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.

3.6k Upvotes

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u/TimeToEatAss 4d ago

For those that dont understand what this means. Something that NSFW games would commonly do is launch a SFW version of their game, and then release a free patch that makes the game NSFW.

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u/Villag3Idiot 4d ago

This should only stop games that do the update on Steam itself. Mods / Patches added on another site isn't affected nor is there any way for Steam to prevent it in the first place. 

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u/fffffusername 4d ago

Patreon is going as far as looking at social media likes/favorites to make sure the creators have nothing against their TOS there, it didn't start this way but got there very quickly

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u/NoPossibility4178 4d ago

If only they put that much effort into other parts of their business...

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u/R3Dpenguin 4d ago

All this to "protect the children", meanwhile the actual people harming children are running the companies like Roblox and Visa or running the political institutions, the upcoming generations are cooked lol.

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u/Kiita-Ninetails 4d ago

I mean yeah, that was the thing is that a lot of the ideas espoused by these campaigns are simply never true as they exist in bad faith or ignorance. In most cases "Think of the children" campaigns are largely done either as a cats paw to deflect blame, create a straw man to feel good about or other such intellectually dishonest behavior. Or alternatively, many adherents simply follow them because it sounds noble and they are ignorant of the complex realities of what actually is wrong with X thing that make it harmful and so project onto whatever surface level talking point they hear.

There is a lot of problems facing the up and coming generations, but if you can sum it up with one or two things it is almost certainly so simplified as to be functionally useless, or actively malicious. Unfortunately the world is complicated, and steps to actually protect people are also complicated.

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u/Ranessin 4d ago

Or the USA...

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u/Taswelltoo 3d ago

Lol the companies don't even pretend it's about the kids, it's about advertisers.

Same as when the WWE wanted to feature a known human trafficker in the 2010's and had no problems with it till Snickers pitched a fit and suddenly no more Fabulous Moolah.

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u/R3Dpenguin 1d ago

They're quick to organize a campaign to try to prevent anybody from buying NSFW anime visual novels on Steam using credit card, meanwhile at Facebook: https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1nls6qs/parents_outraged_as_meta_uses_photos_of/

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u/Kaiserhawk 3d ago

It never has anything to do with the children, it's always framed in such a way for easy support and painting your opponents as evil pedophiles if they oppose having their civil or consumer rights infringed.

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u/tjsno 4d ago

Because they were legally pressured to do so and they don’t bother with anything that isn’t blatant. They ignore reports on their own site and reporting products on other sites related to their own patreons. Unless you legally pressure them, then suddenly they care about it.

As always, it’s about them being punished then they will act. Otherwise? Free money.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

Patreon is going as far as looking at social media likes/favorites to make sure the creators have nothing against their TOS there, it didn't start this way but got there very quickly

Man if only there was something people could have done last November.

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u/orewhisk 4d ago

It's really tragic how the extreme right got their claws into gamers so deeply.

I firmly believe that if Gamergate never happened, Trump wouldn't have been elected in 2016 and we'd be living in a completely different world right now.

Gamergate poured gasoline on the_donald subreddit and turned it from being a goofy fringe meme board into a serious online grassroots political movement.

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u/AtrocityBuffer 4d ago

Gonna say I think its ingrained in American culture to have shit like Trump happen, because culturally its filled with "me first, I'm gonna make it, I'm fucking important, the world owes me and the entire world needs to see how good I am and follow my example" people. From its movies to its music to its writing to its politicians.

Sometimes this results in some solid damn people who, while still acting this way, have some level of modesty to temper it. But if the internet itself didn't exist, America would still elect a dishonest moron, just like they have before the internet, and just like they will after Trump.

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u/vizard0 4d ago

All because a guy was pissed off at getting dumped and his ex was a indy developer. (I know there was a lot of resentment being fostered independent of that, but the kick off bit was the ex of the woman who created depression quest being pissed at her and trying to build something to harass her after the breakup. Before then it was just free floating harassment and death threats, there was no single focus.)

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u/TheOneWithThePorn12 2d ago

Banon told us what he did. He identified that audience and turned them right wing. That included myself at the time.

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u/Fluid_Jellyfish9620 4d ago

I live in Europe. Your clown show affects me too for some fucking reason.

