An update on Heavy Hearts / Censorship

Good Afternoon, Gamers.

I've received so much love over the past few weeks following the recent Steam censorship conundrum. Many people have come to me to offer suggestions on how to proceed without Early Access. Many of them have been great ideas.

Heavy Hearts lost half of its funding when Itchio de-indexed us. We thought we could make it up with Early Access on steam, but of course we had our legs cut out from under us with that one.

While Heavy Hearts has been featured in many news outlets due to the censorship debacle, I'm happy for the exposure but it doesn't solve the problem. We are in a bit of trouble.

Many people are criticizing Steam for this, but the truth is we all know who is the real villain pulling the strings. Do not direct your discontent at Valve.

But, I don't want to get too deep into that.
I just want to talk about what we are going to do with the game now that we have lost half of our funding (itchio) and were denied early access (steam).

Heavy Hearts doesn't feature any content that would be considered fringe. It gets close sometimes with content where characters engage in scenes with a Werewolf man, but we have generally stayed away from content that would otherwise be considered bannable.
That being said, we still have a game to finish.

We want to finish Heavy Hearts hopefully by February, and ship it complete on steam. This means a programming/art blitz to completion.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN WE ARE RUSHING THE PRODUCT, AND IT CERTAINLY DOES NOT MEAN ANYONE ON THE TEAM IS GOING TO BE OVERWORKED (except maybe myself, which is something I accept freely).

It simply means that I have to direct my resources differently that I previously have. In the budget's current state, that means 100% of funding to art/animation and 0% to programming (I'm going to be working for free).

I'm OK with that. Heavy Hearts is a labor of love (even when I get criticized by players for the things they find buggy, or for content they don't like.)

This has to happen before the rules change even more, and something else prevents us from offering Heavy Hearts on Steam.

If you enjoyed Heavy Hearts, and can offer some support, i'd ask that you find one of the supporting avenues and toss a couple bucks in (which will go completely to the artists). There is a lot yet to do, and a little bit from a lot of people will certainly help out.

Thank you so much, lewd gamers. I appreciate all the love and support you guys have poured out to me over the past few weeks.

Dammitbird