Erotic domestic party simulator and adventure game House Party has run into some trouble with Steam and has been removed from the store.
After reaching around 28,000 sales and extensive coverage by some of YouTube’s most popular creators, the 3D party simulator featuring plenty of erotic gameplay elements has been removed from Steam.
[UPDATE 2 07/29/2017]
After Eek! Games has issued changes to the sexual content of the game, House Party has been returned to steam and the developer now offers a free Steam patch to completely remove the censorship from the game.
Bobby has also issued the following statements regarding the return of the game as well as the new Steam patch. You can read both of them below.
I’m sure everybody’s wondering about the changes that had to be made to the game in order for this to happen. I’m happy to say that the entire story of the game is 100% in tact, and there have been no changes made to the content of the game. The issue was specifically with the portrayal of sex acts. I know a lot of people are coming down hard on Steam for this, but it was expressed to me during the course of my exchange to them that they are also held to rules and regulations of their own, and they are just trying to do the best they can. They were very happy to be able to restore the game on their platform. Probably not as happy as me, but close. 🙂
Now, I know that there are many of you who take issue with the fact that you bought a non-censored game, and now aspects of the game are censored. There doesn’t seem to be any issue with providing an off-Steam patch to users to restore the game to its original form as many other games so overtly do, so we will be releasing a small and easy to install patch that you can apply to your game. It’s the best that we are able to do given the current situation, and we hope our Steam players understand. It’s not ideal, but the alternative was that we would not be able to return to Steam, and if the game doesn’t grow, it makes it harder for us to hire on and make the game better.
Steam Patch
We understand that many of you bought the game on Steam while it was still fully uncensored, and would like to restore the game to its full functionality. Using this patch, you will be able to completely un-censor the game. It’s really easy to install. First, download the following file:
Once the file is downloaded, extract the zip file to the following folder: Documents/Eek/House Party/Mods/Censorship/
You may need to create the “Censorship” folder if you haven’t run the 0.6.6 version of the game yet.
That’s it! You’re done! Enjoy!
[/UPDATE 2]
The game’s developer, going by the nickname Bobby, has issued a statement regarding the game’s removal on the game’s official Discord mentioning the title has received “a lot of complaints” but also reassuring consumers that Steam is honoring all sales prior to the game being taken down. You can read the full statement below.
For those wondering about the Steam removal, they said they took the game down because they “received a lot of complaints.” They are honoring all sales made, and people who purchased can still play right now, and will still receive updates. I am talking to Steam and working out the details, but the game will still be available for those who purchased, and will be back once we come to a solution.
While Bobby did not disclose what kind of complaints the game has received, we can easily assume some of them have a great deal to do with the uncensored nudity featured within the game along with the depiction of sex animations. Is that the reason House Party was removed from Steam, however? Realistically, it could be anything from a copyright issue connected to the 3D models used in the game to popular brand logo imagery also featured in the title. We will have to wait for more statements from the developer to see more of the bigger picture surrounding this issue.
We will be sure to update this story as it develops and hope the developer can resolve the situation with Steam in an efficient manner. Even while House Party is gone from Steam, it is still available for purchase on Game Jolt or by donating to Eek! Games Patreon account.
[UPDATE] Eek! Games has released a statement on their site pertaining to House Party‘s removal from Steam mentioning that the game was being targeted by a “certain group,” and the nature of many of the complaints were that the game “includes pornography.”
House Party was temporarily removed as a result of a number of complaints that were sent to Steam about the game. The game has been a target for a certain group of people since the day it launched, and said people were posting very aggressive, distasteful and hateful comments directed toward the game and its community of players. I suspect the complaints about the game that Steam received were originating from the same groups. Steam agreed to let the game back on the site after some modifications (which we are working on now). They have generously offered me the opportunity to modify the game for re-admission to their service.
UPDATE: I didn’t get much detail about the nature of the complaints other than that the game includes “pornography”, and Steam told me that they will re-enable the game once the pornography has been removed. They didn’t specify anything in particular or define what they consider pornographic. I explained to them that I don’t consider the game pornographic as it’s not intended to titillate, but rather is intended to be a humorous and quirky game. Most of the game-play revolves around solving puzzles and humorous dialogues.
The full post can be found on their here on their website.
[/UPDATE]
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