in the company who could read it and maybe take action on it. Maybe even attaching it to some online industry magazines, so as to create a little more awareness of the issue outside of just the industry insiders (I don't know, it's just a guess, but maybe even the porn industry, like PornHub, might have some interest in supporting causes like this).
In the end, I know it's almost just ranting, but, for example, we are almost 6 million registered users here on the forum alone, with an active average of more or less 20 thousand users online at all times of the day, they are not such irrelevant numbers after all, I hope that somewhere it will have to be possible to make them count a little
I've put in a request for reevaluation and plead my case, giving all my reasoning and explaining that there is literally no sexual content with minors in my game and that the reviewer must have made a mistake somewhere. I also asked for more details about what disqualified my game, as they just send a standard denial email with no actual details.
They say there's no hope for another review, and no discussions, so I don't expect much to come of it... But at least I tried. They're very clear about the decision being final and I've never heard of a ruling being overturned after being labeled with such a claim.
Honestly, it's mostly Steam's lack of consistency and refusal to discuss the issue that really bothers me. If they had even just given me details about what I did wrong then this wouldn't be such a gut-punch decision. I mean, there are games on steam that are muuuuuuch edgier than mine, or have some very questionably aged characters. Obviously I don't want to call any of them out to Steam because it could result in their games being taken down too and that doesn't solve any problems lol.
It just really sucks that as soon as a dev gets hit with the "Suggestive content with minors" BS, there's seemingly nothing you can do about it, however unjust or undeserved it might be. I suppose it's possible that if enough people emailed steam complaining about the unjust ban of Homelander that they might be convinced to take another look, but it would have to be A LOT of people and even that's a hell of a longshot lol
