Valve have added a new rule to the Onboarding guide for game developers, noting that payment processors get a say in what stays on Steam.
Recently, a number of people noticed and posted across various Reddits that PayPal has been unavailable for days, so it’s possible this is all coming from PayPal but nothing has been confirmed on that.
On Steamworks the new rule is noted under the “What you shouldn’t publish on Steam” heading:
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. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.
SteamDB noticed this, and also noted in a Bluesky thread how numerous incest games had been removed:
That’s a very specific type of game removal but could only be the beginning of a wider crackdown on the types of adult content allowed on Steam.
Valve certainly aren’t the first to have this happen. Patreon has also seen issues with payment processors like PayPal in the past with adult content. So, it’s not really a surprise that this has happened, the surprise to me is that payment processors haven’t come down on Valve sooner for all these types of games because they really don’t like their services being used for it. It’s not like Valve have a choice in this either, they could fight it but it would probably be a lot more costly than it’s worth to them.
I’ve asked Valve to provide a comment and will update if they reply but it’s unlikely they will in cases like this.
What are your thoughts on this?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
