A dating sim visual novel geared towards filing taxes, Tax Haven 3000Unsurprisingly, it was removed from Steam.
Visual novels are a fairly broad genre, covering a range of themes, sometimes heavy and sometimes light. The general public may mostly just see them as dating sims, but most of the time they offer very personal and complex stories. Tax Heaven 3000 doesn’t seem like that kind of visual novel. Instead, it’s a game that actually helps you with your taxes (if you’re from the US, that is). To anyone’s surprise, it was removed from Steam.
Tax Heaven 3000 stars Iris (get it?), a quintessentially cute anime woman who can help you “actually prepare your 2022 federal income tax return,” as noted on the game’s itch.io page. The page is still running. Check out the trailer, which has all the features of a typical dating sim, like dating and sharing your social security number. You know, the usual stuff.
The game comes from MSCHF, an art collective based in the states, and honestly, they do a lot of stuff. They’ve worked with big names like Mr Beast and Lil Nas X, and you’ve probably seen people wearing their red boots lately to make you look like a cartoon character.
According to a statement provided to The Verge, MSCHF founder Daniel Greenberg said the game passed Steam’s “standard validation process” and was due to release on April 4, but “suddenly it was devalidated and removed from the Removed from the platform without explanation.”
One obvious reason this game might be of concern is that you’re not supposed to share very important personal information like social security numbers in the game, though Greenberg says the game “doesn’t connect to the Internet,” noting that, “in a sense On top of that, it’s probably more secure than most big tax software.”
Look, if you’re American and you don’t like doing things normally, you can try it out via itch.io on April 4th, but maybe reconsider.
