On Steams Removal of Certain Adult Only Games

General Discussion
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Hello everyone! For those of you who don’t know I have been in the middle of moving and working on a large project at work for about the past month or so, and while I am not 100% back yet this current issue with steam is important enough I feel I should try to dedicate some time to address it.

Before we get to far into it I want to remind everyone that while we allow some flexibility around our “no politics” rule when it comes to matters like this, we do still have some guard rails everyone needs to adhere to:

  1. We ask that the discussions stay largely on the facts of the matter at hand
  2. Minimize any discussion around politics to only the minimum required for this subject
  3. Be even more civil and respectful then you may be in other topics and do not attack other users for their opinions or views on the issue

To give a quick example, we will be discussing a group called Collective Shout, but any discussion about them should stay around their involvement with the matter at hand and not veer into discussions about the topics the group represents.

So What Happened With Steam?

Steam recently added Rule 15 to their What you shouldn’t publish on Steam section of their on boarding docs which states the following:

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 particular, certain kinds of adult only content.

According to Steam DB the removal of a large number of adult themed games happened soon after, with the majority focusing on games with themes of incest and rape.

Why Did This Happen?

Details on the reasons for this are currently sparse but Valve has confirmed the addition of Rule 15 was due to pressure from their payment processors. Valve has not specified if it was only certain processors or all of them that where applying pressure.

Currently most news outlets covering this speculate it was mainly driven by Visa and MasterCard due to their similar actions against Patreon, Onlyfans, and Pornhub in the past. SteamDB speculates that PayPal may have also been applying pressure since paypal was not available as a payment option in some regions around 5 days leading up to the rule.

A group by the name of Collective Shout claims to have been responsible for the pressure placed on valve but to what extent they actually influenced the payment processors is up for debate with some sources pointing towards the UK’s technology secretary slamming steam and the past actions of Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal as more likely factors then Collective Shout’s open letter.

Why Does This Matter To Us?

Due to Valve’s hands off approach to games, Steam has become a semi viable store front for those looking to try to make a living off of the fetish games they make. The addition of a rule like rule 15 though opens the doors for incidents like what happened with Patreon banning fat fetish content before they rolled it back a bit.

This makes distributing games through Steam more risky for devs as they could just find their game has been removed from sale or may not even be allowed to be sold as well due to violating the rules and standards of one or more of Valves payment processors.

What About Itch.io?

I have seen some speculation around this impacting Itch.io, but currently its not likely. Itch.io already has a rule like rule 15 in their ToS. They also use a “bring your own payment processor” setup that pushes the responsibility of complying with a payment processors onto the devs. This makes Itch much more resistant over all but comes at the cost of exposing the devs to more risk directly especially since Stripe and PayPal both have a history of refusing to payout accounts that violated their ToS.

So What Does This Mean Overall?

Right now, its hard to say. Valve is a big enough company that they likely have custom agreements worked out with all their payment processors so they are not likely as restricted as a small dev or individual would be or else games like CoD would be in the firing line as well. On the other side though adult content tends to be an easy target as it tends to be dismissed at large so we could see further crackdowns there.

For right now all that can be done is to see how this continues to shake out.

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While this write up is nice and all, I can’t help but feel this situation with Steam is a big nothing burger.

I hate to be that guy, but you’d put priority on this matter over the whole site enshitification thread response?

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That is probably likely but the issue is its a risk that devs who want to try to sell their games will have to keep in mind now. Also, Visa and MasterCard where the two main drivers behind Patreons decision to try to ban fat fetish and feederism content last year so its not without precedent.

Thats a fair question, I did this bc I have seen a few posts trying to talk about this go a bit to far into the politics side of it and get removed due to it, so wanted to do this write up to set the tone for further discussions on it.

The response to the enshitification thread is still my main priority though, its just going to be a big response over multiple posts. My last big work thing is mid this week so hope to get to getting the posts out addressing it no latter then next week.

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I appreciate your response. The groups that were mentioned probably did veer into political territory (I wish it didn’t, because I only see them as the same mindset).
I more greatly appreciate that you researched other factors into this issue, and shone a light on it. I had no idea (and the OP of the video probably doesn’t either) that there could be a greater power in play.