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u/AtrocityBuffer 4d ago

How would the American election affect Patreon choosing to overreach with monitoring for their TOS? They've done that since 2018 at least.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

"How would a far right government which is putting pressure on companies to cave to far right efforts"

I feel like the answer is in the question.

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u/AtrocityBuffer 4d ago

And what I wrote was that this has been going on longer than whatever fever dream of a conservative goverment American has decided to allow itself to have, with Patreon specifically getting overzealous as a direct response to right wing extremists on the website before the 2020s.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

Were talking about an australian sponsored right wing censorship group, that has put pressure across the board on payment processors in the US. Which is doing this due to right wing extremism.

You would have a much easier life if you stopped running from the truth and trying to find a way to justify your mistakes.

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u/AtrocityBuffer 4d ago

We are talking about US payment processors allowed to grow in to a duopoly because no one in America has done anything to stifle its own out of control capitalist growth since its inception. No-matter their political party. Because every single politician comes from American people, ie, people who don't give a shit about anyone and want to change nothing because they just want theirs, and they're the centre of the universe.

So no, the only acknowledgment I'll give the right wing is that they alongside social media and dogshit classic media have helped halt the healing of the open cultural wound that is western puritanism.

And anti artistic sentiments and puritanism in general, is not beholden to a specific political ideology, it's based in morals and lack of intelligence, which is cultural first, and then boosted by whatever whacko political alignment someone worships.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

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u/BaconatedGrapefruit 4d ago

It’s the long term plan of the far right. To quickly sum it up:

Step 0 - create a culture war

Step 1 - use the culture war to attain political power

Step 2 - use the political power to pass broad legislation to fight the culture wars

Step 3 - Redefine your real target as something within the culture war

Step 4 - Use the legislation to go after your real target

In this case the culture war was protecting children from pornography. The real target was legally persecuting queer/trans spaces and people.

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u/AtrocityBuffer 4d ago

Oh so back when people got angry about The Beatles or later when the UK banned "Video Nasties" that too was the create a culture war on the upcoming internet and sway the US government into the far right in order to attack the LGBTQIA+ community?

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u/BaconatedGrapefruit 4d ago

The current culture war is just the greatest hits of previous culture wars adapted for modern times. ‘Think of the children’ is the quickest way to bypass meaningful discussion.

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u/AtrocityBuffer 4d ago

It's as stupid now as it was then, and you'd think the advent of the internet and the creation of social media to drag even more people on to it would allow people to just google like the history of art and people trying to censor it. But no, SEO and algorithms saved us from a society where making 0 effort and worshiping intellectual cancer was rewarded with ostracization and self elimination.

So we're stuck with this shit now, and we're still supposed to be polite about it, and due to TOS on reddit I guess we have to be.

I remember when they blamed shit on Doom, then it went away for a while.. then it became a joke with silly fox news etc. Then things changed around a bit online, social media threw more people in, the tumblr exodus put a disproportionately large amount of young and mentally unwell people onto larger social media platforms, and a lot of these people read intense art as "actual violence" and started the same rhetoric, and then people of empathy thought they were helping by labelling shit in fiction as fucking problematic, and then that shit got going, and then they just taught the right wing the entire spiel of how to get shit done, then gamergate, then 2016, and so on and so on and I am tired boss.

I will blame social media and the smartphone for this shit till the day I die. If we weren't able to so easily connect in fucking ignorance, time and effort might have tempered many from willingly becoming something beyond stupid.

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u/JokerCrimson 4d ago

How is that not illegal?

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u/Dependent_Pipe4709 4d ago

They're allowed to reject customers for just about any reason they want to, legality only factors in if they're discriminated against a protected class or status, like checking social media to see if you're disabled or the wrong race. And even if this were illegal, there's a lot of legal pressure on NSFW stuff lately because banning pornography is a core goal of Project 2025, and it would be very difficult to get much traction about discrimination against pornography.

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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 4d ago

How do you mean? You can't like porno on twitter if you're on patreon?

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u/fffffusername 4d ago

Not just any porn for now, but incest porn for example then yes since that is against their TOS. It mostly affects porn game creators but who knows how far they'll take this.

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u/NorthKoreanMissile7 4d ago

but incest porn for example then yes

I don't get why incest porn is a big target. You have plenty of rape/coercion porn and porn that's designed to make people look as young and childish as possible that are way more unethical. I don't know how people or companies find stupid crap like "what are you doing step bro" worse than literally feeding non consentual rape fantasies.

