So far authorized without real safeguards, the pornographic content games will have to respect new rules on Steam. The fruit of external pressure, it seems.
After the controversy comes for the time of action. In the spring of 2025, Steam deleted from his catalog No Mercya game promoting the culture of rape and incestuous practices. The subject was taken sufficiently seriously by the managers of this game purchasing platform on PC, Valve, which also decided to tighten the screw on this content.
In an update of its distribution conditions, spotted by the Steamdb site, the platform establishes a list of games “that you should not publish on Steam”. It quotes content “likely to break the rules and standards established by STEAM payment managers and associated card and banks networks, or Internet access providers.”
Pornographic and incestuous games withdrawn from Steam
A spokesperson for the Valve platform explains to 404 Media that they were informed that some games “violated the rules” of its online payment partners.
The result is progressive withdrawals of certain titles from its catalog, and all have one thing in common: they have pornographic content, sometimes referring to illegal practices. This is the case with Interactive Sex: Daddy Daughter Incest BDSMof Sex Village, Incest Tales: Webcam Daughteror Incest Tales: Sister and Mom who made it possible to pretend to be a father or mother with violent sex with their daughters.
An NGO with controllers, in the shade?
This new policy would not be the result of chance. An Australian non -governmental organization, Collective Shout, has indeed claimed this gesture as a victory. It indicates in a triumphant press release having put pressure on Visa, Mastercard or Paypal for Steam to change its policy.
But the controversy took a political turn when an investigation by vice, eliminated since, established a link between collective shout and a group of American religious activists, NCOSE, which seeks to suppress any form of pornography in culture. The withdrawal survey also established links between collective shout and transphobic associations.
It was this NGO that had tried to ban the exit from Detroit: Become Human In Australia, believing that it was not acceptable that a player could access scenes dealing with abuse on a child – that must be saved in the scenario.
Savage Ventures, which holds the vice media, had decided to delete the investigation due “to concerns on a controversial subject”, leading to the resignation of the journalist, without however questioning the elements mentioned in the article.
The excuse of the lack of editorial control
As Steam had recalled at the time of the controversy over No MercyValve has no editorial control in its catalog and therefore cannot decide on itself that a game cannot be released. But some cases nevertheless show that actions remain possible. In December 2024, a game containing the attack on October 7 of Hamas against Israel had been withdrawn from several countries, including France, after complaints from Jewish associations and the seizure of justice by Bruno Retailleau, the Minister of the Interior.
