One of the things the video games industry has had trouble with over the years is the issue of "adult" games. I'm not talking about M-rated violence-fests — those are seemingly fine. I'm talking primarily about those that contain explicit sexual content and/or themes a little more ambitious than you might find in your typical focus-grouped commercial blockbuster.

The stigma attached to adult games is largely due to retailer concerns. Specifically, retailers like Wal*Mart and Target in America have historically refused to stock games that have an AO (Adults Only) rating from the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board), despite the AO rating existing and making it abundantly clear that the title is absolutely not for children. The situation is almost certainly the same in Europe when it comes to PEGI (Pan European Game Information) ratings, with the added awkwardness that different individual European countries have different rules on what is regarded as "decent". Germany, for example, has less of a problem with pornography than some other countries, but is very strict on depictions of violence, with many high-profile triple-A games either not making it to Germany at all or being gutted (no pun intended) of violent content in the process.

In other words, making an AO game would historically have been commercial suicide for a publisher trying to make money from their product. After all, if you can't get stock on the shelves of popular retailers, your avenues for selling your product are inherently more limited, and when it comes to big budget titles, you need every sales channel you can get.

But now we live in the age of the Internet, of course, and brick-and-mortar retailers are less relevant to our buying habits. It's still nice to be able to go into a shop, pick up a product and walk out with it (having paid for it, obviously) immediately, but a significant number of people now err in favour of the lower prices offered by online stores. And when it comes to computer and video games, the rise of high-speed broadband and high-capacity hard drives has made games with no physical component whatsoever a prominent part of the digital landscape. In fact, the ability for software to be released as digital-only has allowed more developers and publishers than ever before to be able to bring their products to market — without overheads such as duplication and distribution, developers can focus all their time on their product and, subsequently, promoting their product rather than boring logistics stuff.

And yet we're still stuck with the stigma over AO games. Console manufacturers won't allow AO games on their platforms' storefronts — presumably because it would be all too easy for minors to circumvent any sort of age gate technology and buy porn on Mummy's credit card (suggesting that they should perhaps think about stepping their age gate game up) — and Steam, while allowing a couple of games with boobs in to be sold on the platform, still seemingly stops short of allowing outright porn/hentai games to be sold. (There is, of course, a whole argument about why it's okay for The Witcher to have fairly explicit porking in it, yet the slightest hint of an anime titty gets the big red cross, but we won't get into that now; nor will we get into the "double standard" argument re: violence vs. sexual content.)

This has meant that until now, AO games have typically been sold direct or through specialist distributors. J-List, for example, sells AO visual novels in both physical and digital format from its own publishing arm JAST USA as well as third-party localisation companies like MangaGamer. MangaGamer also sell their own products on their own website. Localisation powerhouse Sekai Project, meanwhile, have their dirty little not-so-secret arm Denpasoft to sell their AO titles (or AO versions of titles that get a wider, edited release for platforms like Steam). It's good that we have all these places to buy AO titles, but until now there hasn't been a unified Steam-esque platform for them.

There still isn't quite that, but what Nutaku (very NSFW link!) is building is a step in the right direction. Nutaku, for the unfamiliar, is a website that sprang up relatively recently and provided adult browser games — typically the sort of gacha-driven free-to-play fare that you'd get on mobile phones, only with more porn. More recently, however, they've decided to launch a digital distribution platform for a variety of AO titles — primarily visual novels, as they tend to be — in collaboration with the popular publishers I've mentioned above.

This is a big deal. A centralised place for AO games to be distributed and for players to build up a library is a great thing, and helps deal with the inherent fragmentation of the market we've had up until now with everyone only distributing their own stuff (with the exception of J-List selling physical copies of some MangaGamer titles). While Nutaku's implementation of its storefront currently leaves a little to be desired — you have to buy games with the "Nutaku Coins" premium currency that is also used in their free to play browser games, and you can only purchase this in bundles rather than the exact amount you need to buy a game — it's very much a step in the right direction, and a system that is hopefully going to allow AO games to thrive in the online market. Perhaps it will even inspire some competitors to come along, or for services like Steam to have an age-gated 18+ section.

And it's started strong; some well-regarded titles such as the 18+ version of Princess Evangile are available on Nutaku's platform, and Sekai Project has even released the 18+ version of Sakura Dungeon first on Nutaku — even before the all-ages version hits Steam or the 18+ version releases on its own Denpasoft store. Let's hope it keeps up this momentum — and if you want some quality filth, be sure to support what they're doing.