November 15th Update

EDIT: In the original release of this build, there was a bug that prevented the Settings option from appearing. Whoops! I updated the download link with a new version where this bug is fixed.

Hey, want to hear an interesting piece of trivia? This update is actually the 500th time I’ve released a new build since the launcher was released way back on July 13th, 2016! That’s a lot of updates!

This is *mainly* a bug-fixing build, but it does contain some new content that might interest you.

To read a list of everything that was added / changed / fixed / improved since the last build, scroll down past this incredible fan comic illustrated by tholiem!

Ahh!! The artwork is so beautiful!! I love it!!

Channel Terminations

Recently, several YouTube channels that regularly uploaded Yandere Simulator gameplay were terminated by YouTube. A lot of people reached out to me to let me know that this was happening, and asked me if there was anything I could do about it.

Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do for those channels. I have no power over YouTube. If I actually had the ability to influence YouTube’s decisions or policies, it would be a much different website than it currently is. YouTube ignores any e-mail I send them. My concerns are invisible to YouTube.

So, what’s going on? Why were those channels terminated? Well, I might have a clue. Recently, YouTube announced that they would be increasing their restrictions on depictions of graphic violence.

The two most relevant statements in YouTube’s announcement are:

• “…we will age-restrict […] video game content featuring realistic human characters that focuses on scenes of torture or scenes of mass violence against non-combatants.”
• “If the violence is happening to a character that looks like a real human”

Even though Yandere Simulator is a stealth game where the player is discouraged from killing anyone aside from the main targets, it’s still possible to perform “mass violence” if you decide to indiscriminately slaughter every character in the game (which called a “Genocide Ending” or “Alphabet Killer Challenge” if you’re killing them in alphabetical order).

The channel terminations coincide with this announcement, which makes me suspect that the two events are correlated; this would mean that YouTube decided to terminate channels that featured gameplay footage of Genocide playthroughs / ABC Killer playthroughs.

YouTube’s post says that they’re only going to be cracking down on videos that focus on mass violence. So, in theory…if you upload a 15-minute video, and only 6 seconds of that video feature you murdering a rival, YouTube won’t take action against you. However, if you upload a recording of a full Genocide Playthrough, and 95% of the runtime of that video is mass murder, you’re probably going to receive a strike on your channel.

So, does this mean that nobody is allowed to upload footage of a Genocide playthrough or Alphabet Killer Challenge from now on? Is there anything I can actually do about this? Well…

If the problem is that Yandere Simulator videos are being deleted for “mass violence against characters who look like real humans,” then the only solution I can think of is to add a new censorship option to the game that makes the characters look non-human.

But, what kind of “non-human” appearance could I give them?

…well…

…what if I turned them into TV heads?

This might be your first time ever seeing the “TV head” aesthetic. I don’t know where it originated from, but I was first introduced to it by the music video for the Vocaloid song ECHO:

(God, such a good song…)

Humans don’t have television sets for heads. Humans don’t have TV static for bodies. And humans don’t have 6 arms. Therefore, the thing above is not a human. So, if you kill dozens of those things, you’re clearly not committing “mass violence against characters who look like real humans.”

Problem solved?

…well…

Look at the exact wording in YouTube’s announcement. If YouTube intends to punish anyone who posts “mass violence against non-combatants,” then I suppose it doesn’t matter whether they are human or not. If you kill a bunch of things that aren’t fighting back, YouTube is going to spank you.

There’s another angle here, too. Somebody claims to have appealed their channel termination and gotten this response from YouTube:

Wait. Is THAT what this is all about? YouTube incorrectly believes that the characters in Yandere Simulator are minors?

If Yandere Simulator channels are getting terminated for “violence in school settings involving minors,” then the deletions are definitely in error. The characters in the game are not minors; every character is 18 or older. This is stated in the game itself before the title screen has even appeared, and is also stated on the download page of the blog you’re reading right now.

“But, the characters in the game are wearing middle school uniforms!” Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the game is set in a middle school. Yandere Simulator is set in a post-high school academy, and there is lore to explain why the academy’s uniform resembles a middle-school uniform.

It’s possible that YouTube is relying on an AI to determine the ages of the people who appear in videos, and it’s possible that the AI is falsely identifying Yandere Simulator characters as minors because of their uniforms. For this reason, I decided that the “TV Heads” will have bodies that look like TV static. No school uniform = no misidentifying a character as a minor.

