Anime dating sim that can prepare your taxes was removed from Steam but its developers say they want to disrupt corporations, not steal your social security number

pcgamer.com:

Tax Heaven 3000(opens in new tab) is one of the more unusual genre mashups I've run into. It's a visual novel dating game, and it will also do your taxes—if you're a US citizen, anyway. Weird, right? Also weird is its extremely brief history on Steam: It appeared on the storefront earlier this week, but just a day later it was taken offline.

The game stars Iris, «a cheerful, assertive girl» who's filing her taxes singly this year. You can take her on dates across five different locations, and learn about her past, her likes and dislikes, and who she likes, which I have to assume is a reference to you, the player. She'll also help you prepare your taxes, for real:

«Tax Heaven 3000 is designed to prepare 2022 US federal income tax returns for single filers without dependents,» the still-extant Itch.io page says. «Tax Heaven 3000 does not support all tax situations, and may not check for all possible deductions and credits that could apply to your individual tax situation. Tax Heaven 3000 is intended for filers with simple W-2 income, does not support amended or late tax returns, and does not support state returns.

»Tax Heaven 3000 is designed to assist in tax preparation only: it is the responsibility of the user to provide accurate information and to ultimately file their return once complete."

Filing taxes is, at its core, an exercise in sharing personal data, and that makes Tax Heaven 3000 look potentially very very unusual in terms of what it asks players to hand over: It's one thing to take your taxes to H&R Block, but something else altogether to hand them over to an anime girl in a videogame. Daniel Greenberg, the co-founder of developer MSCHF, acknowledged that worry but told Kotaku(opens in new tab) that the game