itch.io

Yay, hopefully this means more overwhelming cuteness from Julian. 

Looking forward to it, the character in the image looks amazingly cute, especially with cuteness enhancing beans.

Technically, a self censor path would allow a full restoration of all monetization options. Though depending on the extent, it could change the story. For example, what if they made a E rated version of Doom: The Dark Ages? 

I was thinking of having it nowhere near the download page. The idea is establishing a clear decoopling such that no aspect of new payment processor TOS additions can apply, thus making it so that until the situation is resolved, there will be at least some transaction path open through the platform for one time donations. 

Then once itch gets a better understanding of any restrictions thhe payent processor has, or better yet, if the protests work in reversing it all, then they can revert everything to how it was before. 

For the pay what you want model, I think a good workaround for itch to implement would be a content creator tipping option, where you are not specifically buying anything from them, but instead you are donating some money to them as a thank you for being awesome.

That is sadly part of a fear that many people will have. People reading the itch version will always second guess everything. When one scene ends, was the scene experienced in its entirety or was some dialogue and images removed? They will have to wonder, was a sentence taken out or was an entire paragraph taken out? Did we see all of the cuteness from Marruk or were we deprived of some of the cuteness? While it was made clear from other replies that the story is going to be told the way it was always going to be told, that can still be an area of nuance. For example, an anime that does a faithful retelling of the story from the manga, will often have a lot of content cut out compared to the manga. While you will still get an understanding of the story, if you go back and read the manga, you will still often find dialogue that reveal little things about a character that while not very important to the plot, it works to add more substance to a character. Other times it can be smaller details that contribute to world building where the anime may skim over in order to maintain pacing to have a strong showing for the first 12 episodes.

One of the issues that has lead to such widespread overreaction (itch initially delisting all NSFW including simple strong language and violence), is because the responses from Stripe used terms that are subjective in nature. There is no telling if their definition of adult content was narrowly defined as what was seen in in the game mentioned be collective shout (a game which both platforms quickly removed long before the censorship campaign ever started), or if they defined it more broadly where anything more extreme than Mario Cart is considered prohibited.

While my example is more extreme to convey the concept, since there are many ways to interpret the verbiage, it will be impossible to understand how far the content filtering/ censorship goes, and due to how VNs often work, it can be difficult know what is missing, and that will create a sense that something is missing with many scenes, even if nothing is actually missing between the censored version and the uncensored version.

One potential workarounds will be to clearly indicate when something is censored, but that will then interrupt the flow of the story and change the overall experience. Imagine watching a serious movie and in a scene, the actor pauses a conversation they are having, and looks at the camera and then states that on the 29mm T 1.8 lens on the ALEXA mini LF is not fully centered of the focus ring and that will lead to uneven wear on both the focus ring and follow focus module. Something like that will change the whole vibe and feeling of the movie.

Overall it complicates things in ways that seem unnecessary considering that other VNs, including ones with lots of NSFW content are back to posting uncensored updates with no negative impact to their listing.

Given the recent subsequent rule changes is there still a need for content filter to be permanently on? From the looks of the page as well as other VNs, it seems that is no longer needed given the recently added exception to the rules. It seems like it should still be fine to support you on Patreon and other crowdfunding platforms. This is one of the best VNs on the platform, and it is sad to see any changes made due to actions from an anti-free speech organization.

They allow for NSFW versions to be made available without risking being deindexed, thus the only current restriction at the moment seems to be using itch to directly sell an NSFW version through itch and Stripe. If payments are instead being done on other platforms, e.g., early paid releases on Patreon or other platforms, then it does not violate the the latest set of rules on itch. This effectively means that Early release content can still be sold via other platforms and so long as the paid version is also hosted off-platform.

The initial overreaction by Itch and the gradual pullback was a fear response since changing payment processors can take weeks, and that would mean the business having no income at all for weeks. They are now in the gradual pullback phase and there is a good chance of things going completely back to normal as there is now a much larger public outcry against the censorship astroturf campaign from collective shout. 

Overall in my opinion, the additional censorship doesn't seem necessary given the current structure of your VN listing on itch.

Please consider using an alternate payment processor with a strict no censorship policy, e.g., parallel economy. Abuse from the major payment processors will only get worse if they get rewarded for censoring legal content.

Aamazing to see new updates, and we should all take time to share great VNs with others, especially when itch is not helping with discoverability. 

In these cases, it is not the main credit card companies that are causing these issue, instead, it is mainly the back end payment processors who will facilitate a credit card transaction. For example, Stripe has a history of dropping many people, including numerous content creators, artists, and various donationware companies, e.g., electronics companies like Apple, pressuring a payment processor to ban a developer who is using them to accept donations for a board view applications tailored to 3rd party repair of products made by those companies. Since nothing they are doing is illegal, they can't get the software banned, thus they go after income sources instead.

Anyway what collective shout did is just the beginning, and given how fast steam and itch gave in, they will now double down. Bit by bit they will chip away at what content in allowed, until itch will ban everything more violent than Mario Cart.

Keep in mind that collective shout tried to use a different method to get the game Detroit: Become Human banned, though that was before they utilized the payment processor route. 
The censorship groups of the past that tried to ban things like Dungeons And Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and many other things,never fully disappeared, and the success of collective shout, will effectively give them all a roadmap to exploit. 