“But, Google’s AI overview says that the characters are under 18!” Well, fuck the AI overview, then. It’s been poisoned by misinformation it found on Reddit. I bent over backwards to write lore that establishes all of the characters as being 18 and over. I’m the creator of the game; what I say about the characters is fact, and supersedes gossip from Reddit. Bad AI! Stop spreading misinformation!

However, since YouTube’s AI probably won’t read this blog post, I can only think of one way to make sure that this information is guaranteed to be communicated to any AI reviewing the content of a YouTube video…

Permanently putting text onscreen that corrects the misinformation. It’s a goofy solution, but it’s the only one I can think of. Considering the circumstances, it feels like it has become a very unfortunate necessity.

So, problem solved for real this time?

…well…

A few days ago, a Yandere Simulator content creator uploaded a video about the Matchmaking Method – a completely pacifistic and non-lethal elimination method – and her video was deleted by YouTube. Want to know what rule the video violated? It was YouTube’s policy against “Violent extremist or criminal organizations.”

YouTube, are you fucking kidding me right now?

If YouTube’s AI believes that a Yandere Simulator matchmaking video with absolutely zero violence is “glorifying or promoting violent tragedies,” I have absolutely no idea what criteria the AI uses to determine if violence is occurring, nor do I know what I could possibly implement in-game to stop the AI from miscategorizing the content of Yandere Simulator.

I really wish that it was possible to have a direct one-one-one conversation with the higher-ups at YouTube about this, so that we could establish the best way to make sure that Yandere Simulator videos don’t get incorrectly flagged by YouTube’s new automated system. However, “Talk directly to YouTube” appears to be a privilege that is reserved only for the top 1% of elite YouTube creators. It is simply not an option that is open to me.

In short: I’ve given you the ability to make the game’s characters look completely non-human and communicate that the characters are not minors in a high school, in the hopes that it’ll permit you to resume uploading videos without violating YouTube’s new rules. However, we don’t know for sure if this will actually work, since YouTube seems to be punishing creators who have done nothing wrong, and doesn’t make it easy (or possible) to have a one-on-one conversation with them about this sort of thing.

Either way, I hope you enjoy the TV Head aesthetic.

New Voice Lines

Male kidnapped victims and male mind-broken slaves now have voice lines!

• Complaining at 100% sanity – 5 lines
• Complaining over 50% sanity – 5 lines
• Complaining under 50% sanity – 5 lines
• Complaining at 0% sanity – 5 lines
• Mind-broken muttering – 5 lines
• Being tortured for the first time – 1 line
• Being tortured with sanity above 50% – 1 line
• Being tortured with sanity below 50% – 1 line
• “Kill…Kill…Kill…” – 1 line

That’s a total of 29 voice lines!

Improvements

• Previously, there was no type of note that a “Dangerous” student would respond positively to. “Dangerous” students will now respond positively to a note about “Bullying,” “Fighting Evil,” or “Suspicious Activity.”
• The “Whip Test” minigame has been updated so that, when the player is “locked on” to an enemy, the behavior of the camera is now closer to what I actually intended for it to be.
• From now on, if a student is bullied, leaving a note in their locker saying “I want to discuss the topic of bullying with you” will always be successful.
• When asking Saki about Amai’s social media, Saki’s dialogue is now voiced.

