Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed

I have a mixed feeling about that. I'm not against some kind of regulation on content, but I'm not keen on US prudish moral deciding what I should not play.

While I'm actually glad the slew of badly made pr0n on Steam gets culled as they were just everywhere in every search I've done recently, it's bad that it's due to payment processors bringing the rulehammer down and not a decision on Valve's end.
It's Valve's store and payment processors should stay the F* out of dictating what can and cannot be sold in it.
Whether PayPal or other payment processor, they are obviously playing a political game given the political climate in the US and other regions where conservative voices have decided to throw a temper tantrum.
These temper tantrums should be ignored or we'll be back in the dark ages before long.

My take: If US payment processors get a say what is and isn't allowed on Steam, so should every government in whose jurisdiction Steam sells any games. Otherwise, they should just stay the fuck out of it.

My response: US double-standards, please fuck right off of my game selection.

Payment processors should never get a say in how people spend their money. Unless it is outright illegal there should be no restrictions – no matter what they, you, I or anyone else thinks about the content.
I am saying this not because I am fond of the delisted games, but because it is very much a slippery slope and one day they will dislike something I want to spend my money on.

edit: typo


Last edited by neolith on 16 Jul 2025 at 10:00 am UTC

I agree with what Maki said, on the one hand, there is a lot of trash adult games on Steam, and seeing less of them is a good thing. But there are also developers making actually decent adult games and it would be a shame if they aren't being allowed anymore on Steam to publish their games.

It was one of the better things about Steam that almost any game is welcome there, and payment processors definitely shouldn't have a say in what a platform is allowed to host.

This is not a good development.

I have mixed reactions too. While I'm glad these kinds of games are getting culled (let's face it, they are shovelware, poorly made "games" made just to exploit the trend) and that is good news, because they were everywhere and the only way to stop seeing them was hiding tags (with the whole lot of collateral damage to other decent games that shared the tags); I'm not really happy with the reason to do this.

Payment processors should stay the fuck away of this and shouldn't be censoring anything just because there's a christofascist ruling the US.

And to make it clear, I'm not against adult games, but this is shovelware and there is a plague of it lately.

While I certainly won't miss those specific games, this sets a rather troublesome precedence.

What if those providers at some point decide that they no longer want to see, eg. the use of alcohol or guns or certain flags or or or or ....

You have to live with governments having a say here, and it is often actually for the better.
But payment providers are pure corpo, so I'd rather they have no say at all.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 16 Jul 2025 at 10:02 am UTC

Never saw those games on Steam (unless some other website linked to them) because Steam has quite many levels of Mature Content Filtering in Store Preferences. Makes me think, people complaining about those games, probably have removed all the filtering.

They'll will get distributed elsewhere and funded with other payment methods. I wouldn't worry about those games.

It is becoming increasingly common.

There are people out there happy to make certain kinds of adult content, and people out there happy to enjoy it, and plenty more people happy to mind their own business and have nothing to do with it. People operating in countries with no laws against what it is they're producing.

And yet it's increasingly common for that adult content and it's creators to be censored and forced off the internet, more or less shutdown. And it's entirely due to payment processing companies simply refusing to process payments for certain kinds of activities.

Which is ... wrong and bizarre? These payment processing companies shouldn't be telling anyone what they can or can't sell or buy unless it's illegal.

If creators can't find a way to get paid, then they can't do what they do and make a living, which basically shuts them down. So it shuts down a self employed artist usually, forcing them back into wage slavery, and the people enjoying their work miss out too.

And yet I bet those same payment processing companies have no problem being payment processors for all kinds of other stuff, like cigarette manufacturers, medical insurance companies in the US, coal mining companies, political lobby groups and other stuff which one could question the morality of if one was so inclined.

Makes me wonder, if it's starting with virtual smut, how long before they start deciding other types of activities aren't permitted with their system. Paypal decides political activists are problematic? Suddenly patreon can't host anyone campaigning for climate change or other issues, etc. Could happen.

What a bizarre situation we find ourselves in that it should be the executives of payment processing companies in the world that decides what kinds of porn is or isn't allowed on the entire global internet.

But ya know, if there's one thing I've learnt over the years it is this... People who want to make smut, and people who want to consume it, will always find a way to meet each other halfway somehow. "Life finds a way" etc. If these companies push too hard on this, they might just accidentally create an environment ripe for a new competitor to enter the market, one which doesn't have such strong opinions on what kinds of pixels people buy with their money.

