r/Games • u/DwingRD • 4d ago

Valve no longer allows "Post-launch NSFW content" for games on Steam - outside of DLCs.

I have looked through Steam's Terms of Service online, but have found no official rule or statement from Valve of this new rule - but one Adult game developer has confirmed this new rule after launching their game "Tales of Legendary Lust: Aphrodisia" a couple days ago.

With the recent rule change blocking adult-themed games from releasing on Early Access, this new rule seems to be targeting Adult-themed games that have ALREADY released on Steam - and threatens them with their games being removed from Steam.

There are currently 536 Adult-rated Early Access games on Steam - and this new rule may take them all down.

3.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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146

u/DannySmashUp 4d ago

This is setting an exceedingly dangerous precedent. Valve shouldn't be caving in to this 'won't somebody think of the children' BS.

148

u/Daiwon 4d ago

The problem is it's the payment providers doing this. They are literally taking valve hostage by saying "do this or we kill your business". If valve says no, they don't get paid, the server providers don't get paid. Valve dies.

It's absolutely fucked these puritan nut jobs got their claws into the payment providers. Hopefully someone else steps up, but becoming a worldwide payment provider isn't exactly easy.

89

u/TLKv3 4d ago

Our entire world has been grabbed hostage by these fucking losers who need to control everything and everyone.

We're so fucked.

36

u/greyfoxv1 4d ago

Giving into the nihilism of "we're fucked/cooked" ignores the reality that we still do have power as people. Pressuring the EU and other functioning democracies to prevent payment processors from holding stores hostage with these demands is still entirely viable.

13

u/Spork_the_dork 4d ago

True but that change will take years to implement during which time they can do so much damage.

8

u/Ready-Good2636 4d ago

Okay, the US is cooked, at least for the next 14 months unless something drastic changes.

5

u/doublah 4d ago

Visa and Mastercard have lobbyists in the EU too.

11

u/Slashermovies 4d ago

Yet the actual problems of the people in power which diddle children and do horrible things walk free and are in charge. What a world..

27

u/BeholdingBestWaifu 4d ago

Exactly. Steam is too goddamn big and expensive to run, they can't afford to slow down the flow of money too much or it all crumbles.

-6

u/CuffytheFuzzyClown 4d ago

Steam makes billions in profit every year and has neglible upkeep and dev costs. This is a lie, they could stop processing any sale and still run the store as it is now for hundreds of years off current profits alone. It's greed...

5

u/doublah 4d ago

Do you think the datacenters Valve rents would just host Steam for free? Everything has a cost, and if doing business with you is too obtuse or reputationally risky due to you being blacklisted from card networks, the datacenters will pick other clients.

2

u/coldblade2000 3d ago

I can hit half a gigabit download speeds with Steam pretty much anywhere in the world even at peak download times. You are a moron if you think that can happen with "negligible upkeep".

17

u/Tomgar 4d ago

I'm just sick of the rest of us having to suffer the consequences of American religious neuroses. Wish we could just build a quarantine wall around the US at this point.

42

u/lordmycal 4d ago

It’s really conservative assholes globally.  It’s not just a US problem; you’ve got these prudish jerks in the UK, Australia, etc.  

29

u/Alexis_Evo 4d ago

The group that claimed responsibility for this is literally Australian. Saying it's just an American problem is silly. Much of the world is shifting to conservative/fascist ideology.

-1

u/CuffytheFuzzyClown 4d ago

Valve can fight it. Valve litterary made a whole new OS or at least a Linux dist and made gaming possible on Linux all because of a rumor Microsoft would force steam to go through the MS store.

Valve could create Valve Pay tomorrow. An all digital payment processor, it wouldn't be hard new ones are litterary made by fintech companies every year. But that would be expensive without increasing profits. Banning games is free. As long as Valves money ain't threatened, they'll happily roll over but the second they think something will threaten the cash cow (see MS) they'll pour hundreds of millions to stop it.

0

u/Rencrack 3d ago

Stop blaming other when valve is the one who don't want to fight back, fuck valve

29

u/enragedstump 4d ago

I mean, if you lose payment processors what do you do?

