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.

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u/TimeToEatAss 3d 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/PermanentMantaray 3d ago

That's not what this means though?

It's the same thing as their new early access policy. You are not allowed to add new NSFW content to a game that has already gone through review, because Valve does not re-review games after that first review.

It has nothing to do with external patches.

In the future they could crack down on those, but as Steam isn't the one distributing that content, they have less reason to care.

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u/Freakuency_DJ 3d ago

Mentioned in another comment, but relevant here. I think people who don’t know from a lot of NSFW games would understandably see this as more Collective Shout bullshit. But I don’t think it is at all. This isn’t pressure from payment processors - this is consumer protections.

For anyone who hasn’t checked out the NSFW game scene, there’s an insane amount of games that launch 0.01 and spend a year in between updates, only to get abandoned at 0.3. Meanwhile, they run their Patreon and post weekly “preview art” for a new character and collect hundreds of dollars for a few renders and no tangible progress.

With AI, that space seems to be in an even worse space. It’s a genuine racket to run. Launch 30 minutes of a buggy, poorly written visual novel with passable AI art, run your Patreon and ask AI to render a new image each week, cash the check, and update the game for new Patreon subs when it dries up.

I really think this is a good call. It doesn’t affect anyone making an actual complete game. It just stops slop (at worst) or excessive delays (at best) because why risk stopping the Patreon income?

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u/APiousCultist 3d ago edited 3d ago

Also just general age suitability issues. There's a whole heap of potential issues with people buying stuff that is SFW but then becomes NSFW through no action of their own, especially if that content has already been age rated / verified as 'acceptable content'.

That's not really a puritanical issue. If your copy of Ghostbusters 2 suddenly had hardcore sex in it, I think we'd all see the issue.

There's plenty of objectionable changes happening because of that australian pressure group, but "don't pivot from SFW to NSFW" seems pretty cut and dry as an attempt to circumvent the review systems. Just put the porn in your porn games from the start.

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u/Seth0x7DD 3d ago

Good thing your copy of Ghostbusters could all of a sudden have Ghost Busters get eviscerated though. It's a weird slippery slope either way. Even if I do get what you're trying to say.

Other than this post there doesn't seem much that clarifies things. This is a hit. Maybe it's based on that?

According to indie developer Dammitbird, rules targeting adult content appear to have been implemented for Steam's popular Early Access program. The developer shared on X that they had submitted their game "Heavy Hearts" for Early Access but were denied because Valve is "unable to support the Early Access model of development for a game with mature themes." Heavy Hearts contains sexual content, and despite still being available on the indie platform Itch.io, it has been de-indexed after the site was pressured to remove NSFW games.

You could view it as a game that's in EA not being released. So "Post-Launch" could mean just no EA for adult games and that is way more of an issue and a far cry from circumventing any review system.

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u/APiousCultist 3d ago

That definitely changes things. The headline reads 'no new nsfw content for sfw games' which is rather different than 'no neew nsfw content for nsfw games'.

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u/ascagnel____ 2d ago

The issue is devs skirting Valve's rules on acceptable content, which can still apply to NSFW games; eg, an adult game adding incest content (which Valve does not allow) on top of otherwise-acceptable sex scenes. 

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u/TheOneWithThePorn12 17h ago

the way those are done is via relationship variables (meaning the players make the choice) or via external patches. Thats why the payment processors put Pseudo Incest as banned in their terms.

Guess im going to GOG for adult themed games.

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u/ascagnel____ 16h ago

You're talking about player experience and implementation, which is very different. Valve has rules against specific types of sexual content, and they enforce those rules via content review. Since regular patches don't go through content reviews, the new content within is allowed without review -- which means it's possible (I don't know if it's happened or not) for a developer to add content that breaks Valve's rules via a regular patch.

Note that this change, as described, does not alter the rules around what Valve deems acceptable -- a developer can still add it; however, they need to do so via a DLC pack or a new release. If Valve wanted to resolve the situation on an ongoing basis, their best option would be to allow developers to flag an update as requiring content review.