An Australian company claims responsibility for the removal of hundreds of games from Steam in July 2025.
What kind of company is that? Collective Shout is an Australian company that positions itself as a movement against the objectification and sexualization of women in media, advertising, and pop culture.
In past campaigns, the company advocated (via collectiveshout):
- To have content removed from Pinterest that sexualized teenagers
- To ban deepfake content created without the consent of the depicted person
- To urge online marketplaces like Temu and Etsy to take action against the sale of child sex dolls
In the gaming space, they recently succeeded in a campaign aimed at having the game “No Mercy” removed from various platforms such as Itch.io and Steam, where the player commits sexual violence against the protagonist’s family members.
Steam bans games that violate the standards of companies like PayPal
What kind of ban is this? No specific type of game has been explicitly banned, but Steam added a new rule in July stating:
Content that may violate the guidelines and standards set by payment processors affiliated with Steam, related card networks and banks, or internet service providers. In particular, certain types of adult content.
Source: steamgames.com
The new rule therefore states that games must comply with the policies of Steam’s payment service providers. These include PayPal, Visa, Skrill, and Mastercard.
What type of games have been banned? Valve did not publicly disclose what types of games were specifically banned, but as the database SteamDB noted in a post on X, a plethora of incest-based games were removed from Steam at the time the new rule was implemented.
In a statement to the English-language online magazine PC Gamer, Valve explained in this context:
“We were recently informed that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards of our payment processors and their affiliated card networks and banks. Therefore, we are removing these games from sale in the Steam Store.”
Collective Shout called on service providers to take action
How did the company achieve the ban? On July 11, 2025, Collective Shout addressed an open letter to companies like PayPal and Mastercard, demanding that they “cease processing payments on Steam and Itch.io, as well as on all other platforms” that offer games “that have themes of rape, incest, and child sexual abuse” (via collectiveshout).
Shortly thereafter, Steam made a rule change, which seems to be due to pressure from the payment service providers.
On July 18, Collective Shout indirectly claimed the ban and the removal of the games in a post on X. The company wrote: “Since we launched our campaign asking payment processors to stop enabling payments for games with themes of rape, incest, sexual torture, and child abuse on Steam, they have added a new rule to their guidelines and removed hundreds of these games.”
Just in May 2025, Steam removed a number of games from the shop known for featuring risqué stories and sexual adventures: Steam has just removed 7 of the most notorious games in PC history, but you can still buy them elsewhere
