Just want to drive by and mention - a friend told me to play DDLC and I was highly skeptical given the anime pin-up girl art style. I eventually gave in and gave it a shot.

It's an amazing "playable story" unlike anything I have ever played. Super creative and well worth the couple hours it takes to play. I think it could use a few trigger warnings and it should be rated PG-13 / R, but there's stuff on Netflix 10x more disturbing so I don't quite grok the Google push back on this one.

    This game is not suitable for children or those who are easily disturbed.

1bil+ people have surrendered their right to artistic expression to Google, and another 1bil+ to Apple, and another 1bil+ to Microsoft. Many more billions have surrendered it to Visa and Mastercard. The world will only continue to get worse for the foreseeable future as five corporations assert global control over what is allowed to be published. It is mournful knowing that humanity's peak is behind us.

DDLC is a disturbing (good, but disturbing) game that opens as a bright cheerful one. So long as the description explained what the user is in for later on, I think Google shouldn't have done this. I haven't seen the Android version; I played it on PC, but as it is basically a "visual novel" I doubt there was very much difference between them.

Sad day for freedom of expression.

[Spoilers] For those who haven't played, DDLC has subject matter related to self-harm, mental health, suicide that sort of thing. It generally treats the subjects seriously. It has content warnings on it, so people know what they are getting into.

Its weird how we seem much more hung up on censoring video games we are than books or movies. There is way more disturbing books and movies out there. If this was a book i doubt anyone would care. There probably wouldn't even be content warnings on it.

On the other hand, maybe someone trying to ban you is how you know you have achieved the status of "great literature" like all the other banned books.

It's a relatively old game, so I'll put up here a spoiler so to remove potential confusion:

DDLC is a __horror__ game that contains some gore, death, and self harm content, as well as small fourth wall breaking, disguised as a Japanese Visual Novel style soft/hard porn game. The entire game is a figurative jumpscare. Which makes it technically true to call it a "disturbing and shocking" game, but not as in """disturbing and shocking""" as in the euphemism for pornographic. It is technically correctly rated and marked as such. It just doesn't say viewer discretion of what kind is recommended.

And also: a lot of these Japanese pastel colored things, Visual Novel games included, are in fact not intended for kids, especially under 15. It's not like picture books for 6-12 year olds. Audience gender distribution is often closer to 50:50 than what many assumes.

It's available on Itch: https://teamsalvato.itch.io/ddlc

(I've never played it.)

Walled gardens are antithetical to personal computing. Google is killing ChromeOS in favor of Android.

I guess they don't like Monika.

Let's not mince words. Whoever made this call is a lily-livered, paternalistic chickenshit startled by their own shadow.

Surprising, even by Google's standards. DDLC is a violent game but not much more. What app store rule exactly is it breaking?

Self-harm (especially when depicting minors) has special standards. The recent court ruling on child safety against Meta probably led directly to this decision.

Seems Google needs Mastercard/Visa treatment.

Provide the content, content provider

I think the issue is that Google deliberately decided to market its closed down app store as a necessity to regulators, in order to 'keep users safe'.

Which invites censorship from morality police types.

Well, at least we can "sideload" this easily with minimum attrition, right?

As someone pointed out why do we even bother with age ratings if we’re just going to ban games entirely for having wrongthink?

Aside from the comments on the rest of this thread, I’ll point out this unique point:

If this game’s content is objectionable, where was Google 5 months ago when it was released? Are they admitting that they don’t review apps that are submitted? Do their reviewers have zero familiarity with major multi-platform game releases?

How are they justifying the availability of the Grand Theft Auto or Resident Evil series on the Android platform if this game can’t be published?

Hopefully this turns out to be some kind of error or misunderstanding that gets corrected.

This is why a monopoly is bad. Google can dictate who has access or retains access.

Soviet Union collapsed, bit its cause lives on, now unexpectedly in the West.

Google and Apple know better than you what you want to play and what you want to do on your phone. Visa and Mastercard know better than you what you want to buy. Don't disagree with them, because they're only doing this for your own good.

fun game, I don’t want to spoil it but it’s got some elements that you will def appreciate more as a software dev once you get that far in

This is why we need developer verification - so Google can protect us from threats like this /s