It's no secret that Valve has been waging a war on adult content lately, with many games banned or removed from Steam. A fun gacha game called Brown Dust 2 was recently delisted, while the most high-profile example was the scary indie title Horses from notable indie developer Santa Ragione.
This is largely down to payment processors such as MasterCard and Visa, forcing Valve to pull titles they consider a brand risk, which has triggered a wider crackdown on adult content. However, looking at the horses, it seems that Valve doesn't really seem to be separating “brand risks” from actual games, which is made even more obvious by what's actually allowed on the storefront at the moment.
Valve is still letting the Epstein game receive “updates” on Steam
A prime example is a game on Steam called Epstein, which looks like a pretty generic survival game set on Jeffrey Epstein's private island. You're tasked with infiltrating the island, taking down enemies, and engaging in battle with “Jeffrey” himself. It's clearly a meme game, meant to be spewed out of the mouth of someone scrolling through a storefront rather than something actually made with love and care, but it seems odd that something like this is allowed to exist while Horses isn't.
Your credit card provider may prevent you from buying all those adult Steam games thanks to new guidelines.
Visa and MasterCard now have the power to veto games on Steam.
Epstein is also getting new “updates” in conjunction with real-life incidents that include actual allegations of child abuse, which are against Steam's own onboarding guidelines in its terms of service. Following the release of a batch of Epstein documents earlier this week, the developer behind Epstein announced an “Epstein Case Files” update coming in February that promises to add new features like PvP and story-driven side quests featuring Diddy and “Tramp.”
What makes adult games like Horses and Brown Dust 2 a “brand risk”, and isn't this a game where you've literally infiltrated the private island of a real alleged sex trafficker? While it's possible that this could happen literally in game content, like playing Epstein for a short time (yes, I really did that), there's nothing wrong with the actual content from a surface level.
It's hard to know what's going through the heads of the people at Valve when they're deciding what will and won't be allowed to sell on the platform. Given that the final build of Horses contains nothing against Steam's onboarding guidelines, how are developers supposed to make meaningful games that actually touch on adult themes without fear of being cataloged and buried?
- brand
-
valve
- Original release date
-
September 12, 2003
- Original MSRP (USD)
-
N/A
- weight
-
N/A