And for anyone on here that says it is nothing, remember the mindset “give them an inch, they’ll go for a mile”. If they reach their goal with paid games, free ones could be their next target. They’ll just keep pushing until someone tells them “no”.

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I mean, the inch in question is rape/incest, but hey, to each their own.

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While that IS the justification, they’ve already gone and released a statement along the lines of “this is good, but we also need this done…”; Those categories were just the easiest targets.
We’re not forced to play them if we don’t like them, it should be live and let live when it comes to non-cultish fiction.
If you justify their actions with “it was this and this, so it’s no big deal”, remember our community will likely get the same treatment if their crusade roulette somehow puts us in the crosshairs. We’re niche, but that is hardly a defense.
ALL porn is just ONE of their targets, and we’re in that type of community. Especially with how prominent furries have gotten, a community that’s been considered pretty adjacent to us, the entire community this is built around will not be “passed over” if they go further.

Edit: above is probably over the top. I apologize. I typed before I thought. I’m leaving this up for anyone else who gets too dismissive though.

But I do think I should point out, we’re in a fetish community that:
A.) has blueberry inflation, which was technically started from the named mishap happening to a child,
B.) Vore, which is technically a form of cannibalism,
C.) and popping, which can be portrayed as lethal.
There’s also other types of disturbing aspects of the weight, expansion, and inflation community that are pretty fucked up when you think too deeply about it, such as the that the very term weight gain is pretty much fetishizing an unhealthy body standard, the opposite of the anorexic body type (avoiding extremes and all that in daily life).
So, when I see other fetishes that can get pretty disturbing for my tastes, I… admittedly try not to judge when I consider that I myself am in a glass house. So long as they keep “those” interests in ONLY the realms of fantasy, I just let it be.

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I would like to point out that even this community doesn’t treat all fetishes equally. Sexualization of minors is strictly forbidden, even if it’s just fictional. We’ve drawn a line between acceptable fetishes and unacceptable ones. It may be a more inclusive boundary than many communities’, but it still exists.

Incest and rape are damn close in terms of how disturbing they are to most people, even in fictional form, and that’s what made them easy targets for removal. Because in the end, people don’t usually judge these things using cold logic and consistency. They use their emotions. They play “good fetish, bad fetish” based on how they feel about the individual fetishes. (There are other considerations too, but that’s one of the most fundamental aspects of it.) So generally speaking, there are always going to be some fetishes that get banned and some that don’t. Most communities won’t go with an all-or-nothing approach, even if that’s technically the fairest way to handle things. Rather, the community is going to draw a line that reflects the community’s feelings as a whole. All we can really do is try to apply pressure where we can to keep the line in an acceptable place.

All of which is to say: I’m all for defending our community from encroaching prudes, but I’d rather be a hypocrite than inadvertently defend CP in the name of fairness.

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I’m just worried rules like the new Steam one can escalate into issues like with my state in the US, where adult websites require you to upload your AI and allow for your face to be scanned in order to verify your age. And that makes me uncomfortable because I don’t want that data stored on a companies server, especially associated with adult content. And as much as it sucks I’d rather skip out on paying for a fat fetish game I’d otherwise support if it meant I had to share my personal information.

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Again, don’t think that you’re going to bargain with anyone that’s targeting porn: they’re not about what’s right, they’re not about protecting anyone (again, guarantee that they read books that are popular with most women, which have Twilight and 50 Shades material and then some) - they want to control others.
Collective Shout hasn’t just gone after porn in the past, they’ve gone after games like Detroit: Become Human, and were successful in removing GTA: 5 from stores in Australia (that one guy was right that their name existed for longer than I thought).
Their goal is control, and so long they think they can push further, they will. There is no end goal for them, only control.
And we are not excluded.

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I never said anything about bargaining with them. I’m sure we’re on their hit list no matter what. I’m just saying that I’m not willing to take a stand against them specifically over their takedown of incest and rape. Frankly, I don’t want to defend that type of content, and from a pragmatic viewpoint, I consider it risky to associate with it. Fat fetishism in its simplest form isn’t widely accepted, but it isn’t nearly as widely reviled as incest and rape. I’d rather not make it any easier for the prudish groups to lump us in with them.

(Perhaps you might be about to say, “But they’re going to do that anyway!” Yes, they probably will try. But that doesn’t mean they will succeed. We don’t have to make it easier for them in that regard.)

