Overview

• Valve updated Steam’s guidelines around July 15 to remove titles that violate payment processors’ content standards, citing “certain kinds of adult only content.”
• Roughly 500 games marked as adults-only, many depicting incest, rape or sexual violence, have been delisted following the policy change.
• Steam confirmed on July 18 that pressure from payment processors including Visa, Mastercard and PayPal drove the mass removals.
• Collective Shout has claimed responsibility for the campaign targeting objectionable content and is now pushing for removal of about 82 remaining titles tagged with rape or incest.
• Developers and rights advocates warn that the vagueness of the new rule could lead to over-censorship of legitimate adult material, such as LGBTQIA+ stories.