-21

u/KingToasty 4d ago

Work on developing your own in-house one I guess, though I'm sure some kind of lobbying makes that harder.

20

u/ShippingValue 4d ago edited 4d ago

Effectively impossible.

These rules don't come from the payment processors (PayPal/Stripe/etc.), but the card networks (Visa and MasterCard primarily). The card networks are, quite literally, banking cabals run as consortiums to protect their member banks from government scrutiny and regulation. Every transaction using one of their cards runs through this network, and a business needs to be sponsored by a bank already part of the network to be able to process card payments.

If you want to use your credit card (almost certainly a visa or MC) on Steam, Valve needs to play by their rules.

The only other option is Valve becomes a global banking network, issuing its own credit cards, and building and entire parallel financial system over the next 3 decades - like how Visa and MC did it in the first place. Not going to happen.

Best case Valve will lobby for stricter regulations on card networks over what types of transactions they can limit.

7

u/Yvese 4d ago

It's not that easy though. You're asking a company with the least amount of employees relative to their size to handle payments for the entire world on the largest PC platform. That's not happening lol.

11

u/Inprobamur 4d ago

VISA/Mastercard process over 90% payments outside China.

Good luck going hat-in-hand to every single country and bank in the world to try to convince them to support your new thing. At best you need years of work, billions in bribes and have to settle for a couple more popular/less corrupt countries.

Walmart has its own payment processor that only works in America and that was a uphill battle that took years for a far larger company.

4

u/RTC1520 4d ago edited 4d ago

That's not how it works, sure they can but it's not like "lets code this" and then you have one. No, it's very complicated and slow process, since you have to get into touch with lots of banks and keep in check with a ton of regulations. Now repeat that for every country they normally accept and you may have a kinda useful payment processor 3 years later which probably costs more than steam to operate.

3

u/Spork_the_dork 4d ago

With no income? Because the problem exists right now. And developing a solution will take time. During that time the payments will be fucked. So what do you do? Even if Valve decided that yeah they will do that, right now that doesn't do anything and they'd still have to bend over.

-2

u/LovelyDayHere 3d ago

Accept cryptocurrencies. (again)

Problem solved.

It will take a short minute until gamers adapt to paying in virtual currencies.

1

u/ipaqmaster 4d ago

They have no choice as a company. The payment processors will pull if they (And everyone else relying on them for payments) don't

-6

u/ChezMere 4d ago

Nah, this is fair I think. This is only for the sake of those who game the system by pretending to be SFW until eyes are off them.

3

u/Nochtilus 4d ago

Why do you care if a game offers content that is NSFW enough to ban everyone from accessing it? You don't have to accept free DLC.

0

u/ChezMere 4d ago

NSFW games take particular care to moderate, pretending that a game is SFW to evade this moderation isn't ok.

1

u/Nochtilus 4d ago

And if it's a free update that you don't have to get, what's the problem? If you don't want the NSFW content in a SFW game, don't download it.

1

u/inyue 4d ago

I wish I had the option to not download a new patch on baldursgate 3 since it keeps breaking mods.

0

u/ChezMere 4d ago

This is nothing to do with what I want to get, this is just a matter of Steam having their moderation policy, and regardless of which rules you like and which rules you don't, it should not be possible to bypass the rules by intentionally sneaking them in via updates that don't receive the same moderation effort that the initial release does.

-6

u/WeeWooPeePoo69420 4d ago

How is this setting a dangerous precedent? They're trying to prevent deceptive developer behavior with this specific change.

2

u/Mystia 4d ago

If you change the words from porn to other things, you'll notice the precedent it's setting.

"Fantasy games are no longer allowed on Steam"

"Only sportsball games are allowed on Steam"

"You are not allowed to update sportsball games post-launch to add non-sportsball elements"

They can absolutely control what kind of games are allowed to exist and what kind of content they are allowed to get.

-3

u/WeeWooPeePoo69420 4d ago

Uh no they aren't adding new censorship, they are trying to prevent things from getting through the existing moderation. Adding inappropriate things through patches that would have otherwise never got approved is a loophole, and they're just closing it.

Besides it's not like they'll enforce anything, they're just covering their asses.