A handful of "adult" themed game developers have received emails from Valve, requesting that the games either remove supposed content that goes against Steam's TOS, or be removed from the Steam Store entirely. HuniePop, Mutiny!!!, and The Stargazers, according to Valve, have been reported by unnamed users for "pornographic content", and are to be pulled from sale within 2 weeks if changes are not made. By technicality, none of the Steam versions of these games have such content, as it had to be censored to make it onto Steam initially. HuniePop itself, is a game that has been unchanged and sold on Steam since 2015, selling over 500,000 copies, yet it has not faced removal concerns until now. There are uncensor patches hosted offsite, but unless Steam has quietly changed its TOS, then these games met needed requirements already.

With such a claim being made years after the fact, it brings into question what content Valve considers too "racy" to allow on their digital storefront, and what games will be further removed. Two of the affected developers, HuniePot and Lupiesoft have spoken about their issue on Twitter, stating that their games "follow Steam's guidelines...we were told [by Valve] ecchi content was fine on Steam.". Lupiesoft goes on to say that this could potentially jeopardize the company, and that Steam's targeting of their games is unfair, due to a large content of western games having similar, if not more nudity.

What are your thoughts? Is this kind of removal wrong? What do you think has prompted Valve to only now take action?

We've just received some troubling news today that @steam_games has decided to pull down our titled "Mutiny!!" within 2 weeks for 'reports of pornographic content'. Now those of you who know @Lupiesoft know that we don't put that on Steam, or advertise that content on Steam.

— Lupiesoft (@Lupiesoft) May 18, 2018

- IMPORTANT NOTICE -
I've received an e-mail from Valve stating that HuniePop violates the rules & guidelines for pornographic content on Steam and will be removed from the store unless the game is updated to remove said content.

— Kyu Sugardust (@HunieKyu) May 17, 2018

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EDIT:

• Nekopara's developer's game, "Tropical Liquor" has also received an email requesting that the game be censored, or removed.
• Kindred Spirits has been notified.
• Battle Girls and Galaxy Girls has been notified.
• Re:Lord 1 has been notified.
• Roommates has been notified.

UPDATE 2: As of May 19, all developers that received this warning email from Valve, have all gotten a follow up email stating that emails about imminent removal of their games was sent out by mistake, to disregard the warning, and that the games will be re-reviewed immediately to make sure the games do indeed meet requirements to stay on the Steam Storefront.

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[DarthDub]

Fuck censorship.

 

[TobiasAmaranth]

Moderator needs to censor the above post. It offends me.

 

[gudenau]

This should be interesting to see unfold, there are many titles that fall under this category.

This could set some interesting presidents for future take downs.

 

[ThoD]

No wonder I couldn't find a couple games I had either bookmarked or in my library yesterday:/ Why did Valve suddenly decide to do that when they could simply put a clear 18+ (since it's already an actual thing) and leave them be? What's with suddenly wanting to censor the GOOD parts of mediocre games? Those games were mostly fun because of it! What's next? Cutting out violent games even if 18+ already?

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

This needs to be an issue addressed before the game is even available for the sale on the storefront, period. It's a matter of trust with developers. HuniePop has been around for many years. Unless the TOS changed, that game and others like it should already have been cleared. Any storefront has the right to define its own terms of service, which include the kind of content they are okay with selling. But it's a major breach of trust when a developer is allowed to sell a certain game for years and then be later hit with penalties. It'd be good of Valve to release a statement explaining their actions.

 

[ov3rkill]

Censorship is idiotic in this case. It's a video game. Let the artists and developers express their creativity.
Steam should just create an adult category, add some adult verification on the account if they want to keep them.
But if it can't be helped and if they have nowhere to go and publish their games, then they might as well comply and just add the links on the discussion for the uncensored patch or something.

What should be removed from Steam are those crappy games especially the asset-swapped, lazily made cloned, trashy games.
They should have no place in anyone's library. It should be purged to oblivion, sent to the black hole with no trace.

