Controversial sex game House Party back on Steam with censor bars
Bump N' Grind.
Controversial sex game House Party has returned to Steam after it was pulled from sale last week for sexual content. But the sex game has had a big change - censorship.
No boobs. No love rods. Just a big ol' censorship bar blocking the nasty.
House Party is a simulator where you make your way around a party sleeping with women and fighting people. No Frosty Jacks present, so it's clearly not a British party.
After House Party was removed from Steam, developer Eek! Games said Valve indicated the game could return if some modifications were made.
No changes were made to the game's story or content, but the censorship bars are now on regardless off settings - and cannot be removed without a patch.
Some speculated House Party was removed due to certain scenes which could be seen to be derogatory and offensive towards women (bordering on sexual assault). Perhaps the most infamous scene is when you steal a woman's phone and blackmail her with the pictures in order to get her to sleep with you. This scene was altered in early July based on "user feedback", but you can still get women drunk in order to have sex with you and force them to parade around naked.
In a blog post, Eek! Games said Valve took issue with the game because of its visual depiction of sex acts, not the nudity or context. Now the sex has been censored, the game's back on Steam.
"The issue was specifically with the portrayal of sex acts," the developer wrote. "I know a lot of people are coming down hard on Steam for this, but it was expressed to me during the course of my exchange to them that they are also held to rules and regulations of their own, and they are just trying to do the best they can."
At the bottom of the post the developer provided a link to a small patch which removes the censorship, so not much has particularly changed.