Steam: Payment providers force Valve to kick out porn games

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Valve has removed dozens of porn and sex games from the Steam Store. The reason for this step was information from payment service providers, platform operator Valve confirmed to Gamingonlinux magazine.

“We were recently informed that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set by our payment processors and associated card networks and banks,” Valve wrote in the statement to Gamingonlinux. “We are withdrawing these games from sale on the Steam Store because the loss of payment methods would prevent customers from purchasing other titles and content on Steam.”

The Steam operator does not provide any further details. It is unclear which companies have specifically contacted Valve. Steam's payment service providers include PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard. In its guidelines, PayPal, for example, excludes the purchase of sexually oriented content via digital media.

No sex games in Germany

The removed titles are questionable sex games that conspicuously often revolve around the themes of incest and rape. The unofficial Steam database SteamDB has published a selection of the deleted titles on Bluesky. In Germany, these titles were never available via Steam – The category for “Adult Only” games has not existed in Germany for years.

In 2020, following a complaint from the Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein Media Authority, Valve blocked all titles that were labeled as “adult” and did not have an age rating. To be able to offer them, the US company would have to integrate a reliable age verification system into Steam in Germany. Because Valve has not yet implemented such a system, sex games remain blocked in Germany.

Community fears worse

The banning of incest games from Steam has caused quite a stir in the gaming community. Many users criticize the extensive rights that Valve grants to the payment service providers. Many fear that companies that know little about video games and gaming culture could dictate the rules for Valve's own store in the future.

An entry in the English-language store guidelines shows that Valve wants to continue to adhere to the wishes of payment service providers: In it, Valve states that games that violate the rules of the payment providers can also be removed from Steam in the future. This information is still missing in the German version of the guidelines.

Open letter from activists to PayPal and Co.

Last week, the organization Collective Shout published an open letter to payment service providers in which the undersigned activists denounce sex games on Steam and other platforms. The open letter is addressed to the heads of companies such as PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard.

“We have discovered hundreds of games with rape, incest, and child sexual abuse on Steam and Itch.io,” write the signatories. “We call on you to fulfill your corporate social responsibility and immediately stop processing payments on Steam and Itch.io, as well as other platforms where similar games are offered.”

(dahe)