New Steam Policy Removes Extreme Adult Games Over Payment Provider Restrictions
Steam has introduced new guidelines for adult content that ban games that violate the rules of payment service providers. The change already led to the removal of numerous games with extreme content.
Payment providers determine about content
Valve surprisingly tightened the rules for developers on Steam. In the SteamWorks documentary, a new guideline was added that can violate “content that can violate the rules and standards of Steam’s payment service providers, associated card networks and banks or internet providers”. According to the regulation, “certain types of content are only affected only for adults”. Read: sex games.
The change took place without much announcement and was only noticed when Steamdb pointed out to the sudden distance of numerous games with incest issues. Among other things, titles from the “Interactive Sex” series and other games with explicit content on controversial topics were affected. However, not all games with comparable content were removed, which causes confusion among developers.
Background of the financial companies
How PC gamers reports that the rejection of certain adult content has been reinforced by payment service providers such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal since 2020. The trigger was the controversy around Pornhub when the platform came under criticism due to problematic content. The credit card companies then terminated their services for the platform. For Valve, it is obviously more important to receive the payment methods for all Steam users than to stand up for certain and certainly borderline adult content.
This form of so -called “financial deplat formation” is not an isolated case. Similar situations have already experienced ONLYFANS, TUMBLR and Patreon, who had to tighten their guidelines for adult content under the pressure of payment service providers. ONLYFANS even announced in 2021 to completely ban sexual content, but rowed back after massive protests. Tumblr lost a large part of his users after his pornography ban 2018.
Community is concerned
The new regulation has triggered considerable concerns in the community. While many users welcome the removal of extreme content, other long -term consequences for creative freedom on the platform fear. A special concern is the possible influence on LGBTQ+content. So far, Valve has not submitted any detailed explanations, and it remains unclear whether the platform will remove further types of content in the future. The fear is that the current measures could only be the beginning of a wider censorship, in which the decision -making power is no longer at Valve, but at external financial companies.
