Country Restrictions & Explanation

[Envy]

Before we begin, I want to say this, I (Dharker Studios Ltd) do not want to restrict any countries, if it was up to me the game would be freely available to everyone no matter where you are... Sadly every country has its own laws and rules and different countries are strict or lax on different things. We have no choice but to abide by all laws for the sale of our games based on the content included.

More details of our position on restricting the game can be found below:

Restrictions

Negligee: Love Stories is an adult mature game, as such I am sorry to say to comply with laws across the world, we are unable to sell our game in the following territories on Steam and as such the store patch has restricted visiblity on Steam in these territories:

Japan,
Malaysia,
Botswana,
Egypt,
Morocco,
Nigeria,
South Africa,
Sudan,
Uganda,
Bangladesh,
China,
Lebenon,
South Korea,
Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia,
Turkmenistan,
Belarus,
Iceland,
Ukraine,
Russia,
Australia,
Papua New Guinea,
Indonesia
Guyana,
Iraq,
Dubai,
UAE,
Germany

For alternative ways to purchase visit:
https://dharker.studio/games/#/nlove-stories/

Explanation

The fact is, these restrictions are the downside of being the poster child for the first fully uncensored adult game on Steam (with no dlc to unlock extra content required).

Several countries banned the game which prompted us to realise that we need to be more careful with where we sell in case we breach laws in other countries.

You might think that it is ludicrous but Dharker Studios Ltd is a company, if we release a game in a country where the content is illegal or could be considered illegal then potentially we could suffer fines and penalties and even legal action by those countries. Also as per our and every developers agreement with Steam, If they fined or targeted steam, we (dharker Studios) would be liable for damages sustained. which would likely end our company, we are a small indie developer, we do not make millions or anthing close to it and do not have the resources for such costs whilst continuing to make games.

Therefore sadly we must err on the side of caution.
And that, plus research determines the restrictions.

What has Changed with this Game?

In the past most of our games have stories and then the adult content is created in addition to the main story as a bonus or extension to the main story. Making it easy to censor them and still offer a full robust game suitable for sale on Steam without that content. This is why all of our past games have no country restrictions as that adult content has been removed.

This is not the case for Negligee: Love Stories, the stories themselves are adult in nature and style from start to finish. If we censored this game so that everyone could play, it would remove 90% or more of the content, unforetunately that means this isnt really an option for this game.

Was this intentional?

Some people have complained, because they think we or steam did this intentionally. But the truth is that is a crazy idea. First this all came about when countries started contacting steam to ban the game from selling in their region. We then contacted our solicitor (who has some dealings with international laws) and began the process of working out what is legal and what is not and restricting the game.

The problem we encountered is that laws in other countries for distance online selling, distribution and adult content is very murky and grey, many countries have made such things illegal and whilst they are rarely enforced... They can be enforced at any time.

Based on this we (Dharker Studios) created a list of countries that had laws that prohibited distribution, sale or viewing of content included in the game. E.g. Russia has laws against homosexual content, which the game includes in part. Japan has laws against uncensored genitalia being visible. Germany have laws against selling to people under 18 and require software to verify ages which steam does not currently have. Thus every country on the list has a law that potentially makes selling this game illegal and as such we cannot sell to that.

Most of the countries generally have very little sales on Steam, but any sales are better than no sales. Germany however is our fourth largest sales region after USA, UK and Canada, so we wouldn't restrict a game from there if we didn't have to.

Please bare all this in mind before taking to the discussion hub to complain, there is no simple way around this, but people from some of these countries can purchase the game via other sources as detailed on our website, where they have proper age verification systems:
https://dharker.studio/games/#/nlove-stories/

In the Future

Based on the neccessity of restrictions based on adult content, none of our previous games will be patched to include adult content. Some will however be given a Free or Cheap mature content DLC pack in Steam (sadly this dlc will likely be restricted as all adult content must - but the base game will be unaffected) Players can then either install via Steam or if restricted gain the patch in other ways at their own discretion and at their own risk and liability.

Likewise future games will be developed to release a censored edition where possible and then have a free or cheap mature content dlc pack on steam as well.

The only other thing that may change any of these restrictions is if countries change their laws and stances on those laws or if the countries contact steam to advise the game can be officially released in that region.

Why arent other companies restricting their adult dlc?

Lastly we do not know why other developers who have released an adult dlc patch for their game have not restricted its visibility to certain countries. Nor do we know why Steam is allowing them to do this.

For some it is probably because they have very little visibility, and so steam do not know about them or believe that the countries will notice or care themselves. For others though I do not know, there are some games recently released at the same time as Love Stories with DLC adult content that are more popular and cost more than my own releases and yet there adult DLC remains unrestricted to all.

I do not know why.
At present I have asked them why this is, but as yet have been given no response.

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We have now explained our position numerous times and it is clear those who are complaining about this are simply ignoring what we write and calling us liars, we therefore will not be commenting further and if you wish to complain you can do it elsewhere, constructive debate is one thing but continuous trolling and hating posts are no longer welcome here especially as we have seen numerous posts in those discussions flagged as innappropriate, rude and hateful etc.