Steam has quietly introduced a new rule banning content that breaches the rules of the financial organizations it deals with, such as credit card companies, with specific focus on “adult only content”.
The games platform has also removed a slew of incest-related content, suggesting that the more extreme versions of what can be classed as adult content on Steam are being targeted with the new rule, initially at least.
According to Steam, the new rule bans “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.”
Credit card companies and major banks often have policies about not dealing with companies related to vice and explicit content, and have been accused of being overly conservative in this respect. In 2020, Mastercard and Visa removed their payment services from Pornhub.
As well as removing a bunch of games that featured incest, Ars Technica reported that Steam removed some games that referenced “slave” or “prison” imagery.
Steam, which is owned by Valve, bans games that feature explicit content showing real people, such as porn, but around 2021 some developers became confused about the policies. In 2018, Valve said that Steam would allow “everything” on its platform aside from “things that we decide are illegal or straight-up trolling”.
A dating simulator game called Super Seducer 3 was banned from the Steam Store, despite its makers saying that it did not feature nudity.
Valve may simply by looking to purge the darkest, dirtiest corners of the Steam Store with the new rule, and it’s unlikely that anyone beyond a very particular niche of people will lament the banning of games featuring incest content.
Still, the fact that the rule was brought in based on the policies of external financial companies, rather than Valve’s own moral compass twitching, shows how beholden platforms such as these are to the transaction providers.
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