Steam Removed Adult Games For Surprising and Disturbing Reason

Steam has removed a large number of games and updated its policy on what types of games can be posted to Steam. It’s not that games have been removed; that happens all the time for different reasons. But the reason, in this case, is disturbing. Even if you don’t play adult games, you should know what happened.

Steam Content Policy Change

Steam’s policy change is a problem because of the reason they made the change. They’ve added a clause that states, “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” can’t be shared on the platform. Let’s break that down.

What they’re saying is that, if PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, your bank, etc. have a policy against processing payments for a certain type of content, you can’t buy it. So, one or more of the payment providers they support has a policy against adult content. Therefore, Steam will no longer sell that type of content. Yikes.

Why Now?

It might be related to a situation that happened in the UK. UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle went after them for carrying an explicit visual novel that had non-consensual sexual contact. Nothing official is confirming that is the case. The official statement was:

“We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks.”

“As a result, we are retiring those games from being sold on the Steam Store, because loss of payment methods would prevent customers from being able to purchase other titles and game content on Steam. We are directly notifying developers of these games, and issuing app credits should they have another game they’d like to distribute on Steam in the future.”

Why is it a Big Deal?

Nier creator Yoko Taro stated it perfectly in a tweet:

“It implies that by controlling payment processing companies, you can even censor another country’s free speech.”

Can you imagine walking into a store and trying to buy a book only to have the payment declined at the register because the credit card company doesn’t think that book is appropriate? Or, even worse yet, because a major payment processor declares a book or other piece of media violates their “rules and standards,” stores stop selling it completely. Then it becomes unavailable to everyone. It’s dangerous. Especially in a world that relies more and more on digital currency and payments.

This isn’t just about video games. That’s just where it has started.