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The rules of pay

Steam cracks down on some sex games to appease payment processors

New rule against "certain kinds" of adult content accompanies removal of "incest" games.

Kyle Orland – | 161
One of the few safe for work promo pictures we can show you of "Interactive Sex: Incest Sister," which was recently barred from Steam. Credit: Steam
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Valve's famously permissive rules for what games are and are not allowed on Steam got a little less permissive this week, seemingly in response to outside pressure from some of its partner companies. In a Tuesday update to the "Rules and Guidelines" section of Steam's Onboarding Documentation, the company added a new rule prohibiting "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. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content."

On its own, the new rule seems rather vague, with no details on which of the many kinds of "adult only content" would belong in the "certain" subset prohibited by these unnamed payment processors and ISPs. But the trackers over at SteamDB noticed that the publication of the new rule coincides with the removal of dozens of Steam games whose titles make reference to incest, along with a handful of sex games referencing "slave" or "prison" imagery.

Holding the keys to the bank

Valve isn't alone in having de facto restrictions on content imposed on it by outside payment processors. In 2022, for instance, Visa suspended all payments to Pornhub's ad network after the adult video site was accused of profiting from child sexual abuse materials. And PayPal has routinely disallowed payments to file-sharing sites and VPN providers over concerns surrounding piracy of copyrighted materials.

Since Valve's 2018 announcement that Steam would allow any games that aren't "illegal" or "outright trolling," the company has shown some difficulty deciding where specifically to draw the line when it comes to adult content. Before this week, Valve's rules prohibited games that feature explicit images of real people, adult content that isn't labeled or age-gated, and content that is "patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers." The guidelines also prohibit "content that exploits children in any way," a rule that seems to have affected some non-sexual games that feature school settings or characters in school uniforms.

This time, though, it seems Valve is being pressured to implement a new rule on in-game content by outside payment processors, rather than by its own interpretation of speech laws or acceptable social norms. And those outside companies have a lot of leverage here; avoiding third-party payment processors altogether is nearly impossible for a company like Valve, which stopped accepting Bitcoin as a payment option in 2017 due to the extreme volatility of the cryptocurrency's value.

The removal of a handful of incest games might not be seen as a major issue for most Steam gamers. But the fact that Valve apparently sees the need to bend to content rules imposed by other companies could plausibly have wider effects in the future.

Photo of Kyle Orland
Kyle Orland Senior Gaming Editor
Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.
161 Comments
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S
Sajuuk
As always, two things can be true gross: a lot of content on Steam is fucking awful, and payment processors acting as judge, jury, and executioner of what people are functionally allowed to buy is fucking awful. It's doubly awful when they care a lot about sex, and not at all about stuff like, I don't know, Nazis.
G
Goose306
As always, two things can be true gross: a lot of content on Steam is fucking awful, and payment processors acting as judge, jury, and executioner of what people are functionally allowed to buy is fucking awful. It's doubly awful when they care a lot about sex, and not at all about stuff like, I don't know, Nazis.
To be clear, payment processors are doing this because of changes in the legal landscape and the general long-term conservative trends occurring in western society. Generally, they are more than happy to skim fees off the top of any transaction. But when the judges clear them to be party in lawsuits over revenge porn because they facilitated a transaction, then they are going to consider pulling their services in areas of higher risk. This was called out by Boston University in 2023, and is one of the reasons that civil rights groups such as the EFF directly opposed the Take It Down Act.

To quote EFF above:
The takedown provision in TAKE IT DOWN applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the bill. The takedown provision also lacks critical safeguards against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Services will rely on automated filters, which are infamously blunt tools. They frequently flag legal content, from fair-use commentary to news reporting. The law’s tight time frame requires that apps and websites remove speech within 48 hours, rarely enough time to verify whether the speech is actually illegal. As a result, online service providers, particularly smaller ones, will likely choose to avoid the onerous legal risk by simply depublishing the speech rather than even attempting to verify it.

Emphasis mine. Note payment processors are not "small", but the point about depublishing speech stands.

These changes will continue, but getting mad at the payment processors is the incorrect response. They are being driven by legal precedent and laws being implemented, and lawsuits involving them directly. The cost of doing business with these riskier segments has increased with legal repercussions and/or reputational harm, so they can no longer support it. It is their policy changes, but they are being shaped by forces larger than themselves.

EDIT: Added direct quote from EFF, fixed some grammar.
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