I am glade to see less of those games on Steam but I think the better way would be to get a working Age verification system.

In Germany they could use something like PostIDent (or eID) where the user could online or offline get verified to be the person who he claims to be. Valve would just know that the user got Verified to be Adult (18+/21+).

Payment processors should never get a say in how people spend their money. Unless it is outright illegal there should be no restrictions – no matter what they, you, I or anyone else thinks about the content.

Yup. But sadly, governments won't do anything about that, so payment processors will keep being puritan garbage.

Makes me wonder, if it's starting with virtual smut, how long before they start deciding other types of activities aren't permitted with their system. Paypal decides political activists are problematic? Suddenly patreon can't host anyone campaigning for climate change or other issues, etc. Could happen.

The "conspiracy theorists" have been saying for years that digitial currency (this is more on the side of digital product, but in the same ballpark) in its various forms would lead to exactly this. They even claimed it would start with fringe stuff being censored/removed.

First they came for the hentai (I think it was similar incest/underage content specifically) and I did not speak out, then they came for the porno games and I did not speak out...

My concern is that this kind of thing is a slippery slope, how long before any e.g. wolfenstein game will have to be so censored because it touches on topics that are uncomfortable for some. There are a few videos on Youtube where the video avoids naming its primary context to avoid automatic and contextless bot censorship.

Think about how you would feel if games with guns or blood had to be removed because suddenly PayPal or Mastercard didn't like them. This is dangerous.

This is infuriating (and this is coming from someone who doesn't play sexual games, for no reason in particular).

First, I don't get all the complaints about seeing adult games with sexual content on Steam. Just filter them out. Use the tools you are given instead of limiting the freedoms of other people.
Steam gives you plenty of ways to filter out what you want to see. You can filter out tags, publishers, general mature content, nudity+sexual content, only sexual content...

Back on topic, this is the usual US puritanism. Decapitating people is fun, boobies are wrong. I'm guessing those specific games have some theme in common but unfortunately there is no clear rule to follow.
Suddenly your salary depends on what some payment processor thinks of your game. This should be illegal, they shouldn't get to choose which money they process. Money is money, unless it comes from illegal businesses they should just process it.

I wonder what's the solution, Patreon, OnlyFans, Pornhub and plenty others continue to work while having some of the most disgusting porn out there so there must be a way. Steam is probably big enough to fight it.

Truly words evade me. Decade after decade the same stupid problems, they just never go away, it's so frustrating.

Well... I was actually using PayPal to pay on Steam, but there is no reason for me not to switch so I guess I will then.

Think about how you would feel if games with guns or blood had to be removed because suddenly PayPal or Mastercard didn't like them. This is dangerous.

They already do stuff like that on a regular basis. For example you cannot pay some VPN Services and OCHs with PayPal or Mastercard.

Not so hot take: video games, as fiction material, should not be censored. Payment processors should not have a say in any of it. We're all grown up here, and buy what we want.

I don't particularly care for *that* list of games, but that's no excuse to remove them. If I don't want something, I don't get it; if I want something, I get it. It's not the place of any interfering busybody to decide what I can and cannot enjoy in my leisure time. This is obviously the first step in the way of locking everything down to what a handful of bigots are graceful enough to allow others to enjoy.

Well, I don't support any form of censorship, but tbh that will save me a lot of clicking on "Ignore".


BTW, you can still buy them *with paypal* on third-party sites.


Last edited by pb on 16 Jul 2025 at 11:34 am UTC

To explain why I'm in particular not using the 'varied tools Steam has to filter out adult content'; I don't mind well-done adult content.

But Steam has been overwhelmed by cookie-cutter shovelware which someone probably spent five minutes on to write an AI prompt or something. It's been an insane influx of really bad 'games' which are just interactive pr0n movies.

Take Fenoxo's Corruption of Champions II in comparison; it's a work that people have spent years on before putting it out on Steam. It's smut, obviously, but it shows that people have done the work to create it. As opposed to the examples from the screenshot. There's actual game dynamics in it.

Not all 18+ games are low quality, but those which are were dominating the lists by their sheer volume.


Last edited by Maki on 16 Jul 2025 at 11:45 am UTC