NekoNyan Software announced that the all-ages version of Hello, Goodbye has been approved for release on Steam and will launch on the platform on April 18th. This comes after the game was banned back in December of 2018 for “child exploitation”.
The news comes courtesy of a tweet from NekoNyan who sent out the notice on April 4th, 2019 to their followers on Twitter, notifying them that Valve apparently had a change of heart and was allowing Hello, Goodbye on Steam after they initially banned the game months ago.
It’s true. If you visit the Steam store page it now has an April 18th, 2019 release date and a full store page description. The game is the all-ages version of the game, which means that it does not contain any explicit nudity or sexual content. It still features a few illustrations that NekoNyan states contains “very mild nudity” and “dialogue that contains sexual jokes and implications”.
This was one of the first all-ages visual novels that was banned from Steam even though it contained no explicit content.
Hello, Goodbye’s ban also managed to get picked up by a few other publications, who attempted to frame the argument that Valve was banning games with “young looking” characters, all while completely ignoring the fact that plenty of other games are allowed on Steam that feature actual, canonically young characters in suggestive situations such as both Life Is Strange games, Telltale’s The Walking Dead, and Bully: Scholarship Edition to name just a few.
Most people recognized that Valve was being disingenuous with their reasoning given that plenty of Western games also feature “child exploitation” based on their loose definition of the term, but mostly Japanese, Chinese, and South Korean games with anime art-styles were the ones being targeted. They make up the brunt of the Waifu Holocaust 2.0 banned list.
In this particular case we have no idea what led to Valve changing their minds about the game, but someone at the company decided to give NekoNyan a second chance. Whether or not they stick to it and allow the game to launch on the platform is another story, since it’s still two weeks off from release.
Regardless of what happens with Steam, you can still purchase Hello, Goodbye from other adult game stores, including:
Jast USA
Nutaku
MangaGamer
and NekoNyan’s own digital store
You can learn more about Hello, Goodbye by visiting the game’s official website.
(Thanks for the news tip MaverickHL and StarKitsune)
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