@wan @Arkana @wgiwf The other interesting thing about NSFW games in Japan is simpler: when the Sega Saturn came out devs found One Weird Trick to make money: take a porno game and take the sex out of the game.

Games like Desire, EVE Burst Error, Yu-No, and more ended up with Sega Saturn ports with the porn removed and just the story, and needless to say a game like Yu-No still was solid without the sex scenes. This continued onto the PS2 era for sure, and the PS2 had many "all ages" VN ports without the sex scenes (and then there were SFW VNs that solely focused on a story, like Steins Gate as well).

Eventually this led to lots of money being made and some mainstream success, which would inevitably cross over into the western weeb circles. VNs are far more popular than they were a decade or a two ago, where they would either be obscure or the kind of games that some SomethingAwful writer would take the piss out of.