Back in May of this year Valve banned the visual novel Yotsunoha from the Steam store, along with a bunch of other games. These titles found their way onto the Waifu Holocaust 2.0 list. Well, several other distributors have stepped up their game and stepped in to offer consumers an opportunity to purchase Yotsunoha from their storefronts, along with offering an R18+ patch for those who pick up the all-ages edition of the game.
You can purchase Yotsunoha from the Jast USA store for $$24.99.
The game is available DRM-free from Jast USA. Additionally, keep in mind that while this outing is the R18+ version of the game, since it’s made by a Japanese developer, Hiqosoft, it does contain mosaic censorship. So keep that in mind.
Check out the latest releases on our site from our new store partner @SolPressUSA ! You can save 20% on all of their releases (except Yotsunoha) this week until July 31st!https://t.co/yCAaMWOUDD pic.twitter.com/Tq6CLn48pk
— Denpasoft (@Denpasoft_pr) July 24, 2019
The game is also available for purchase from the Denpasoft store.
Not only is Yotsunoha available on Denpasoft, but Sol Press managed to strike a distribution deal with the outlet, enabling gamers to purchase other Sol Press published titles from the online store as well, including but not limited to Under One Wing, Newton and the Apple Tree and Sakura Sakura.
Denpasoft is also holding a limited time discount on Sol Press titles, with the exception of the newly released Yotsunoha.
What’s more is that Sol Press has opened up their own online storefront featuring their very own games that are available for sale. You can purchase the all-ages version of Yotsunoha from the Sol Press storefront.
Keep in mind that the games on Sol Press are sold as all-ages versions, so you’ll need to acquire the R18+ patches from elsewhere to bring them back up to their original glory. In the case of Yotsunoha, you can get your hands on the R18+ patch by downloading it from the Panty Press website.
Once you download the patch, just install it to restore Yotsunoha back to the adult version of the game. Unfortunately it’s still baked in mosaic pie, but it is what it is.
This is a nice alternative for a lot of visual novel fans who have been incensed at Valve’s treatment of various Asian-made games, specifically those fan-service heavy games made by smaller indie developers and nascent publishers.
Valve has basically been bullying these studios around by requesting censorship or outright banning their games for nebulous reasons.
Sol Press wasn’t content with simply waiting until the twelfth of never for their game to appear on Steam, and promptly went into business for themselves by opening up their own storefront, in addition to offering more of their games via other adult-oriented software distributors.
As this is the shop’s initial launch, please let us know if you happen to find any bugs so we can fix them ASAP!
We also don’t have every product in both physical and digital formats just yet, but we’re working to make them available as soon as we can! Thanks for being patient!
— Sol Press (@SolPressUSA) July 13, 2019
Hopefully this is a turning point for visual novel makers and other studios making ecchi or fan-service heavy games to not rely solely on places like Steam or GOG.com, since they have very uneven and unfair content curation policies that are not applied equally nor transparently.
It’s good to see that companies like Sol Press and Top Hat Studios are opening up their own storefronts, because it will surely help shift the market share within the landscape of digital PC gaming.
(Thanks for the news tip EvaUnit02)
