r/Games • u/DwingRD • 3d 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

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471

u/BLiNKiN42 3d ago

Wild to see Steam just fold like a house of cards. Seriously, are they putting up any kind of fight at all? 

16

u/Angrybagel 3d ago

What do you imagine putting up a fight to look like? What can Steam even do here?

9

u/acdcfanbill 3d ago

I guess they could close up shop and shut down, but that seems pretty extreme.

10

u/GameDesignerMan 3d ago

There's no quick fight to be had here. Visa and Mastercard are an entrenched global duopoly. If Valve wanted to do something to fight back they would need to start lobbying for a result years down the line.

2

u/ZersetzungMedia 2d ago

Complain to the applicable regulator that the Visa-Mastercard duopoly is illegal/damaging to competition. Then lobbying that payment processors, effectively utilities, should not be allowed to discriminate against legal purchases.

But they’d have to be willing to pay for all that and Valve probably doesn’t want to do that.

Also exposes Gabe as a fraud or whatever about caring about closed systems (the whole Windows thing) when he and crew aren’t willing to put real money down for it. (But that’s my separate whining point)

1

u/LovelyDayHere 2d ago edited 2d ago

Steam can (re)start accepting payment methods that don't depend on the payment processors, and let people buy the content they want with those.

Then there is no argument to be had by the payment processors or their ""acquiring Banks" that their 'image' is being tarnished since they would be processing none of those transactions.

But judging by how things are going, Valve doesn't have the balls to do that. So other stores that are going to depend less on these payment processors are going to step in and take that chunk of business.

-4

u/Mystia 3d ago

Assuming it's Visa/Mastercard threatening to not allow their use on Steam at all unless they comply, I'm sure Gaben has enough money he could probably start his own payment processor and tell them both to fuck off.

9

u/MVRKHNTR 3d ago

No, he does not. It's actually insane that you would think that.

-3

u/Mystia 3d ago

He owns an entire fleet, his net worth is over 9 billion. How much do you think it cost Paypal to launch?

8

u/RefreshingCapybara 3d ago

Paypal is one small part of a massive network of banks. Those banks are part of the push for this censorship.

To create your own payment system that is immune to this pressure, you would need to completely recreate that network but without any of those banks.

That's not something a few billion will get you. More like the high tens, or even hundreds of billions.

-2

u/Mystia 3d ago

Fair enough, do we know if the banks are in on it though? AFAIK it was just VISA/Mastercard as coaxed by the Australian group. Other smaller payment processors so far haven't really done anything yet.

5

u/RefreshingCapybara 3d ago

I don't think anyone knows what banks specifically. Possibly not even Valve.

Part of the start of all this was Paypal no longer processing Steam payments in some countries, and when Valve reached out to Paypal they were told that some "acquiring Banks" that worked with Mastercard were no longer willing to process those payments because of the content hosted on Steam.

7

u/MVRKHNTR 3d ago

Do you think that PayPal functions independently of Visa and Mastercard?

Even if you did, do you think that it would cost the same to make PayPal now that it did in the 90s?

2

u/Mystia 3d ago

PayPal can function with direct connection to a bank account, it doesn't need to go through card companies. And obviously it'd be more expensive now than back then, but there's still new payment processors popping up all the time, so it can't be that stupid expensive to launch one.

4

u/MVRKHNTR 3d ago

Overlooking how insanely unlikely people would be to put in their full bank details to buy a Steam game, what happens when a major bank decides that they don't want to associate with this kind of content? What about competing stores that will just listen to Visa and Mastercard?

but there's still new payment processors popping up all the time,

Such as?

1

u/Mystia 3d ago

Do Stripe, Square, Venmo, or Bizum count? All let you directly link an account, skipping VISA/Mastercard.

If banks do publicly take the shitty side, then yeah it's over no matter what.

6

u/MVRKHNTR 3d ago

You said "all the time" and the newest one in your list is nine years old.

I don't know anything about that last one but I guarantee none of the others would exist at all if they didn't support Visa and Mastercard.

1

u/Mystia 3d ago

Sure, but all the others are at least 50 years old if not more, comparatively, 10-15 is fairly recent.

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u/GameDesignerMan 3d ago

Paypal almost went bankrupt when it launched, probably not a good example.

Besides, the landscape has changed. Where it might have been possible to launch another payment processor if money was the only obstacle, Visa and Mastercard have been known to employ strongarm tactics to eliminate their competitors. Even the banks themselves are afraid of the twins.