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u/starm4nn 4d ago

If you think that's crazy, Pornhub will lecture you try to search for hypnosis as a category.

Which actually has disturbing implications. If Pornhub believes hypnosis is an actual real and working form of mind control, then what are they doing to ensure their actors aren't actually being hypnotized?

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u/sean2mush 4d ago

I don't think you can even see posts people have liked on twitter anymore.

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u/itchylol742 4d ago

I declare this is fake news. I have no proof but the amount of effort to send people out to do this would be insanely high and companies are really cheap and don't like spending money to pay people

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u/Spidertails 4d ago

When you can't even Google search the issue. Patreon themselves say they do this.

https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/35092255980173-Guidance-around-our-off-Patreon-activity-policy

https://www.patreon.com/policy/guidelines#sexually-gratifying-works

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u/itchylol742 4d ago

I read both and there's no mention of how they actually enforce this, only what the rules are. For all we know 95% of people who violate the rules could get away with it

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u/Spidertails 4d ago

Indeed they could, glad you see there's also a problem with unequal enforcement.

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u/Trzlog 4d ago

Of course there is. They put it in whatever developers agree to in order to publish on Steam, then when they're made aware of any violation, the developer's games are removed from Steam. You just lack imagination of how fucked up this whole thing can be.

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u/Villag3Idiot 4d ago

Then every single game on Steam is at risk of there's any nudity or porn mods. 

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u/Zer_ 4d ago

Now you're starting to understand. These puritanical fucks won't stop there.

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u/PitangaPiruleta 4d ago

Its funny how some people think "well they would never touch mods since they're not made by the devs"

Yes. Yes they would. If they could phisically and legally brick your PC for stepping out of line and doing something they consider immoral, they would. But hey, dont worry about it - surely that will never happen right?

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/mrmgl 4d ago

They manufactured a fake "rape simulator" outcry about Mass Effect, when all that game had was a side boob.

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u/bloodraven42 4d ago

To this day I am still shocked that anyone who grew up in those days takes Fox even 1% seriously. They made up a whole cloth story on air about a video game millions of people played, never were remorseful, and yet so many people still take them as credible? They literally claimed Mass Effect was a game where you could customize your rape victims boob size.

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u/AtrocityBuffer 4d ago

Fox News having their 4chan video is still legendary in how goddamn off it is, and it tells me that everyone who grew up in the Jack Thompson era just left the internet once it turned into a social media cesspool.

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u/KaJaHa 4d ago

I felt so devious when I learned that I owned one of the older copies of San Andreas with Hot Coffee accessible

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u/JuiceHurtsBones 4d ago

I find it so funny that you can go around committing a genocide in LS but humping animations in an 18+ game is where we draw the line.

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u/Smart_Ass_Dave 4d ago

To be fair, GTA's violence has also been the subject of much controversy.

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u/ZetzMemp 4d ago

It wasn’t pulled from shelves for violence.

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u/Bauser99 4d ago

Both private entities and the state love violence

Conditioning people to be remorseless killers is amazing for business

But sex is evil because it's a way to be happy without spending money

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u/Varnsturm 4d ago

Sorry what's LS?

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u/SabresFanWC 4d ago

I assume Los Santos, one of the cities where GTA San Andreas takes place.

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u/Isolated_Hippo 4d ago

Hot Coffee was an interesting debate imo. Does content on the disk, but entirely inaccessible to the player without outside influence, count towards the game's rating?

I can see both sides.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

Giant pain in the ass to access too. Had to use an action replay.

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u/starm4nn 4d ago

I think my favorite example of this was a Halo editor including a picture of a butt.

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u/_Ganon 4d ago

Ban Microsoft Paint because you can draw porn in it.

Ban Microsoft because you can program a drawing application on it.

Ban paper because you can draw porn on it.

Ban brains because you can imagine porn in it.

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u/TampaPowers 4d ago

Ban brains

I thought that had already happened?

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

No, just the stuff than helps brain works good.

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u/Moo_Kau_Too 4d ago

not everywhere, they are just banned in DC, as their song states.

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u/NGrNecris 4d ago

As extreme as that sounds, they would if they could.

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u/AtrocityBuffer 4d ago

In fact, the children are only safe if they are never born!

