Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games from Steam

[bnew]

Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games from Steam

It's not a great precedent, that's for sure.

www.pcgamer.com

Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games from Steam​

By Joshua Wolens published 2 days ago

It's not a great precedent, that's for sure.

(Image credit: Love Conquers All)

It's Mastercard's world; we just live in it. That's my understanding based on a recent communiqué from Valve to PC Gamer, which confirmed that, yup, the company sure did recently remove a whole spate of adult games from its storefront because it made payment processors upset.

"We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks," said Valve. "As a result, we are retiring those games from being sold on the Steam Store."

Valve's reaching out to devs impacted by the change "and issuing app credits should they have another game they’d like to distribute on Steam in the future." Just, you know, so long as those games get the seal of approval from Valve's payment processors, I suppose.

To be fair to the house that Gabe Newell built, I don't think it has much of a choice. Valve explicitly said that it was removing the offending games "because loss of payment methods would prevent customers from being able to purchase other titles and game content on Steam." It seems quite clear to me from those kinds of statements that Valve's chafing a little under payment processor tyranny, but I suspect even Steam can't really go toe-to-toe with the likes of Visa and Mastercard.

Valve didn't say which games, specifically, have been yoinked off Steam as a result of the credit card companies throwing their weight around, but I don't think it takes Poirot to put this one together. As we noted in our original piece on Steam's new rule forbidding content that might upset its payment processors, the appearance of the new regulation in Steam's documentation coincided with the sudden disappearance of a bunch of adult games with a, um, theme of keeping it in the family.

(Image credit: NomnomNami)

There are some games that still have that focus on Steam's storefront, so I suppose we can't say for certain that it's what raised processors' hackles, but I think it's a safe bet anyway.

One thing we can say for certain: the simultaneous delisting of a Chinese, Phoenix-Wright-esque game from Steam apparently had nothing to do with the new rule. Trials of Innocence disappeared from Steam at the same time as the adult stuff got culled, leading some to theorise that it had been accidentally caught in an overzealous net. But the devs have now confirmed that the game has been "temporarily taken down due to a DMCA claim." So that's something, I suppose.

Credit card processors are incredibly touchy about adult content online. Not only is it a magnet for scams and chargebacks, but they're still reeling from the time a few years ago when popular adult site PornHub was found to be hosting content featuring underage and non-consenting performers (processors severed their links to the company, which continues to this day).

Of course, Steam doesn't allow explicit content featuring real people on its service. All the adult content on its platform is animation of one form or another, and yet apparently payment processors are jittery even about that. It feels like an incredibly bad precedent to set; if I want anyone deciding what I can or can't buy on Steam, it sure as hell isn't Mastercard.

 

[bnew]

Steam's got a new rule that puts the kibosh on 'certain kinds of adult only content' that make Visa and Mastercard sad

The new rule seemingly coincided with a large number of adult games being delisted from the platform.

www.pcgamer.com

Steam's got a new rule that puts the kibosh on 'certain kinds of adult only content' that make Visa and Mastercard sad​

ByJoshua Wolens publishedJuly 16, 2025

The new rule seemingly coincided with a large number of adult games being delisted from the platform.

(Image credit: Art Witch Studios)

Devs are biting their nails over a new Steam rule that prohibits—in painfully vague terms—certain kinds of content on its platform. The new rule (seemingly introduced incredibly recently, and definitely introduced since the Wayback Machine's last Steam rules snapshot from April 14 this year) forbids "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 other words: keep Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal happy or sling your hook. How do you do that? Valve doesn't say, only noting that particular care should be taken with "certain kinds of adult only content." No elaboration is offered as to what kinds of adult-only content that means, leaving NSFW devs groping in the dark to appease payments processors.

I've reached out to Valve to ask for clarification on this rule, and I'll update this piece if I hear back.

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But while we wait, maybe we can connect some dots. As spotted by SteamDB on Bluesky, the new rule coincided with the sudden removal of a significant number of incest-themed adult games from Steam's storefront. Anyone who had any number of the Interactive Sex or Sex Adventures games on their wishlist should have bought them sooner: they've been suddenly and unceremoniously yoinked.

I've reached out to the dev behind some of those games, too, to ask if they've had any communication from Valve, and I'll update if I hear back.

