Spike Chunsoft has announced that there will be no Chaos;Head Noah Steam release at this time, as according to them it would require changes to the game's content. These changes would make the Chaos;Head Noah steam release not be up to their standards and they refuse to release it. This follows news that it was banned in August, although Spike Chunsoft didn't appear to cancel plans for the release at that time.
In their announcement, they state that they are looking at alternative storefronts, which might mean GOG or Epic Games Store or may mean more niche and Japanese-centric stores. While apologizing to all fans looking forward to the release, they also state that when details are decided they will make a formal announcement about where players may find the game.
What is particularly surprising about this is that Chaos;Head Noah is going to be released on Nintendo Switch still on October 7th. It has received a Mature rating from the ESRB, and that means that many of the areas that can cause bannings aren't present in the game. It will be released as part of a dual pack along with Chaos;Child, which had an English PS4 release, while this is the first official English release for Chaos;Head Noah, which has been teased for a while.
If you don't know what Chaos;Head Noah is, it's a visual novel and the 'director's cut' version of Chaos;Head. It includes several additional endings and edited parts of the original Chaos;Head release. The version being localized is the CERO D version which already censored some of the content in the original CeroZ release which would be closer to Adult Only. Chaos;Head was the first of the Science Adventure series, which would later include the even more popular Steins;Gate games as well as the Robotic;Notes games. These all fall into the visual novel adventure category which includes mysteries to solve by figuring out what's going on, and making a variety of choices. This release also features remastered 1080p graphics, as well as a special costume DLC.
We've reached out to Spike Chunsoft, and Valve for further information on this, and will update this story as we learn more. In the meantime, Chaos;Child is already on Steam, and you can pre-order the dual pack for Nintendo Switch on Amazon.