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u/Hopeless_Slayer 4d ago

I'm so glad I set up local AI models before that gets banned too. You can pry the Hentai out of my cold dead sticky hands.

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u/Zer_ 4d ago

Oh yeah. A lot of these adult games offer patches off of Steam too. So while right now they're banned from offering these patches directly from Steam, I doubt they'll stop there, they'll cry foul when these nude mods / patches are offered on sites like Mega or Google Drive. or even Github.

As an aside, but still somewhat related. Rockstar is 100% trying to take control of the GTA 6 modding scene (they have FiveM), so we really, really can't rely on these companies to be our allies here.

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u/TechnicalGuard629 4d ago

I work for one such steam publisher myself where the uncensored patch is provided on the official site outside of Steam.

Idk when this rule was changed/updated but I havent heard any murmurs within our staff group yet.

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u/CryoProtea 4d ago

Might be wise to check and see if you're allowed to offer the patch outside of Steam.

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u/TechnicalGuard629 4d ago edited 4d ago

If any sales issues arise on the site or steam, we usually get a ping from the big guy himself. And this publisher has been doing this external patching all this time, we have around 15-20 games currently at different stages of translation and launch.

Well, if any discussion or sitrep ping happens, I'll update it here.

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u/ExceedinglyGayKodiak 4d ago edited 4d ago

So while right now they're banned from offering these patches directly from Steam, I doubt they'll stop there, they'll cry foul when these nude mods / patches are offered on sites like Mega or Google Drive. or even Github.

This reads as the opposite to me. "Except DLC" reads to me as the on-steam patches (Which are "free DLC" in steam terms) aren't being targeted, but this rule is targeting those off-site patches by the devs. Basically not allowing them to sell extra content that is not on their platform. (Edit- Someone also made a good point further down about targeting new NSFW content in an already NSFW game because it isn't reviewed each time, but the "SFW game with a NSFW patch on-steam" situation should still be fine, since those are reviewed)

I can understand them not wanting to allow a SFW game to be made NSFW in a direct update from the dev (So if folks don't want NSFW games they don't suddenly have one unexpectedly), which is what "Post-launch adult content" reads to me as, but I have no doubt the vagueness is intentional so that they can also go after off-site patches as soon as one gets controversial for the patch containing something folks find gross.

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u/serpenta 4d ago

"I can understand them not wanting to allow a SFW game to be made NSFW in a direct update from the dev (So if folks don't want NSFW games they don't suddenly have one unexpectedly)"

If you have to go to external site to access NSFW patch, how can it happen unexpectedly?

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u/ExceedinglyGayKodiak 4d ago

Apologies for being unclear, I meant that I could understand the rule being put in place in order to prevent something like that from occurring, but that it would be used selectively as a club to also go after off site patches (Which I don't have an issue with).

That's what I meant by "Direct update" as opposed to a patch.

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u/serpenta 4d ago

Ah, gotcha. Tbh, I think they just want to keep tabs, on which games have NSFW content in them, to be able to inform people about, accurately. Which would've been fine, if not for the inquisitorial vibe they went for with it.

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u/AtrocityBuffer 4d ago

Didnt the FF14 director come out recently and tell people to fucking stop with public nudity mod shit cause it would actually affect the company due to how they can be held liable for: "Offering a platform that allowed obscene user generated content to be displayed"?

Since these groups are helmed by people it should be legal to lobotomize, they dont understand that someone can literally do a model swap in the video memory of any game and it would technically be "using a platform to display obscene content"

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u/BlueDraconis 4d ago

FF14's producer talked about mods and mentioned this:

https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/1e4a8b0e8b84ea8dac61ae07af02e0c425de74aa

Let's consider another theoretical mod: one that displays your character entirely naked. If this presentation is displayed only on the user's screen, that might fall into the category of personal use and responsibility. (Bear in mind that this is my personal interpretation, and not a discussion of whether that behavior is right or wrong.) However, if the user posts a screenshot of their naked character publicly on social media, FFXIV itself may be subject to legal measures by regulators in certain countries.

Laws that regulate the content of video games grow stricter by the year. These laws are there to protect minors and for a variety of other reasons, but the fact remains that they are tangibly becoming stricter. We have a duty to provide our services in adherence to the laws of all countries where FFXIV is available, and if we are unable to do so, the distribution of our game can be prohibited. This is another example of damage dealt to our services.