Image 1 of 2

Steam's rules in April 2025.(Image credit: Valve)

Steam's rules today.(Image credit: Valve)

It would seem, then, that incest might be one of the themes that falls under Valve's (or, more accurately, Valve's payments processors') new rubric of verboten games, but there's a wrinkle here too. There are still some incest-themed games available for purchase on the platform, including one from the same Interactive Sex series that was hit so hard in the removals noted by SteamDB. Could it be they just slipped some sort of automated removal net? Or was the disappearance of so many games with the same, um, theme just a coincidence?

Without clarification from Valve that goes beyond the couple of sentences that have been chucked into its Steamworks onboarding docs, it's tough to say. What's less hard to parse is the very real fear this has struck into the hearts of Steam users and devs both. Fears abound that Steam is in for the kind of turmoil that struck OnlyFans all the way back in 2021, when the site—almost exclusively associated in people's minds with the sex workers who use it to make a living—said that pressure from banks was forcing it to ban pornography on the platform.

The policy was eventually walked back after an outcry, but it was just one more thing that makes trying to make a living from sex work uniquely precarious in the age of online payments and platform-dependency.

It's not just OnlyFans that has come under the eye of Sauron for this kind of stuff, either. Tumblr, infamously, banned porn on the platform, with CEO Matt Mullenwegg bluntly stating that "Credit card companies are anti-porn." Patreon, too, has initiated crackdowns on certain kinds of NSFW content at the behest of payments processors.

OnlyFans has also drawn financial ire for the prevalance of sex work on its platform. (Image credit: LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images)

Processor hostility to adult content has heightened in the wake of the 2020 scandal where popular adult site PornHub was found to be hosting revenge porn and content featuring minors. That led Mastercard and Visa to terminate service to the site—a termination that continued even after PornHub went nuclear on videos from unverified performers.

Credit card companies categorically do not want their names associated with that kind of reputation-damaging content, to say nothing of the increased risk of chargebacks and fraud that comes from online pornography.

You do have to wonder where the line on 'acceptable' sexual content gets drawn. (Image credit: Larian Studios)

Meanwhile, Valve categorically does not want Steam users to suddenly find themselves unable to buy games using ubiquitous payment methods like Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal, meaning it's a lot easier to simply bow to their whims than stick up for adult game devs. The fact that Valve doesn't feature live performers in the adult games on its platform—it's hentai as far as the eye can see—apparently bears little relevance here.

We might not miss the glut of incest-themed games that have seemingly (but I stress it's not been confirmed) been hit by this rule, but I fear it's the thin end of a very thick wedge. On the one hand—as much as I enjoy poking fun at the more obsessively goonerlicious games that mark our hobby—it's my position that what other people get off to is none of my business, the usual caveats about everyone involved giving informed consent applied.

On another, darker hand, there's a not-unreasonable fear that what begins as a crackdown on porno shovelware could eventually spread out to target queer creators and games of all stripes.

Some fear that unabashedly queer games are next in the firing line.

"It’s the quiet normalization of financial censorship and it’s going to hurt LGBTQ+ games and devs," writes NoahFuel_Gaming in a popular Bluesky post. "Banks like Visa and Mastercard are now backdoor moral authorities. They already pressured Patreon, OnlyFans, and others to remove NSFW content. Now Steam is next. And guess who they’ll target first? Queer, transgressive, or 'unusual' games.

"Queer content gets flagged as 'explicit' even when it’s PG. A trans dev making a personal story? 'Too controversial.' A surreal queer VN? 'Sexualized.' Financial deplatforming in action."

In a time of seemingly global reactionary backlash against LGBT people and queer lifestyles, it feels more important to push back on this kind of puritanism than ever.

 

[Lord Beasley]

Good. Get cum queens of the marketplace

 

[Lambent55]

At this point it may be worth it for some companies to build a credit system based around money orders. (You mail in a money order, and they add it as a credit to your account to be used for purchases)

 

[OneDeep]

Some of those games on there needed to be took off there regardless

 

[NoMoreWhiteWoman2020]

At this point it may be worth it for some companies to build a credit system based around money orders. (You mail in a money order, and they add it as a credit to your account to be used for purchases)

You must not be old enough to remember publishers clearing house

If you didn’t subscribe, you couldn’t win

You had people subscribing in states where they couldn’t even legally collect the reward

 

[RamsayBolton]

didnt these places try to kill onlyfans and shyt

i dont pay or play this shyt but they need to stop trying to enforce their prude nonsense

 

[RageKage]

Can't u subscribe to actual porn sites with mc and visa?

