Valve has apparently updated its Steam Early Access policy to no longer accept games with what the company deems to be “mature themes.” As first reported by earlier this month, gaming studio Dammitbird, which develops the adult adventure game Heavy Hearts, was not allowed to put the title on Steam Early Access because of its content.
Payment processors like Mastercard and Visa have been on video game marketplaces Steam and Itch.io to remove certain adults-only content since early summer. After a game called No Mercy in April at the behest of payment processors and an , there has been a steady expansion in the application of these new policies.
Steam, for its part, made some incredibly vague policy changes to appease the payment giants, adding a sweeping clause that promises to ban certain kinds of adults-only content before hundreds of games. Itch.io made before from its marketplace. Steam has removed hundreds of titles that we know of.
The apparent scope creep is of particular concern to small independent developers whose fairly innocuous games were banned from Steam and delisted from Itch.io. Exhumed is a mostly text-based game whose limited imagery and innuendo is worlds away from the sort of adult games that were first banned when this whole saga kicked off.
Part of the problem is how card payments are policed. Stores like Steam and Itch.io don’t contract with Visa or Mastercard directly but with acquiring banks and processors that must enforce the card networks’ brand-safety and anti-trafficking rules. This can end up influencing how work with Steam across different regions, depending on how banks in those areas are responding to the pressure exerted by Visa and Mastercard.
The confusion will continue to cause consternation among developers and consumers alike until policies on these platforms are made clearer, or payment processors relieve some of the pressure by clarifying their own standards.
Engadget has reached out to Valve for comment and will update if we hear back.
