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.
Steam brings this on themselves, really. We have all of these trash games, Hatred, and games that literally don't include executable files on the storefront but some censored nudie CGs on the storefront ? Absolutely blasphemous!
What this says about Steam is that they would rather have broken games and even games that have sex otherwise, such as The Witcher, but they won't allow these other games because...they're pornographic, I guess? Nevermind that these games, rather often, don't have sex as the meat of the overall product, and they're required to be censored without being able to offer or point to uncensors on their store page.
And what's more, it only really seems like bullying because Steam, rather than deciding to respond to these developers and talk to these developers or even be transparent about specifically what they want out of the content on their platform. All things considered this treatment is pretty fair, I'd say. Driving these games off of Steam also takes a good deal of money away from them, as I don't know if y'all have seen the prices for the backgrounds for Huniepop, but I can safely say Valve's made a hefty sum off of it, and yeah, those games really could just go elsewhere and do fine enough. It'd be a wonderful time for some other competitor (such as GoG, for instance) to swipe them up and advertise them, maybe partner with companies like JAST and Mangagamer, and basically steal a whole demographic from Steam. Not a big one, but it'd earn them a solid amount of moolah and support.