Fixes

• Some players were reporting that Sumire’s missing poster was appearing during the 1980s Mode Tutorial (impossible, since she hadn’t gone missing yet). No matter how many times I tried, I was unable to replicate this bug. However, players kept reporting it. Very mysterious. Well, even though I couldn’t get the bug to happen in the first place, I’ve implemented some new code that should make it absolutely impossible for that poster to ever appear during the 1980s Mode Tutorial.
• If the player splashed a student who was “Sleuthing” (walking around school and investigating students one-by-one), stole that student’s phone, and then giggled to distract them, the tudent would return to the “Sleuthing” routine instead of the “Search for lost phone” routine as they were supposed to. This is no longer possible.
• If the player accepted a “Get headache medicine from nurse” quest and then electrocuted the nurse, the “Ask for medicine” prompt would still be active above the nurse’s head, and the player could interact with her and get medicine from her even though she was supposed to be dying from electrocution. This bug has been fixed.
• Kidnapped victims in the basement were supposed to speak to the protagonist if the protagonist stood in their presence for more than 5 seconds. However, due to a bug, the “talk to protagonist” code wouldn’t run unless the protagonist entered the “torture” menu and then backed out of it. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player attempted to activate the China Dress easter egg after activating the Crush easter egg, or activate the Crush easter egg after activating the China Dress easter egg, the protagonist would attempt to wear both outfits simultaneously, and visual glitches would occur. This is no longer possible.
• If the player entered the Yakuza beat-em-up minigame, lost, returned to school, and looked around school, numerous bugs would occur, such as students spinning in place and not being able to pathfind anymore, the protagonist holding objects incorrectly, etc. These bugs have been fixed.
• If the player gossips to a rainbow student about one of their friends, the rainbow student is supposed to react negatively to the gossip. However, rainbow boys were reacting negatively to gossip about rainbow girls, which wasn’t part of the intended behavior. This bug has been fixed.
• In the beat-em-up minigame, if an enemy began to perform an attack animation and then the player turned the camera away from that enemy, the enemy would freeze and not finish their animation until the player rotated the camera to look at them again. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player killed a student, saved the game, loaded the game, and looked at the dead student in Yandere Vision, the dead student’s outline would be green (the outline for friends) instead of orange (the outline for murder evidence). This bug has been fixed.
• If the player stole a phone, switched from Ayano’s phone to the stolen phone, then used the “Provide Stolen Phone” prompt to give the phone to Info-chan, and then entered “aiming phone” mode, the phone’s texture would be incorrect. This bug has been fixed.
• If body parts are present at school, the player is not supposed to be able to save. However, if the player put body parts inside of a cello case, saving would become possible, which would cause various bugs to happen. This is no longer possible.
• If Raibaru triggered a bucket trap while running to distract a student, she would get caught between the “react to being splashed with water” and “distract student” states, and would freeze in place permanently. Thsi bug has been fixed.
• If the player used the Skip prompt to skip the “Ayano interacts with her Senpai Shrine” cutscene, the cutscene would continue to play in the background during Ayano’s text message conversation with Info-chan. This bug has been fixed.
• Nobody has been able to explain how, but, somehow, it was possible for a student to get out-of-bounds and be outside of the school map. I’ve added code that will teleport them back inside of school if they ever go out-of-bounds.
• In the “Amai has been eliminated and Ayano is practicing cooking” cutscene, if the player skipped the cutscene, the props would continue to move as if the cutscene was still playing (floating in midair). This bug has been fixed.
• If the player sedated more than three female students on the same day, one student would perform a “lying down” animation at a bench instead of performing a sitting animation on that bench. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player framed a male student for murder and then put him inside of the musical instrument case, the police would find him and arrest him, but would describe him as “she” and “her.” This bug has been fixed.
• A player sent me their Custom Mode so I could fix a bug they were encountering. I never deleted some of their files, and so those files were being included in Custom Mode by default. Those files have been erased.
• During the “student gets tranquilized from behind” animation, a student’s eyes are supposed to close. The female student’s eyes were closing, but the male student’s eyes were not. This bug has been fixed.
• Because Ryoba’s dad sits really close to the “Go Outside” prompt, it was possible to speak to Ryoba’s dad and interact with the “Go Outside” prompt at the same time. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player used a stink bomb to disrupt Amai’s bake sale, all subsequent students to visit the bake sale would stand still and not eat any food. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player turned a member of the Newspaper Club into a mind-broken slave on Week 10, the game would give him a camera and “Sleuth” animations. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player pushed over a bookcase in the library, crawled under it, and stood up, the player would teleport into the guidance counselor’s room. This bug has been fixed.
• When talking to Amai’s clubmates to learn about her social media, the subtitles would disappear before the characters were done talking. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player saved the game while wearing a cello case, the cello case would be floating in midair upon reloading the game. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player electrocuted a mind-broken slave while the slave was in the middle of killing a target, bugs would occur. This is no longer possible.
• If the player put a note into Moeko’s locker in 1980s Mode, Moeko would react to the note with Amai’s voice. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player saved their game while a student was vomiting and then loaded that save, bugs would occur. This is no longer possible.
• The 80s “Stage’s Closed” sign was not updated to use the new “Pool’s Closed” artwork. This oversight has been corrected.
• Kenko’s voice lines did not play in the correct order, and one of them was missing. This bug has been fixed.
• The Save/Load menu was not properly displaying the thumbnails for saved games. This bug has been fixed.
• Himari’s hair was updated, but her portrait was not. This oversight has been corrected.
• The “heat up knife with a blowtorch” feature stopped working. This bug has been fixed.

Bottom Of Blog Post Fan Spotlight

This artwork by Seina is sooooo gorgeous!!! Ahhhhh!!!!!