Steam has long allowed games with explicit content on its platform, but this also causes problems for Valve, which must be dealt with internally.
Why do the games cause problems? Steam has a massive amount of adult content. In fact, Valve follows the rule of only banning things that are illegal or pure trolling
. However, in practice, this open approach leads to enormous issues, as the team often has to make subjective decisions about where the boundaries lie.
In the past, developers of anime smut games were blocked by Valve, often because the games evoked associations with underage characters. A prominent example of active intervention was the controversial game Rape Day
, which was directly removed from Steam in 2019.
External pressure is also increasing: Global payment providers are making the publication of adult content increasingly complicated with strict guidelines. These requirements even spill over into other genres. For example, the artistic horror game Horses
fell victim to content reviews, despite not containing classic pornography.
GabeN does not want censorship
What is the dispute about? According to a report by Bloomberg, which arose in the context of an ongoing antitrust lawsuit against Valve, there have been intense internal conflicts regarding content moderation. Valve CEO Gabe Newell typically stays out of day-to-day operations—unless a topic is extremely important to him.
One such topic was the allowance of 18+ games and naked pixels on Steam. Valve’s top lawyer Karl Quackenbush reportedly demanded stricter, more active moderation for such sensitive content during a debate.
Newell is said to have been far from pleased with this proposal. According to an attending employee, Newell harshly interrupted the lawyer: “What the hell am I paying you for if that’s your opinion?”
What is the status now? Anyone who disables the safe search filter on Steam today will notice immediately: Gabe Newell seems to have won the internal debate. Steam now offers countless games for adults.
However, if Newell thought that simply allowing content would solve the problem, he was wrong. Reality shows that Valve’s desired hands-off
approach simply does not work.
In light of controversial titles and pressure from payment providers, Valve must ultimately intervene again and again. In hindsight, a stricter moderation, as demanded by lawyer Quackenbush, would likely have spared Valve many headaches.
GabeN and Valve’s top lawyer clashed quite a bit on the issue, but in the end the boss prevailed, even though it continually causes headaches. There is a lot of money to be made with adult games: Steam: Developers want to fulfill a wish for fans upon reaching a milestone, achieving it within 2 hours
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