Overview

• Valve updated its Steam publishing guidelines on July 16 to forbid content that violates payment processors’, card networks’ or banks’ rules, specifically flagging certain adult-only titles.
• SteamDB recorded the removal of dozens to hundreds of explicit games—many featuring incest, rape or other extreme themes—within hours of the new clause taking effect.
• Valve confirmed that titles at risk of breaching payment processor rules are being retired from sale and that affected developers will receive Steam app credits to publish future games.
• The policy’s vague reference to “certain kinds of adult-only content” has left developers uncertain which themes or formats are prohibited and how enforcement decisions are made.
• Critics warn that deferring content decisions to financial institutions hands de facto censorship power to banks and card networks and could put queer and other nonconforming content at risk.