Adults Only games are removed from Steam due to a crackdown by banks

When it comes to video games, there are a ton of genres out there. One of those is the ‘adults only’ or mature games category. Games that are marked as ‘Adults Only’ will more often than not involve sexual content. However, for Valve’s PC games storefront, Steam, this tag may cease to exist. On July 11th, Australian not-for-profit group, Collective Shout, posted an open letter on their website for payment processors to cease operations on Steam due to the platform featuring games that have triggering and upsetting content.

If the name is familiar, back in 2014, they were successful in the removal of GTA V from Target and Kmart shelves, and it looks like they’ve received a further win. In the past few days, Steam’s removed roughly 500 or so games that feature certain keywords and are marked as Adults Only. So, what’s going on here? In a report from Gamespot, Valve has quietly updated its rules and guidelines with new text:

“Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.”

A lot of the games that the company have removed involve keywords relating to taboo and/or illegal topics, such as incest and rape. The removed titles are viewable via SteamDB, a database for Steam games. When it comes to payment processors ceasing operations on storefronts, it’s not new. As Gamespot mentions, it’s been used against websites that contain adult content before. Back in 2021, popular content subscription service OnlyFans announced a ban on adult content. But, due to the backlash, the company ended up chucking a uey and scrapping the ban.

In saying all of this, it’s not that Valve runs Steam like it’s the wild west. While the company does allow content, even “something that you hate”, they will remove games that feature illegal content, as reported by Ars Technica in 2018. And it’s safe to say that the games recently removed from Steam won’t be missed.

But the issue lies in the new rule that Valve has created, specifically the wording “certain kinds of adult only content”. To quote your Year 11 English teacher, it’s too vague. While yes, you could see the term “certain kinds” to mean games involving incest and rape. It’s that the use of “certain kinds” does a lot of the heavy lifting. And due to its very vagueness, it could extend to other forms of adult only content that you or I might see as tame, but others… not so much.

Specifically, games that involve LGBTQIA+ content. Games such as Hardcoded, while it does feature sex acts, are also steeped in trans liberation. Then there are more popularised games like Baldur’s Gate 3, where it’s not explicitly marked as Adults Only, but it does feature a lot of horniness, to the point where there were news articles from (primarily) non-gaming publications about the fact that you could have sex with Halsin in his bear form.

Some could see the connection to NSFW and LGBTQIA+ identities as ludicrous, but unfortunately, that’s how the world is travelling at the moment. In America, the political initiative that is Project 2025 wants to include “transgender ideology” in the definition of pornography. Back home in Australia, as noted by Archer Magazine, anti-porn groups often have ties with anti-LGBTQIA+ movements. And surprise, one of the very same anti-LGBTQIA+ references in the Archer Magazine article is included in this open letter from Collective Shout.

While sure, not many people are crying at the loss of games involving incest or rape, it does lead to wonder how much emphasis the word “certain kinds” is doing in that ruling, and what they’ll come for next.