September 7th Update:
Steam Finally Added Store Content Preferences!
That's right, after months of battles with various game developers threatening to remove their games due to containing sexual content Steam has finally added a new filter system... We covered this news and how to enable the filter options HERE!
June 6th Update:
Looks like Valve is doing a complete 180 and has walked all the way back stating that Steam should not be the ones to decide which game developer can and cannot post their game. The same goes for Steam customers, Steam doesn't want to tell customers what they can play and not play.
Good job Valve for taking a stance that makes sense for your business model, appeases your "real" customers, and ignores the outspoken minority who started this whole mess!
Check out the full blog post below:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082
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(Update from PCmag.com)
Original article:
Reacting from a 2 year campaign from endsexualexploration.org to have Steam remove games featuring sexual exploitative content, Value has responded by sending 2 week notices to the game developers to remove such content or face removal from the Steam store page.
https://endsexualexploitation.org/articles/top-videogame-company-steam-removing-sexually-graphic-content/
The following is a list of developers (and their games, if known) that have allegedly received an e-mail from Valve stating that they must remove pornographic content from their games
(List provided by techraptor.net)
These game developers have reached out to their customers and fans via Twitter showing explaining their 2 week notice of removal from Steam:
From this sudden push by Steam to filter out games featuring specifically Anime-esk adult content, Nutaku has taken to Twitter to promote their website as a potential new home for games who may be removed from Steam if they cannot comply with Valve's non specific terms.
In the end it does look like Steam is not capable of deciding what they allow and what not... Many game content and even game screenshots/artworks are getting insta banned by the smallest report... many stuff blurred/censored still...
I don't play games solely for "sexual content", and most of the games I play don't contain such things, but it still sucks for those that do.
Idiotic!
If they remove this, they should remove all those spam achievement games too.
Bye bye waifus
there goes all my waifu games
You'd think this win for us that steam backed down would be enough to show the publishers, or hosts that we don't want our games censored but sadly we are still getting out games censored, or even refused to be ported entirely because of how bad censorship is getting in certain places...
Thank goodness other game stores for such games exist. Really hope Steam won't touch the games that I've already got in my library :(
Browsing through the store lately, I can definitely see the change! If you know what I mean... ;)
Sooo glad that we finally get a positive change after all of this!
I wonder what is considered "illegal" or "trolling" for Steam games.
I am glad Valve decided to clarify their position on allowing Anime games, visual novels and games that might be controversial to some segments. Let's hope they will also actually hold true to that announcement by not acting on banning and removing games based on the automated reporting feature that was mentioned in many discussion posts, comments and activity feeds.
A HUGE HOORAY for this stance!!! Now time to look at the Steam store page once again.
Looks like Valve is doing a complete 180 and has walked all the way back stating that Steam should not be the ones to decide which game developer can and cannot post their game. The same goes for Steam customers, Steam doesn't want to tell customers what they can play and not play.
Good job Valve for taking a stance that makes sense for your business model, appeases your "real" customers, and ignores the outspoken minority who started this whole mess!
Check out the full blog post below:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082
This is a sad gamer moment if I ever did see one.
2 week deadline is off!~~~ Now it is time to put those babies on Sale!!!
Signed the petition! Thanks woosk.
My Steam group Visual novel, JRPG, Anime made an announcement to ask all readers to consider joining in on an online petition at change.org to stop these games from being removed from Steam.
The announcement:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/vnislife#announcements/detail/1673529614006914106
The petition:
https://www.change.org/p/valve-software-do-not-remove-huniepop-and-other-sexual-content-games-from-steam
Hopefully there will be a sale on these games prior to them being removed from the Steam store page.
Oh ok good that's a relief