 

[Lambent55]

Can't u subscribe to actual porn sites with mc and visa?

They stuff they removed must have been on the extreme side, because games like this are still listed.

 

[Why-Fi]

not surprising. credit business wont even support state lottery or legal weed. porn games never had a chance. i bet they are behind age verification on the actual porn sites too

 

[bnew]

After Steam, they came for itch.io

https://archive.ph/mA2ot

Spoiler: text

Posted on Thu Jul 24 06:41:32 2025 UTC

https://i.redd.it/u3amr9fwpref1.jpeg

Anyone who thinks they will stop after one thing is delusional. Source: Update on NSFW content

Spoiler: text

Commented on Thu Jul 24 06:48:42 2025 UTC

What next? They going to censor gta 6 when it comes out

│
│

Spoiler: text

│ Commented on Thu Jul 24 08:19:11 2025 UTC
│
│ Hijacking top comment to share that this shyt https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/987 Americans call your reps. If they're a dem, phrase it like a dem (mention concern for queer content). If they're a republican, phrase it like a republican (don't want no big banks to dictate how you as a red blooded American spend your money)
│

│ │
│ │

Spoiler: text

│ │ Commented on Thu Jul 24 09:18:47 2025 UTC
│ │
│ │ This bill is exclusively co-sponsored by a few dozen Republicans, which was a red flag to me because Republicans generally don't push for increased business regulation, and when they do it's usually for bad reasons.
│ │
│ │ But I read the raw text of the bill and, honestly, it doesn't seem like it has any malicious catch. It's pretty much what it advertises. It simply aims to prohibit large banks from restricting access to their services for reasons such as a business being 'politically controversial' by requiring banks to only restrict services for reasons such as unlawful activity or, in one example they give, routine business operation such as cutting off a client for being rude and insulting to an employee. And if they break this rule, the proposed penalties are potentially becoming open to civil lawsuits from the damaged party or having access to a federal service (discount window lending, which is when the government gives a bank access to short term borrowed funds in order to cover for brief shortages of liquidity) revoked.
│ │
│ │ The main worry I have is that this type of legislation could very possibly be challenged on first amendment grounds, because it requires private institutions to do business with entities they may consider politically objectionable. And refusing to do business with an entity for political reasons is generally protected by the first amendment, because otherwise the government would be forcing said institution to do something in opposition to their political beliefs.
│ │
│ │ Conditional funding based on the politics of the funded institution is a very unexplored legal issue right now, with most instances of it lately being Trump cutting off colleges from federal grants for allowing students to protest the Israeli government. In theory it's a practice that will probably be struck down, but banks as a pseudo-utility may be held to a different standard. It's just really hard to say either way.
│ │

 

[east]

Can't u subscribe to actual porn sites with mc and visa?

most fetish sites went under because of pressure from mc/visa, the ones that are left like kink or insex are shells of their former selves

even mainstream sites like brazzers have had to censor/delete hundreds of scenes/entire subsites on order from their payment processors

the steam/itch thing is the handiwork of a far-right australian andrea dworkin, who also got tyler the creator banned from australia

here's another of their founders discussing the fundamentalist christian ideology behind their crusade, their goal's to erase all lgbt characters from games while pretending it's about protecting women:

Daniel Principe takes on Porn Culture - CPX - Centre for Public Christianity

Issues around consent, pornography and sexuality are a minefield to navigate for young people today […]

publicchristianity.org

they've even started getting news articles about them censored:

This Group Takes Responsibility for Steam’s Payment Processor Censorship Policies — They Just Implied ‘Pervert Nerds’ Cause Society’s Problems - VICE

Group Behind Steam Censorship Policies Have Powerful Allies — And Targeted Popular Games With Outlandish Claims - VICE

 

[KFBF]

Would using PP be a workaround? Is the fear from the CC companies that the government might drop a hammer on them? Otherwise who cares.

 

[MajesticLion]

Giving zealots a beachhead is never a good idea.