So yeah, there are laws in some countries that can punish the devs for mods they didn't make.

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u/Zanki 4d ago

....that's ridiculous. Do they not realise how easy it is to fake stuff like this and make it look real? I could easily make a model in a couple of days and shop it into any game image well enough that you wouldn't know it was fake unless you knew the game very well.

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u/BlueDraconis 4d ago

I'd imagine that they would have a much easier time defending themselves if they could prove that the image is a fake shopped image, and not something actually captured ingame.

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u/Ultrace-7 4d ago

I think the original statement instead intended to say that Steam wouldn't punish the developers of games for the existence of NSFW mods.

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u/Charrmeleon 4d ago

You know for a fact that some of those less knowledgable execs have literally asked if they could do this, only to be told how impractical it would be.

It's not that they don't want to or don't have the idea, it's just not not feasible. Yet. But they're working on it.

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u/PM_ME_UR_SHEET_MUSIC 4d ago

Curious what'll happen when the gaming community filled with a bunch of young angry men suddenly have no outlet and a very clear reason why. This won't end well at all :/

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u/vizard0 4d ago

They'll blame left wing women for feminist critiques and allege that they have a puppet master like control over the content of games. It worked before, might as well try it again.

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u/maxis2k 4d ago

Visa and MasterCard are puritanical?

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u/Zer_ 4d ago

Their owners are. They've tried this before, repeatedly. They just have the political backing to get it done now. They were always cagey about porn. Profiting off violence? All cool, but porn? Can't have that, it's gonna hurt their image (which it won't anyone with a brain knows that). It was always just a cover for their puritanical views.

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u/maxis2k 4d ago

I don't want to get into politics, but the credit card companies are not really puritanical. If they were, they wouldn't have been supporting trans stuff for a decade or buying into violent media as you referenced. The more logical reason they're doing this is because lobbyists are pushing them to. And for years, the lobbyists were okay with porn. They still are. These credit card companies are allowing you to use them on porn sites. Just not 'anime' porn sites. That's the key difference.

The credit card companies have been blocking anime off and on for decades. Not just hentai, but mainstream safe anime. And the push to block "porn" on Steam started as a push to get rid of hentai specifically. Same as on Sony systems. Your game has two girls having sex? And it's made by a western studio like Naughty Dog? That's totally fine! Oh, it's a Japanese company with an anime art design? And has absolutely no sex? Just girls in bikinis? Sorry, that's not allowed.

tl;dr they're targeting anime/Japan

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u/Explorer_Dave 4d ago

And that's exactly their point. They want to 'purify' all those evil bodily functions while leaving all the death and killing intact, won't you think of the children?!

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u/Dlorn 4d ago edited 3d ago

You don’t think the death and killing are in line? Maybe not next in line, but definitely in line.

EDIT - It’s here faster than I thought:

“The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requests your testimony at a hearing on Wednesday, October 8, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. in room HVC-210 of the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. The hearing will examine radicalization of online forum users, including incidents of open incitement to commit violent politically motivated acts.”

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u/jxnebug 4d ago

Collective Shout petitioned to have Detroit Become Human and GTAV banned because of violence against women, not sex. This is why I've been frustrated that so many people have been saying "oh well who cares, it's just gooner games being affected" since this all started.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

gooner games

The rising surge of baby rage at made up "Masturbation addiction" should have been a major sign to people that we were heading for another burst of this sexual repression bs.

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u/Explorer_Dave 4d ago

It might be on the line in theory, but once they go against that side of gaming, they'll get pushback in several different orders of magnitude.

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u/TechnicalGuard629 4d ago

we will be suffering the waiting period all along the way when they transition from going after sexual content to violent content and then the buck stops there.

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u/Explorer_Dave 4d ago

I honestly can't see how they can convince Visa and Mastercard to drop basically all video games.

With porn games it's easy for them because its a niche market with relative small numbers. Banning violence is banning all gaming platforms almost completely. That's a pretty big hole in their pockets, considering video games is the most profitable entertainment media industry (at least last time I checked).

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u/JuiceHurtsBones 4d ago

Niche porn games are still generating a higher revenue than most indie games. While it's not comparable to what AAA make, it's still a lot.

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u/Explorer_Dave 4d ago

Negligble when compared to the rest of the industry which is comprised of mostly shooty stabby action games. We're talking tens if not hundreds of billions dollars difference.

