Steam recently added a new rule to its guidelines, and it’s a rule that is causing certain titles on the platform to be banned, while also raising ethical concerns regarding third-party financial censorship. The new clause says that “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” will not be allowed.
To put that into layman terms, if a credit card company, such as Visa and Mastercard, or a bank doesn’t like the game being sold on Steam, the game will be removed. The “kind of” good news is that most of the games facing the backlash are primarily smutty and adult-only titles.
Steam has added a new rule disallowing games that violate the rules and standards set forth by payment processors and card networks, or internet network providers. At the same time, many incest themed games were removed from the store.
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The implementation was pretty much immediate, with SteamDB listing a laundry list of adult-only titles being pulled from the platform. The games, both morbidly surprising and unsurprising, are adult games that focus on the “incest” genre. No love loss for these titles, then, but the timing of their of their removal matches up with the new clause.
This isn’t the first time that a payment processor or bank has dictated their terms and conditions surrounding adult content, and it’s certainly not going to be the last. More often than not, the argument that is used is that many of these adult-only platforms do not have enough safeguards against illegal content, such as revenge or underage porn.
In 2020, both Mastercard and Visa blocked the use of their cards on Pornhub, on the ground that they had found illegal content. The former went a step further the following year, adding a “Special Merchant Registration” requirement, in which banks that connect merchants (read: smut peddlers) must have some safety measures in place, including the ability the monitor, block and, where necessary, take down illegal content.
Again, it is unlikely that folks are going to cry in anguish over the “incest” titles, but the clause is being seen as Valve giving into the demands of financial institutions and allowing them to set the terms and conditions for what sort of video games can or cannot be made and sold. It’s a dangerous precedent, and one that could ultimately see a non-adult titles being subject to that very same scrutiny.
