Steams New Adult Game Ban Apparently Not Implemented in Germany
– 2 min read
With Valve bowing to the demands of credit card companies and banks, adult game developers have already begun to scout for ways to circumvent recent bans. Germany’s unique situation meanwhile might have prevented the inplementation of the new rules for now.
With a recent change in their publishing guidelines, Valve has restricted the publication of certain adult games on their storefront Steam. Under “What you shouldn’t publish on Steam“, the company has added the following clause this week: “Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks or internet providers, im particular, certain kinds of adult only content.“
This ban on certain adult games, aimed in particular at certain explicit depictions of sexual interactions, puts an ongoing development of credit card company policy into stone in Steam’s own guidelines, reportedly to alleviate pressure from said companies on Valve. Similar developments have in the past happened at different storefronts that were formerly open for adult content, such as Gumroad or GameJolt.
The first direct bans of published games have already been reported. Notably, the scan for adult content that falls under the new prohibition appears to be relatively cursory and concentrated on the names of the games, as backend screenshots shared by developers and SteamDB database changes show that a renaming of a game to exclude the particular fetishes from the title and offer a more sanitised naming convention kept some games from removal. We can expect newly published adult games to adapt to more general naming conventions in the future if this development indeed helps adult content to stay on Steam.
Notably, the special, more restrictive condition of the German Steam market might have prevented the implementation of the new clause as of yet, since the German Steam publishing guidelines do not yet feature the restrictions. Adult games are banned wholesale on the German market through Steam because of a dispute between Valve and the German minor protection agencies. This could open up a loophole for adult game developers and publishers operating out of Germany. If this persists howewer remains to be seen.
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