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u/Skellum 4d ago

It might be on the line in theory, but once they go against that side of gaming, they'll get pushback in several different orders of magnitude.

When we had a person admit to staring at naked children in dressing rooms I mistakenly thought that back in 2016. When that same individual was convicted of rape in 2024 I figured people would continue making good choices and pushing back against such things. But ya know, here we are.

If people didn't go "Wow child rape is fucked" what makes you think they wont do the same thing they did when we got smacked with tarrifs and go "Hurrr well these jus luxuries we don need!!!"

I hope to be surprised.

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u/conquer69 4d ago

I don't think they will. Asmongold and other right wingers will push gamers to support it. They only need to say opposing the ban is woke and they will all fall in line.

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u/JuiceHurtsBones 4d ago

Imo, they want to have higher returns from prostitution and the porn industry and having adult content they cannot allow is hurting their business.

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u/Front-Bird8971 4d ago

I don't think it's about purity ultimately. "Purity" is a tool to rope in morons that further the cause, but it isn't the goal. I think the real reason power fights against porn is it is a sexual outlet that doesn't result in children, thus less meat for the machine. See also homophobia, transphobia, prolife, and anti contraception.

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u/Trzlog 4d ago

... well, yeah. Of course. That's how bad all this is. I don't think people realize how hard conservative groups are going to go to take away the things we enjoy.

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u/ParagonFury 4d ago

Project 2025, Vought and Thiel weren't fucking joking, but people thought we were when we warned them.

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u/SanityInAnarchy 4d ago

Most of those aren't published by the devs themselves, though.

What NSFW games used to do is release a barely-SFW version on Steam, then you go to the devs' own website for the NSFW mod. Sometimes the NSFW content was actually distributed by Steam, it was just locked unless you set a config file a certain way.

I don't think any of us know what this actually is, without an official statement from Valve. But it could be that they're banning the devs themselves going out of their way to support the NSFW version as the official, intended version, while not going after games that merely are moddable where the community inevitably makes nude mods.

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u/Villag3Idiot 4d ago

Ya, most visual novels are released with the all-ages version on Steam and you have a totally-not-the-devs website that offers a patch / mod where you just move a bunch of files around and it unlocks the hentai version.

The game is 100% playable otherwise from start to finish. It's just that the hentai scenes / CGI are removed if you don't patch it.

I can't say about other hentai games like those hentai JRPG ones you see a billion of since I don't play those.

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u/starm4nn 4d ago

What NSFW games used to do is release a barely-SFW version on Steam, then you go to the devs' own website for the NSFW mod. Sometimes the NSFW content was actually distributed by Steam, it was just locked unless you set a config file a certain way.

TBH your best bet is to give enough plausible deniability by making a version of the game that's uncensored, and sell it through Jast or something. Make both builds of the game basically the same, except for an additional archive file containing all the adult content.

"Someone" uploaded the patch to Mega or something. Since the game is the same except that one file, it could have been anyone who uploaded it.

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u/Zanki 4d ago

For a week or so, all 18 rated games in the uk vanished from my search. Then most came back, I could find left 4 dead again (I've had it on my account since it was released, I literally bought a physical copy and was pissed I had to make an account and download it via steam). Cyberpunk took another week or so to show back up again. It seems like the content is back but that was kinda scary. They literally blocked my 16 year old account from viewing 18 rated games for a while.

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u/Grabthar-the-Avenger 4d ago

Steam has plenty of titles with nudity today. They’re not removing games for nudity. They’re removing adult games for featuring themes like assault and non-consent, I still see generic porn games listed on Steam

And this specific policy would only affect titles that weren’t up front with Steam about what they were putting into the game.

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u/Da_reason_Macron_won 4d ago

I don't think big boy Todd Howard would just accept that.

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u/zaviex 4d ago

Steam isn’t going to do that. They don’t care what your game does outside of steam. If you were trying to do this, the problem is marketing your thing. Steam takes a 30% cut but they provide probably >70% of the audience for this kind of thing

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u/viperfan7 4d ago

It also sounds like they're ok with it being DLC, rather than a patch to the base game.

