Nekopara After: La Vraie Famille is the latest entry in Neko Works’ long-running cat-girl visual novel game series. Like all previous titles in the Nekopara series, it was planned for release on Steam, but a dragged-out review process has delayed its launch by over 40 days and counting.
The original release date for Nekopara After was May 23. However, a couple days prior, publisher Project Sekai announced that this would be postponed to May 29 due to approval from 3rd parties (i.e. Valve) still pending. But even after the extra week passed, there were still no signs of the game being approved for the platform. At the time of writing, Nekopara After’s Steam release is listed as “TBD.”
According to Sekai Project, they submitted Nekopara After’s game build on May 5. Then, on May 14, Valve contacted them requesting a save file – which they provided within the same day. But since then – over a month later – they have been met with complete radio silence from the platform, leaving them unable to provide even an estimate about when the game will be able to launch.
Since Nekopara After was meant to release simultaneously on several PC platforms, its postponement on Steam stalled the entire launch. Ultimately, the publishers decided to go ahead and release the game on DLsite, Fanza and Denpasoft on June 13. Over on Steam, Project Sekai has been publicly counting how many days Valve has kept them waiting (last updated on June 13 at 42 days), likely as a way to intercept the inevitable flurry of inquiries from fans waiting for the game.
Nekopara is an eroge franchise – meaning it includes adult content. All past entries (six games including Vol 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and Extra) have been released on Steam so far with the R-rated scenes removed (save for things like mild nudity, jiggle physics and lewd jokes), with DLC available for players who want to access the 18+ content fully. It’s likely that such aspects of Nekopara After have been brought into question by Valve, but the lack of feedback from the platform about what’s blocking the release has left the publisher unable to take countermeasures or announce a new release date.
Nekopara After: La Vraie Famille is available for PC via DLsite, Fanza and Denpasoft (18+ version) and Sekai Project’s homepage (all-ages version). The Steam release is TBD.
This is where there should be more of an effort to make Itch.io The western equivalent to Dlsite so Japanese devs don’t feel like they have to solely rely on Value and Steam
To be honest Japanese developers should just create their own site without relying on Western internet infrastructure. The amount of money they can earn with selling manga, anime, eroge is huuuuge, and there is no need to go through a Western representative with mtl getting better each month. Also they should go the direct debit, ideal, crypto, selling points ect route instead of hostile credit cards. Dlsite should just give Western idiots the finger and stand up for their Japanese artists…..