Doki Doki Literature Club developer plagued by inferior mobile ports

The developer behind the surprise hit anime romance visual novel slash horror game, Doki Doki Literature Club, has made amends to its fan content guidelines to prevent people from making fan games and clones for mobile devices. Dan Salvato explains in a blog post that numerous Doki Doki fan creations on the Google Play Store “has been a great source of stress”.

The game is free to download on Steam right now and has been incredibly popular, with ranking site Steam250 currently listing it as the 13th highest rated game of all time on the platform. As a result, Salvato says that both “malicious developers” and well-intentioned fans are trying to cash in by selling mobile ports and fan games on the various app stores. Salvato is clamping down to prevent players from having a bad experience with inferior versions of the game that he has no control over.

“I’m just not comfortable with DDLC being publicly available on mobile right now,” he says. “Especially when I want to do everything I can to give mobile players a top-quality experience – for most of them, it’s their first time playing. So far, no developer has even asked me for permission to publish DDLC on the Google Play Store, much less wanted to work with me on features and quality control before they did so.”

This all means that there’s a distinct possibility of an official mobile port coming in the future, though Salvato wants to improve the PC version before that happens. Those familiar with the game’s… quirks… will know that a straight port would difficult on mobile devices, and so any new version will need to be quite different in some areas. There are many more details about the ins and outs of all of these decisions in the blog post, including a passionate message to his fans assuring them that he has no intention of shutting down fan content. Which is great considering how much Monika fan art there is out there.

“I’m aware and very thankful that DDLC has such a passionate fan community, and that they want to share DDLC with as many people as they can, or to be able to take it with them on their phones,” Salvato says. “But the reality is that it can be harmful for me to allow fan content on such a mainstream platform before I have the chance to represent my game in a way that I’m comfortable with. I’m not some big gaming company that wants to shut down its own fanbase. I’m just one person who is trying to protect my well-being so I can continue making cool stuff for people. And I love my fans. As I do my best to be open and encouraging of fan content, I can only hope that my own wishes are respected as well."