It's a, um, New Year

If you don't mind, I'm going to bypass the usual "Happy New Year" phatic sentiment. "Happy New Year" and "Merry Christmas" so often fall into that realm of gratuitous throw-away social lubricants, much like asking "How are you?" when meeting someone, said without expecting an actual response.

Auld Lang Syne

I'll be honest. This past year has been a hard one for me. Putting aside for the moment the current political climate that makes life difficult for so many, the only reason that I'm looking forward to the new year is the thought that it can't be worse than the previous one. I know I'm tempting fate by saying such a hideous thing, but one lives in hope.

I've had on-going family issues. Serious ones. I'm constantly reminded of the surgery I had in 2024 by having to deal with its after-effects in 2025. For almost four months, I spent three days a week traveling to a facility for very painful therapy. When I wasn't in therapy, I was living in constant pain recovering from the therapy that was supposed to lessen the pain. Catch-22, and all that. I'm somewhat better now. One brief hospitalization earlier in the year, but it's pretty much been uphill from there. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that my healthcare insurance costs just doubled as of today.

I worked, hard, to get Confusion finished and out the door. I took the occasional day off here and there, but for the most part it was a 24/7/365 slog. Aside from wanting to finish the journey five years in the making, a big reason I did this was in anticipation of the income I'd receive from its publication on Steam. Yes, it's an "adult visual novel" with some of the expected tropes and content, but I thought it was important in my quest to help promote normalization of transgender people, their rights, and of public opinion.

1984

Boy, did the current administration scuttle my intentions at every turn. In addition to poisoning the waters of public opinion when it comes to trans rights (hell, their mere existence) they also pushed the narrative that was instrumental in curtailing the distribution of adult video games. That monopolies like Visa/MasterCard could legally impose their supposed business "reputation" over basic first amendment rights still galls me. What little market remains is flooded with people with no morals and even less talent turning to Large Language Models to create supposed "works of art." Microsoft constantly and aggressively trying to get into my privacy pants with their telemetrics and data theft, forcing me to funnel all of my data through them so that they can build whatever database they need to sell me paper towels and diet-drugs-of-the-week. Bugs in the tools I use every day keep me from working and the vendors involved seem like they could care less. So many of the consumers of my story try to lump it in with every horrible futanari fetish-fest out there and are disappointed as a result. I can't seem to win for losing.

The final blow to my psyche was the intractability of Steam. After six months of extra work, they just slammed the door shut and locked it. I blame payment processors for most of it, but Steam isn't without its share of fault. Rather than fight for their right to operate their business in the way they see fit, within the confines guaranteed them by the U.S. Constitution, they bowed to pressure and negotiated a plan that just avoided conflict. Rather than work with content creators to meet the tenets of that negotiated plan, they opted instead to act as sole arbiters. Confusion has some difficult story elements. On purpose. I hinted at abuse and sexual situations that helped shape the characters involved, but stopped short of actually showing the acts in process. Jesus, you'd think I was trying to sell "Loli Incest Hooker Rapists" disguised as a coming-of-age tale. It wouldn't have been easy, per se, but I could have removed any passage or plotline that the Visa/MasterCard people would object to. But Steam's take was just to ban the work, in toto, with absolutely no recourse.

Hard Times

As I've said in the past, I've been living off savings for the last five years. That savings is about to run out, and without the income I'd been heavily investing in anticipation of receiving, I'm not sure what to do next. This has been, and continues to be, my full time job. This past fall, I invested a bunch of time in a "quicky" title that was going to be created solely to generate income, but the tools at my disposal wouldn't allow it. With the economy the way that it is, patron support has been slowly declining now that Confusion is finished. Not by a lot, but the money I'd been receiving wasn't nearly enough to make up the difference in my expenditures anyway.

So I've taken the past week off. I didn't go anywhere. I didn't do anything but vegetate in front of a television. I played a few hours of video games. I cleaned house. I lost weight from forgetting to eat. And not wanting to have to clean up after myself. Some proverbial "me" time.

It helped. I woke up this morning and fired up my development tools for the first time in a week, intent on diving back in to University Trans-fer, trusting that the universe will somehow provide. I was immediately faced with: a mandatory BIOS update, Windows doing whatever the f--- it does to my system without my permission, that update messing with the Thunderbolt ports that connect my DAS, and some of my DAZ Studio tools suddenly not working because I had to update it and a host of plugins and utilities that depend on the new version...SSDD FUBAR.

The Parting Glass

So, I'm looking for advice. How should I proceed with the updated version of Confusion that I'd been calling Confusion—Steam Edition ("C-SE")? I'd obviously been planning to sell it via Steam. I'd have to rework it, AGAIN, to remove references to Steam from the program. The original 1.0.1 version was a complete experience that stands on its own. If I try to get C-SE published by the only other commercially viable outlet (GOG) it would take a ton of work and I'm not sure if it would ever pay off. If I just post it to Patreon, SubscribeStar, and itch.io, it hasn't really helped my income situation. (I had promised C-SE to top tier patrons and I still intend to honor that promise, somehow.)

C-SE has many features added over the 1.0.1 version: achievements, character profiles, and a hidden gallery of non-canon 4K images shown once you complete the game. It adds one new scene, and one extended scene (both trans/male interactions), along with a bunch of re-renders/animations for sake of quality and continuity. But the story itself hasn't changed, so it's not like there are additional paths or different endings or anything. You'd have to replay from the beginning as well because the changes involved forced that. Should I offer C-SE as a separate product here? Because of the way that the billing systems work, I wouldn't be able to offer upgrade pricing or anything like that--it would be a wholly new product. Would you even be open to paying for another version? Please let me know here, or in a private message. Thanks.

And "Happy New Year." 🫤

Steam Edition? Nope.

I've been working on the Steam version of Confusion for almost six months now. It's gone through several iterations involving changing my website because it featured pointers to other sites like itch.io, modifying the game to add Steam features, suggested adjustments to dialogue--only to have it permanently banned from Steam.

I was honest and upfront about the content that caused Confusion - SE to be banned, explaining context and providing enough backdoor tools for reviewers to review the questionable scenes in context. Nope. Banned permanently. I lost all of that time and effort, not to mention the fees I paid to Steam to be considered in the first place. To say I'm disappointed is a gross understatement.

Hello,

After review, we will not be able to ship your game Confusion - Steam Edition on Steam. While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us, we found that this title features themes, imagery or descriptions that we won’t distribute.

Regardless of a developer's intentions with their product, we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.

While every product submitted is unique, if your product features this representation—even in a subtle way that could be defined as a "grey area"—it will be rejected by Steam.

For instance, setting your game in a high-school but declaring your characters are of legal age would fall into that category and be banned.

This app has been banned and cannot be reused. Re-submissions of this app, even with modifications, will not be accepted.

Steam Support

I don't know what I'm going to do yet. Releasing on Steam has been a core part of my income strategy since I started working on it almost five years ago. I may look for other distribution venues, but none of them have the reach of Steam.