The basis of your concern is a slippery slope argument. You’re assuming that if one fetish goes down unopposed, they all will. But that type of reasoning is considered a classic fallacy for good reason. As I’ve already explained, I don’t believe that the end result will be all-or-nothing. A line will be drawn somewhere. I don’t know where. I hope fat fetishism won’t be on the wrong side of it. But regardless, I think that opposing them right now, while they’re fresh off a moral-high-ground-victory, would be difficult and risky. You’re right to be concerned, but at the very least, wait for them to pick a more defensible target.

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I feel that linking incest and rape together is pretty clearly a ploy by them specifically to make this more palatable, because rape is universally maligned for good reason and as a result CNC is also considered creepy and wrong. BDSM was the same for centuries. However, anyone that has even opened a standard pornography website can confirm- incest and fauxcest (step-) has to be one of, if not the MOST common fetishes out there for straight men especially, outside of things like “big boobs” (which hardly qualifies as a fetish for our purposes outside the extremes). Lumping them together like this is for the purpose of saying “oh, so you defend rape and CP?” every time someone opposes censorship by fucking Visa of all people.

Their goal is the universal banning of everything the “Moral Majority” crusading group hated, because MM splinter groups are the ones funding them. Hell they might target Itch for hosting TTRPG content at some point. I think leveraging the wide-scale outrage among gamers about this is a perfectly valid way of arguing against this.

That said- Visa, Mastercard, etc have already banned these things before, and it resulted in the Patreon fat fetish ban. Fat fetishists are a comically tiny minority in comparison to the stepmom/stepsis fetishists, so I feel this is going to be a “And then they came for me, and no one remained to speak out” situation (not trying to compare them to the Nazis, but when we have a couple thousand people arguing against this stuff a year from now when they ban fat content, it’s going to be laughed off. Although who knows, they might just ban all porn before then.)

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Honestly, I think the Nazi comparison is apt, because groups like these won’t stop, even if they’re successful in banning all porn everywhere, because next they’ll go after non-sexual depictions of LGBT people in media as “Fetish works” just like they’re already going after non-sexual fat kink, and then they’ll go after any form of straight romance that doesn’t conform to their narrow moral standards.

It is exactly what has been happening with the assault on Trans Rights. The Christian Right lost on gay marriage and decided to pivot to attacking an even smaller minority than gay people in the hopes of removing an important ally.

There is no endgame with these people. If they don’t have a boogeyman to fight, they’ll make one up.

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You clearly glossed over “Twilight and 50 Shades and then some” - rape is actually a common theme in those kinds of books, and I don’t know about incest (I don’t read those books but I’ve seen a video from someone who has).
There’s also the fact that “depictions of incest” is actually a pretty broad term when you look deeply into it - there was actually this one game where it was the bad end, but someone still wanted it taken off there, simply due to any depiction of incest.

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some good news (hopefully): apparently the japanese FTC hit VISA with some anti-monopoly stuff and VISA has applied for a “commitment plan” that supposedly this type of pressure would not allow.

source
I don’t know if what this guy is saying is true tho, this stuff goes over my head

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I think one important thing to remember is that to these people, literally any depiction of LGBT people, whether it’s porn or Arthur, is something that they see as equivalently sinful.

They’re picking the battles they think they can win in the hopes of making things easier, but don’t be surprised if they go way harder soon.

Which is to say, they can’t be appeased or compromised with, since they see every victory as a beachhead from which to launch new assaults.

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Apologies, but I haven’t read those books for myself either, so if I missed a point you were making, that’s probably why. Sorry.

I was going to say more, but I realized I would just be repeating myself, so I’m just going to stop here.

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Agreed. Another thing we should keep in mind is that, despite how loud and obnoxious these assholes can be, they are in no way representative of the majority view, so they will always be fighting at a disadvantage.

These people need to be fought at every opportunity, even when it looks like a losing argument. Because, as King Pyrrhus shows us, you can lose every battle and still win the war if you make it too costly to fight.

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Welp, I take back saying this post seems like a nothing burger now. Wish it was, but completely wild what happened with itch.io over night. Linking the other thread for full context: Itch.io DELISTED ALL NSFW GAMES! - #4 by AnonymooseProduction