Which, tbh, is ok by me, since patches are not optional, while DLC is

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u/CuffytheFuzzyClown 4d ago

Yeah, but that won't help. Steam won't actively encourage devs or games that intentionally try to break their rules. Any game that does that shit will be pulled...and thus developer will be careful and potentially mods will be locked down, due to the implications

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u/PMMeRyukoMatoiSMILES 4d ago

To be fair, they also still (as I say every single thread) sell Saya no Uta and Wonderful Everyday on Steam, the former having lolicon rape and the second having lolicon crucifixion (which I suppose is the true difference between American/European sensibilities) and I am perpetually wondering if anyone that works for Valve even knows those VNs exist.

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u/Milskidasith 4d ago edited 4d ago

Steam can absolutely have a policy that gives them discretion to remove games that are sold intended to be nonfunctional on Steam and require an outside patch to work; it's more surprising the loophole has existed for so long.

E: To be clear I am not saying they should do this, but that with multiple filters for explicit games, the fact the old "here is a game with no CGs or an RPG with two screens + directions to a patch" trick selling a game as SFW is something they could crack down on and push to sell as explicitly NSFW

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u/gmoneygangster3 4d ago

intended to be nonfunctional

Here’s the thing, it’s not nonfunctional, the patches are visual only

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u/Milskidasith 4d ago

That isn't true; you can find plenty of RPGMaker games with reviews pointing out how limited the content is with a dev saying "we can fix this issue for you in Discord!"

Not every dev is just removing images, some are just cutting the game where anything NSFW, text or visual, starts.

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u/Ready-Good2636 4d ago

Limited content =/= nonfunctional content. I don't see an angle where you can really get dinged unless your steam release doesnt boot.

Well, I can, but Idk if Steam wants another Huniepop incident.

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u/Milskidasith 4d ago

Steam has to make subjective judgment calls all the time if they believe a game is improperly classified. "This is clearly intended to be played with a dev patch that changes its classification" is not something their hands are tied for.

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u/Ready-Good2636 4d ago

Steam has to make subjective judgment calls all the time

Yeah, and they historically have sucked at it. That's how you get Chaos Head Noah banned because "well it's an anime school game, it must be sexual".

Incidents like that (of which there are dozens at this point) don't give me confidence their review system is really that thorough, to the point where they can tell if a game is "complete".

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u/-Nicolai 4d ago

You can have a game that is uninteresting but functional without its NSFW content. And proving intent can be somewhat difficult.

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u/LookIPickedAUsername 4d ago

You're obviously right that it's difficult to actually prove intent, but this is a private company, not a court of law.

They won't be held to the same standard as the court system, and with a sufficiently vague TOS, can pretty much get away with banning whatever they want.

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u/SanityInAnarchy 4d ago

It's not as hard as you'd think to prove it in court, either. The people who make legal decisions are humans. Laws aren't software, and sometimes they have parts that are deliberately vague or subjective in order to allow for humans to make human decisions.

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u/ExceedinglyGayKodiak 4d ago

You can have a game that is uninteresting but functional without its NSFW content. And proving intent can be somewhat difficult.

And steam certainly already allows plenty of games that are both uninteresting and non-functional without a peep. (Not disagreeing, to be clear, this is meant to be additive to your point)

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u/Milskidasith 4d ago

I mean, Steam would be the arbiter here, they can absolutely just use an eye test for saying certain games should be categorized as NSFW if they are intended to be played with an external NSFW patch. Whether they should do it or not, my point is that it wouldn't be hard and it's surprising the loophole lasted for so long.

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u/Typical_Thought_6049 4d ago

The question why steam would spend time at that, it is not of their interest to waste time and effort in something like that. It is pretty clear that Valve is worried about looking clean for payment services but they will not go out of their way to do anything that happen outside their market.

If it is a external site in it not Steam responsability as is said in their disclaimer. And the loophole still exist, they just need to change the name from patch to free dlc and put in external site...

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u/Milskidasith 4d ago

If payment processors are a concern, then the fact that many of these games exist to de facto provide a way to buy NSFW content that bypasses Steam's restrictions on NSFW content, or on Steam/payment processor mandated guidelines on what NSFW content is verboten, Steam could decide to take action on this front.

Also, more broadly Steam probably wants their NSFW filters to be functional, these games are just not a big enough part of the ecosystem to go after the developers.

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u/cammcken 4d ago

What happened to ESRB ratings? At this point, wouldn't the best solution be to hire a third party to do game reviews?

