Apr 132026
It was all the way back in 2017 that we first discussed Doki Doki Literature Club, a visual novel that looks like a cute romance on the surface but is actually horror.
I was surprised to look back and see how… sparse… my review is. I really didn’t want to spoil anything.
(After all this time, it’s become so well-known that most people have probably encountered the biggest spoilers in passing even if they haven’t played, but I still won’t spoil any specific details.)
Doki Doki Literature Club also got expanded release in 2021 as Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, which I reviewed for MonsterVine, and then just this past December, it got a mobile port that made the main game available for free with the Plus content purchasable as DLC.
…Except now, four months later, Google decided it isn’t fine after all and removed it from the Google Play Store.
According to the official statement from the developer, it was deemed to violate Google Play’s content guidelines for its “depiction of sensitive themes.”
If you know the game’s content, it’s pretty easy to guess what that might be.
It’s a shame, especially since other storefronts have been putting forth stricter content guidelines for various topics as well, from Steam to itch.io to the Nintendo eShop (although DDLC has only run into trouble with Google). It feels like a common trend nowadays, and not a good one.
Anyway, it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to get Doki Doki Literature Club reinstated on the Play Store or not. (I assume they had already warned about its content like on its other store pages, so I can’t see how it would return if the content itself is the issue, though.) How do you feel about this situation?
I think it’s incredibly restrictive and downright damaging to gaming as a whole to have these kinds of outright bans on content, when we already have ratings and other methods to limit content views. If I had Google Play, I would be quite unhappy with them.
Definitely.