 

[Xzi]

Personally I think there are plenty of other places to get your porn, but a poor move for Valve to make anyway. We've already got enough censorship of sexuality in movie ratings, if video games go draconian too then all that will be left is HBO.

 

[Mark McDonut]

valve needs to calm the fuck down, the industry should not be pandering to any more shit policies and should be turning to parents to enforce the ones already in place.

 

[OctolingRift]

This is bullshit. Fuck you Valve and fuck censorship. Fucking pussies

 

[RedBlueGreen]

As long as the games follow the law where they're sold I don't agree with censorship. It's just another stupid double standard. A lot of fan service or porn in a game? That's a bad thing for some reason. Nudity in something people complaining like? Suddenly it's art and it's good.

I know that's not what Valve is saying, but it rubs me the wrong way all the same.

 

[Deleted User]

maybe they should just rename a small string and push that update back and tell em they censored it xD
unbelieveable... are we living in stoneage? i wonder who anonymously informed them... must be a damn poor guy/girl.... lol

 

[Scarecrow B]

And this is why we can't have nice things!

Categories and content filter were invented for a reason, it not the developers fault that some parent got angry that their kid was playing some H-Game after making an account with a fake DOB. But seriously, this only cripples game development and if things keep going like this soon the devs are going to have to release their games by pieces, like VR kanojo where you have to go to the developers’ blog to download the "other" assets to have the full game as intended.

Plus never forget that is because of shit like this that we can’t get localizations of a lot of games like Criminal Girls 2, and if there is a localization it is utterly censored.

 

[kuwanger]

What are your thoughts? Is this kind of removal wrong? What do you think has prompted Valve to only now take action?

Valve gets complaints. Rather than bothering to actually follow up on those complaints by reviewing the content spoken of and determine whether any of it actually violates ToS, they basically send out form letters demanding changes. And here we are.

If anything, my complaint would be that so much stuff is tagged "Nudity" when it doesn't have nudity. Or stuff is tagged "Metroidvania" when it's not a Metroidvania. That's an actual problem that needs to be solved. As already stated, 18+ stuff is already flagged by a separate thing and if they want they can do region based blocks on a 18+gore vs 18+sex if some region requires it by law. But otherwise, this is just Valve being lazy. It's easier to not have to actual deal with the complains with a "suck it" and potentially lose a customer to your platform than to just forward it and put the onus on someone else to prove themselves innocent.

 

[MarkDarkness]

I don't remember seeing any outcry that could even tangentially relate to this... even in terms of mass media scares and such. This must be an internal decision. Maybe some SJW/feminist person got promoted to a higher position and is trying to impose their views.

 

[XXXTORTELLINI]

Does this mean that they will have to push an update to all copies already sold or only new copies?

 

[KingVamp]

I think censorship by using ratings is fine, but even more censorship on top of that, is defeating the purpose.

 

[Hyborix3]

I have no interest with adult contents on Steam, but this is just plain stupid. We’re at the age of content creators expressing their own creativity, not going back to their backward’s ass mentality of “NO NUDITY BUT TONS OF GORE IS FINE” shit era. Everytime I see some updated garbage TOS like that, I kept thinking some SJW was hired and tried to express their views in a meeting with a megaphone

 

[The Catboy]

They've already received their rating as Adult games, that's more than enough censorship. I really hope they bring Value to court over this and fight this decision.

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

Everyone here seems to miss the point that Valve runs a private storefront and can do as they please in relation to content guidelines, especially in defense of a public image. What I think Valve is doing here is stupid, those games were approved for the storefront years ago, it's a blatant breach of trust to later take them down. But it's not censorship. Censorship would be a governing body outright banning certain games or media from being produced. A storefront has the prerogative to refuse to sell games with certain content, that's not censorship. Developers can just as easily take their game and sell it elsewhere. Steam has great influence, so obviously that's gonna hurt developers, but it's not censorship.