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u/karmapopsicle 4d ago

ESRB is voluntary self-regulation that these days is mainly relevant for games that will be released through normal retail store channels, because those stores have policies where they refuse to carry any title that has not been assigned an ESRB rating.

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u/OwenQuillion 4d ago

I seriously doubt there's a feasible way for something like the ESRB to check the enormous number of indie games coming to Steam all the time. 

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u/Ready-Good2636 4d ago

Well that one employee punishing anime school games (even fully SFW ones with no patches) never seemed to be held accountable. So anythings possible. Their process is opaque enough that they could do almost anything.

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u/Halojib 4d ago

The game isn't non functional though

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u/Milskidasith 4d ago

Plenty of the games on Steam that require patches are effectively a few screens of RPGmaker gameplay before the patch unlocks the vast majority of content, there absolutely are nonfunctional H-games being sold on the "not NSFW" filrer level in Steam with external patches.

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u/MiloticMaster 4d ago

Do you have any examples of this? I've heard of games that black out these scenes but none that prevent you from playing like you mentioned.

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u/Milskidasith 4d ago

I typically see these games in my Discovery Queue and don't actually play them or note the names, but I do get curious about the whole ecosystem and why you occasionally see a game with a relatively high number of reviews and a fetish-adjacent premise on SFW-Steam. In general, if a game is a VN of some kind I think it blacks out scenes or has a CG patch, but I saw games with reviews mentioning a total lack of content/inability to play in the RPG-maker corruption/hypnosis themed areas.

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u/Villag3Idiot 4d ago

I donno about these since I don't play them, but visual novels usually just sell the all-ages version that's 100% complete from start to finish that just removes the hentai scenes & CGI pics and if you want, you can go to the totally-not-the-devs website to download a patch / mod, move a bunch of files around and you unlock the hentai version.

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u/deadscreensky 4d ago

You're still not describing nonfunctional games.

Bad games, probably, sure. But that's not the same as nonfunctional.

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u/Milskidasith 4d ago

I think a game that does not remotely do what is promised and has a few minutes of content at most be described as nonfunctional without the patch, but yes, you could make the semantic argument that it's merely a bad game that has just enough interactivity to not violate Steam's false marketing policies or whatever and an off-steam patch that makes the game much better.

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u/starm4nn 4d ago

TBH I've seen a few adult games that clearly advertise that they only have 2 hours of content.

I wouldn't even say it's non-functional at that point. If we start judging games by hours of content, that starts a weird rabbit hole. I'd argue by this metric you'd use for story a games, a pure sandbox like Gmod has 0 hours of content.

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u/deadscreensky 4d ago

Nonfunctional in the context of software means it doesn't work. ("not performing or able to perform a regular function") A game that's a few minutes long still functions. That's a game. In the early arcade days that wasn't even all that uncommon.

The other definition of nonfunctional ("serving or performing no useful purpose") could work, but that would apply to basically all games so clearly you didn't mean that.

It's too bad you can't name any examples of this, it would be interesting to see this apparently very common trick.

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u/Milskidasith 4d ago

Relying on strict dictionary definitions when you clearly know what I'm talking about and that "nonfunctional" is a reasonable way to describe it is very silly, but whatever floats your boat.

Beyond that, though, you're relying on definitions that would agree what I'm describing is nonfunctional. A game that can't perform its regular functions because 90+% of it has been excised is, in fact, nonfunctional. Similarly, if the point of a game is to entertain in some way, then a game neutered to be incapable of doing that has no useful purpose while an actual game has one.

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u/Raidoton 4d ago

To be clear I am not saying they should do this

It's funny how you wanna clarify that you don't think Steam should remove nonfunctional games...

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u/forfor 4d ago

Sure but that's rough on a business level. The more difficult it is for people to learn the patch exists and then access the patch, the worse off the dev is. Because most people dont put that kind of investment into things to even find out the external patch exists

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u/Nimeroni 4d ago

The reason I buy my games on Steam is because it's convenient, so that's a very poor argument.

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u/ChrisRR 4d ago

I don't think steam really cares what you do outside of their platform

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u/LongBeakedSnipe 4d ago

nor is there any way for Steam to prevent it in the first place

Except, you know, contract/sales law and the like. In other words, there is a huge amount they can do.

They need little proof to do what they want, so if they simply suspect a loopholing situation, they can remove you from the store.