I actually do have a problem with all ages versions, even though I recognise some devs see them as a financial necessity.

It's a way of trying to dilute a piece of work into being marketable to everyone, but by making the sexual content optional they develop a kind of psychotic split tone within the same story - extreme content and pandering for the horny, yet cheeky smiley happiness for the self-deluded and everyone else - and become weird disposable trash as a result. Some of the stuff that's managed to make it onto Steam in All Ages form really makes me laugh, almost in bewildered outrage, when you know what it really is, and especially considering some stuff that's been booted from the platform for simply being risque. All Ages versions are the reason that the only officially available English version of Cross Channel - a great story - is some badly translated censored trash on Steam, when that entire VN revolves around sexual violence and trauma. And in fact the All Ages version of the game in this topic seems to be the fundamental reason that the West is getting a censored version of it - because we're getting the port of the Japanese re-released All Ages. They're not a new phenomenon for ero-games and it's not specific to non-Japanese versions; this kind of re-release, with safer, censored yet more polished and substantial content is pretty common even with some Japan-only games. Having changed so much of their original vision for cash, the devs see no problem changing even more and telling everyone to go spin.

A shame because the art for this one looks kind of nice. It's entirely possible that the dev is just some out of touch auteur who thinks that speaking as boldly as possible is the best way to defend his creation, but he's late to the anti-fandom party and happens to be talking in far too similar a way to the 'we don't want these kind of fans' SJWs that every sane person over here is sick of. This isn't our first rodeo, bitch, we might not have keigo but we recognise humility when we see it, and when we don't.

I just think lewd game makers should skip Steam entirely and try to galvanise their fanbase into buying on stores which don't have ridiculous censorship rules. That would negate this stupid charade entirely. Obviously the conventional wisdom is 'Steam release = more money', but outside the bigger name games I'm not convinced this actually holds true well enough to offset the drawbacks. Besides VNs being niche in the first place, they're usually priced too high for normie impulse purchases, while those who know the games by reputation will often seek them out in their least bastardised form from other stores - assuming those other versions exist. Speaking of which, grab Full Metal Daemon: Muramasa from the JAST store if you want a great, deep story about alt-historical fiction, sword dorkery, buddhist philosophy and magic samurai power armour. Of the few examples of questionable translation choices I've seen in it (there are always some), none related to wokeshit or censorship.