The Super Seducer series has been having a hard time lately. The controversial series comes from professional pick-up artist Richard La Ruina, and acts as an interactive instruction manual for men to be successful with women. While the first two games in the series, both released in 2018, drew heavy criticism for the moral questions surrounding its premise, their releases were relatively uneventful (aside from a planned release on the Playstation 4 that was pulled shortly before release). The third game, initially set for release February 15th, has been plagued with issues.

The first sign of trouble was on February 3rd, during Steam's Game Festival promotion, where indie developers were allowed to release demos that would only be available for a limited time. Super Seducer 3's time was more limited than expected, however, as the demo was unceremoniously pulled only an hour after going up. Then, on February 11, Steam rejected the submitted build, citing the sexual imagery featuring live-action actors. (While plenty of explicit games can be found on Steam, they all feature animated characters rather than real people.) Since then, La Ruina has been censoring those scenes and resubmitting to Steam, before receiving a third and final rejection today, as Steam has totally banned the game from its storefront.

The game's future at this point is uncertain. La Ruina stated shortly before the ban that alternate storefronts (specifically, Epic Games Store and GOG) had rejected it, and that other methods were "not very attractive." Since the ban, however, he has stated he will have something ready for this week, and that the version he is aiming to release will be the original, fully uncensored version. The first two games were also expected to release on the Nintendo Switch in February of this year, with the third given a tentative date of late 2021, though that date came and went with no release, and only a brief mention from La Ruina that the release was still on track. He has also mentioned he may work on a similar branching path, FMV series focused on the horror genre, tentatively titled "Horror Seducer."

GBAtemp was lucky enough to receive a censored version of Super Seducer 3 for review prior to its initially projected release date. If you'd like to see exactly how bad the censored version (which has also been submitted to and rejected by Valve), you can read or watch our review here.

Steam have BANNED and removed Super Seducer 3 from the store. They will not allow it to be released in any form.

Our page is gone and 61,700 wish lists are gone.

Prior to this they told me expect either “approval or feedback”.
We repeatedly said we’d do whatever they needed pic.twitter.com/hVuDcvzL2n

— Richard La Ruina (@RichardGambler) March 20, 2021

 

[RedoLane]

I'm more surprised that over 60,000 people wishlisted it.

 

[Veho]

Aww nerts. And it came so highly recommended too

 

[rehevkor]

Good riddance.

 

[Paupreeka]

Aww...

 

[Silent_Gunner]

The creator right about now:


I'm disappointed because there won't be a fourth game called Super Seducer 4: Reserection! XD

 

[Viri]

That's a shame, hopefully he can find another store to sell his game on.

 

[Noctosphere]

while I don't approuve that kind of stereotyped games, I disapprouve even more censorship
Nothing should ever be censored
Punished by criminal or civil law, yes, but censored no...
For exemple, there's an Ottawa's university's employee who called our prime minister a "White supremacist who intentionally killed black and native people in his hospital"
Should that be censored? no
Should that be punished? yes
NOTHING should be censored
We're not in China here

 

[Kanakops]

Why do they always have to ban and censor everything, the game is meant to be ironical/funny and it was made in agreement with consenting actresses. Next to it there are thousands of questionable hentai games available for purchase. Steam are huge hypocrites.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Why do they always have to ban and censor everything, the game is meant to be ironical/funny and it was made in agreement with consenting actresses. Next to it there are thousands of questionable hentai games available for purchase. Steam are huge hypocrites.

Yeah, but if people really want this game...it's a game only on the PC platform. And what does the PC platform have a sizable amount of in its playerbase?

 

[Deleted member 194275]

It is a Western (mainly American) hypocrisy.

If it was a game where your character uses uniform, and you shoot people on the face, the game would be released with highlights in front page. Even if it was live acted.

But pussy is something that belongs to the devil, so it will be banned.

 

[hippy dave]

while I don't approuve that kind of stereotyped games, I disapprouve even more censorship
Nothing should ever be censored
Punished by criminal or civil law, yes, but censored no...
For exemple, there's an Ottawa's university's employee who called our prime minister a "White supremacist who intentionally killed black and native people in his hospital"
Should that be censored? no
Should that be punished? yes
NOTHING should be censored
We're not in China here

It's like the "right to free speech on twitter" thing. It's not being censored or persecuted by the government, Steam is a private entity that can make its own decisions about what it wants to sell and be associated with. The creepy guy could sell the game independently from his website with no issues, but I'm assuming that's one of the options he describes as "not very attractive" (a phrase which, judging by his face, he's familiar with).

 

[Mikemk]

When is Steam going to start banning all the shovelware and outright scams they allow on their platform?

 

[slimbizzy]

When is Steam going to start banning all the shovelware and outright scams they allow on their platform?

HAHAHAH good question

 

[pustal]

while I don't approuve that kind of stereotyped games, I disapprouve even more censorship
Nothing should ever be censored
Punished by criminal or civil law, yes, but censored no...
For exemple, there's an Ottawa's university's employee who called our prime minister a "White supremacist who intentionally killed black and native people in his hospital"
Should that be censored? no
Should that be punished? yes
NOTHING should be censored
We're not in China here

Steam is not a government, they are a private company and are in their rights to decide what do they want to support or not in their platform.

That being said, it's just plain dull and a symptom of our sex frustrated society. It's not about sexism or stereotypes, if it was that, a whole universe of anime games would be censored as well - it simply has to do with depiction of live action models.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

When is Steam going to start banning all the shovelware and outright scams they allow on their platform?

The day that such behavior won't be used to justify banning legit games. *looks at Devotion*

 

[Kwyjor]

Would it be surprising if they were very deliberately hitting the wrong buttons here in order to generate free publicity? "The game that was too hot for Steam!" would make for a fine selling point.

(While plenty of explicit games can be found on Steam, they all feature animated characters rather than real people.)

Reckon they could make a decent amount of coin by replacing all the characters with barely-animated catgirls and leaving the content otherwise unchanged. "Anime Seducer." Bam.

 

[ZeroFX]

Woke puritans can't handle meat pussy combined with irony, so they flood companies to ban them, one day maybe steam will start allowing them, since we got 2d ones without magic white light coming from the sky (*cof* sony).

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Woke puritans can't handle meat pussy combined with irony, so they flood companies to ban them, one day maybe steam will start allowing them, since we got 2d ones without magic white light coming from the sky (*cof* sony).

I feel like there's a reference at the end there that I'm not getting...

 

[Sansgaming420]

I would be more upset if this "game" actually looked any good. Still a dumb decision by Valve.