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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[Deleted User]

Go around mass flagging all the pda games. Those have violent content, sometimes to the extreme . See how quickly get change their tune.

 

[MarkDarkness]

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.

No. Not really. A modicum of previsibility is the very least a business platform can provide. Not talking about Steam in particular... any. They have financial and contractual ties with the developers, and anything that threatens the stability of that needs to be discussed in a business-like manner, not with a takedown. Otherwise, it is the same as relegating themselves to being obsolete and old like a Walmart, which is something Steam pretty much always prided itself in not being. To do otherwise is to jeopardize their position as a DRM platform developers and gamers trust.

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

No. Not really. A modicum of previsibility is the very least a business platform can provide. Not talking about Steam in particular... any. They have financial and contractual ties with the developers, and anything that threatens the stability of that needs to be discussed in a business-like manner, not with a takedown. Otherwise, it is the same as relegating themselves to being obsolete and old like a Walmart, which is something Steam pretty much always prided itself in not being. To do otherwise is to jeopardize their position as a DRM platform developers and gamers trust.

Yep, and that's what I said in my post.

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

I don't think it's censorship at all, but it's definitely in poor taste as far as developer-retailer relations go.

 

[Bladexdsl]

usually i'm against censorship but NOT THIS TIME. it's about damned time! this WEEB trash was choking steam to death! all them sex dungeon, eroge, and visual novel garbage get rid of them all good riddence. time to get steam back to the way it was. with actual GOOD games.

and fuck any of you who disagree.

 

[anhminh]

usually i'm against censorship but NOT THIS TIME. it's about damned time! this WEEB trash was choking steam to death! all them sex dungeon, eroge, and visual novel garbage get rid of them all good riddence. time to get steam back to the way it was. with actual GOOD games.

and fuck any of you who disagree.

Aww, you still think that Steam wasn't full of trash even without those weeb game. That's cute.

 

[Xzi]

Aww, you still think that Steam wasn't full of trash even without those weeb game. That's cute.

No more so than any modern console is "full of trash." It's not hard to pick out the gems and ignore everything else.

 

[gameboy]

and just like that xbox's new controller is made irrelevant for the non-disabled...

 

[Deleted member 420418]

I bet it was probably because some kids were playing it and then there parents got angry and called up valve.

 

[Taleweaver]

So if I understand this correctly, I can do the following:
1) create a "nude Freeman" patch for half life and half life 2
2) host it somewhere online
3) use this existing patch as proof that these games are pornographic
4) demand that valve sends notifications to themselves to patch their games (ignoring the fact that they need to be patched to enable it in the first place)
5) if 4 isn't met (which is, in this case, impossible), have these games removed from steam

Yeah....that makes sense...

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

I'm pretty liberal on this: if it's an 18+ game, I see no problem with nudity. Steam was pretty prudish before, but that's mostly because they have to oblige American law (meaning: ultra-violence=okay; nudity=NOOOOOOOO!!!!). This is just going a ridiculous step too far. Either the step is mere bureaucracy to meet the most prudishness of prudishes (if those are words)*, or they're facing some stupid legal battles they don't wanna face.

EDIT: I meant prudish instead of prudent. Sorry about that (and thanx @FAST6191 for correcting me)



*in that case, the conversation will go a bit like this:
Valve: "hey, guys...we've gotten a complaint about your games. You need to patch it."
Devs: "erm...we've already patched it before we submitted it to steam, remember?"
Valve: "just checking. Thanks for the response. It's probably from someone attempting to blame us for downloading nudity patches elsewhere themselves, so...it'll probably blow over. But we obviously have to make sure we're okay."

 

[Clydefrosch]

guys, publishing a game on steam isn't a right, its a privilege.
if they notice games they don't want in some form on their platform, publishers have to fall in line, or publish somewhere else

 

[anhminh]

guys, publishing a game on steam isn't a right, its a privilege.
if they notice games they don't want in some form on their platform, publishers have to fall in line, or publish somewhere else

Yeah, not every game have an honor to be on Steam. They should feel glad that lord Gaben had deem their game worthy for his platform.

 

[Kigiru]

Realy? I mean, it's obvious what's the point of these games, but there's actualy a pretty big difference between "pornographic" and "erotic" and Valve bending their asses to some crying of people probably even not using their systems at all will cost them money.

When media producers will realize that these cryings are mostly from people from the outside, and not their actual consumers? Listening to people that have no interest in buying your product is first step to death, see what happened with Marvel Comics.

 

[mgrev]

Now what about games like Grand Theft Auto V? And other games featuring sexual scenes? I'm interested in how many games this will affect.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

So I guess all those RPG Maker games that is also on steam and has the same level of content that huniepop has are also getting removed. Good thing there is other sites like humble bundle and Manga gamer that sell these games already uncensored.

Still I understand why is on steam, it's the biggest source of games on pc platform expanding linux and mac uses, but I always felt that it's perhaps not the place for the game. There is other sites that do sell games similar in content, but is just not as popular as steam with the library and ease of access, so I understand why steam was their choice of platform for selling the game.

But the fact that these are games that was already sold for long time before ask to remove, did steam not check the content of these games before allowing it to be sold? Did they suddenly realize, "Oh gosh, look at these games, we got to take them down NOW!" Seriously, if it wasn't a problem before, it shouldn't be now. Seem like 2018 is the year of ruining popular companies.

 

[VitaType]

Porn content isn't allowed on Steam? Why? It has this funny "if you pass here you will see sexual characteristics - clearly and uncensored!"-button isn't that enough to keep me safe from this crap? I really wished the US just could overcome there extreme uptightness with everything porn and nudity related . You can buy Hatred on there site, come on, steam can't be serious about this, right? (and yes, HuniePop is porn. Watch the promo video of this game to the very end. We could argue about the other two games though)

 

[fatsquirrel]

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.

Little man vs a mega corporation with basically monopoly in the business...yeah good luck

 

[Viri]

usually i'm against censorship but NOT THIS TIME. it's about damned time! this WEEB trash was choking steam to death! all them sex dungeon, eroge, and visual novel garbage get rid of them all good riddence. time to get steam back to the way it was. with actual GOOD games.

and fuck any of you who disagree.

Censorship is okay, when it's something I don't like.

 

[Nisem0n0]

It's almost like valve has that age confirmation screen when going into a games page and numerous adult related content tags for nothing. This is literally a joke. If they say 18+ content is negatively impacting their public image then the floods of trashy rpgmaker games are as well and we all know how those are just everywhere.

 

[Saiyan Lusitano]

Valve going Nintendo.

 

[migles]

altough i am against this crap of cencorship
well, if it was just theese 2 games, nothing valuable lost..
at least hunie pop was crap, i didnt played the other one but i guess it is pretty much the same
I have a very bad taste for weird games, i usualy find theses really amusing but the hunnie pop was awfull