If there is no resistance to this, then eventually every prude will effectively have veto authority on all content on itch, steam, and many other platforms.

Would itch consider switching to a different payment processor? While companies like Stripe are the biggest, there are many others out there that came about after censorship groups pressured payment processors into going after others in the past, e.g., electronic repair communities, and communities developing 3rd party schematics. 

Given how much more effective these censorship companies are becoming, my may be best to just move to a payment processor whose business model is to never ban any legal content. If itch sticks with their current payment processor, they will only continue to gradually censor more content and this situation will become a regularly occurring event. 

Hoping that the VN can continue in its intended form. Got worried when I saw much of the content on the page disappear.

Beyond that, also hoping for more cuteness from Marruk.

Take all of the time you need, I am happy that the project is not cancelled as the story is amazing, along with amazing characters. 

Looking forward to future updates, and hoping there is a way for the story to continue. Especially if there is a route for Raphael (I wish cute mouse characters were more common in VNs).

Yay, it is always amazing to get some kobold cuteness, though I wish there was more interaction with kobolds.

Hopefully there will be an option for the player character to happily enjoy some tasty creamy goodness from the fox character (Sam), as an upgrade from the goat experience :).

Great story and amazingly cute fox. It is always awesome to get some fox cuteness, especially when they get cute digitigrade paws and other cuteness enhancing features. 

Always great to see more Owen cuteness and my favorite character. Though it would be great to get more Vlad cuteness as well.

Will there be more wholesome cuteness focused scenes with him instead? Will the player character get to boop the snoot as well as the cuteness enhancing paw beans?

In cases like this, the theft can also be reported to search engines which will impact their ranking as well as remove the direct search result in cases when they refuse to remove the infringing content.

Outside of that, a common tactic used by freeware developers is to add an install (for applications that require installation ) or first time run note indicating the official sources and warning that if they purchased or acquired the freeware from an unofficial source then they were scammed and likely got a version bundled with malware. It often works since it is a very real risk since malware devs often focus on bundling malware with the launchers for legit software.

Often that throws enough doubt and raises enough red flags on 3rd parties trying to monetize your hard work for their own gain.

Yay, new activity, still hopeful for more cuteness from Marcouy.

Eagerly looking forward to this VN.

Not sure about what will be with this new VN, since it is in the early stages in terms of what has been released so far, and there are many really cute characters that I would love to see more interaction with, though beyond that, given the truly amazing story content from Echoes from Valeth, odds are that we will see more amazing content that goes well beyond romance.

Often for these VNs, it means not having a bunch of different routes and endings, instead there is a single main story that is of an amazingly high quality. 

Take the time you need, this has been an amazing VN so far and I eagerly await future updates to experience more of the amazing story and the world you are building in the VN.

Is anyone else having an issue where the "Look for trouble" option now has every encounter being a hypnotic one?

Looking forward with more cuteness from Crevan, he has the highest cuteness level in the VN so far.

Amazing character.

I wish more VNs offered options for penis types compared to all furry characters having human penises.

I like when more actions can be taken in a day, one if the most frustrating experiences in a VN is feeling that a time limit prevents you from experiencing all of the additional content in a single playthrough. While multiple playthroughs for multiple major routes can work, ideally there should be ample time to thoroughly enjoy the main content and side content along with repeatable content without feeling overly pressed for time.

Awesome work, though I was wondering, will there be more romance options for Chi to enjoy more cuteness with him?

Amazing, though I wonder, will there be options for him to top?

Beyond that, he has astronomically high cuteness levels.

Thank you for the update, and take all of the time you need. It is such an amazing VN that any future updates will be well worth the wait, and it will be all the more amazing to enjoy with knowledge that it is not a source of stress and burnout for you.

Amazing story in the VN and astronomically high cuteness levels from Redline.

One feature I wish Renpy would add is save grouping, imagine having the standard saves pages that can count up infinitely. then them imagine above the page number, are a group option, thus allowing users to freely make as many saves as they want within a route without the need to worry about overwriting, but still be able to group them according to route.

I have been totally fine with the current design. Easy to read, good aesthetics, and the user will be enjoying the awesome VN anyway, especially when new versions are released.

Awesome update, though I wish there were more options to enjoy the cuteness enhancing paw pads of Artics rather having the player character get his or her feet or paws receiving service from Artica.
It would be awesome to find multiple unique ways of enjoying the cute pawpads. Especially if the player character is more submissive.

Awesome VN, though from the survey, it is surprising that more didn't prefer body types that offer higher cuteness levels. Imagine getting characters that have all of the cuteness enhancements, thus allowing the main character to experience cuteness overload from a monster or slim to athletic build (others can work as well as long as cuteness levels are high), digitigrade legs, cuteness enhancing paw beans, etc.

High cuteness levels is always awesome to experience alongside an amazing story.

I personally have no issue with it being used, especially considering that it can help to play with verbiage while brainstorming a scene. It can also help to communicate elements of a scene in a way that can transcend a language barrier.

Extremely good VN, can't wait for the next update. Also the ultimate in cuteness.