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'Who’s Deciding The Fate Of This Game?' The Secretive Process Of Getting A Game With Sexual Content On Steam (aftermath.site)
submitted 1 day ago by kip5608@retrolemmy.com to c/games@lemmy.world
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[-] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 78 points 1 day ago

I personally always find it weird that killing hundreds of people is okay but nudity requires scrutiny.

That being said this derives from stripe threatening Valve in the near past (which is why their previous games didn't face this scrutiny). This is a known thing that any game developer, especially one developing mature content, should know. And the content in that game is definitely mature, if the screenshots of the game were shared without context I would think it's one of those sex simulators, which I get this is not and those are just small parts of the bigger picture of the game, but that's just like saying "this chocolate bar shouldn't need to be classified as containing peanuts, it only has 1 peanut".

[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 38 points 1 day ago

I personally always find it weird that killing hundreds of people is okay but nudity requires scrutiny.

Just Christian moral panic and puritanism, which has fucked us up mentally and psychologically for centuries now.

[-] zarathustrad@lemmy.world 4 points 16 hours ago

It's much easier to have power over people who can be blackmailed for "sexual deviance" when the definition is very broad, can be tracked online, and tracking and banning are voluntarily enforced by corporate entities like banks (no-free speech problems).

[-] Katana314@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

Rather than put us against invented enemies, I like to think a lot of Christians actually don’t care much about these subjects, and that the push specifically comes from Christofascism (rich people without a soul in their body using religion as a weapon to restrict and control people)

[-] zarathustrad@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago

That's a bingo!

[-] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Which is weird because "thou shall not kill" comes before adultery in the commandments, and go forth and procreate is also somewhere in that book.

[-] Keegen@lemmy.zip 6 points 17 hours ago

I'm pretty certain that about 80% of people who consider themselves "Christians" couldn't even list all of the ten commandments if you asked them.

[-] cosmos8188@leminal.space 1 points 16 hours ago

Agreed they dont even follow the rules - unless by rules you mean their rules.

[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 8 points 1 day ago

I didn't say it made sense.

[-] VonReposti@feddit.dk 4 points 20 hours ago

Almost makes you think that the bible might have been written by humans and is just as flawed in its text as humanity itself.

[-] Nelots@piefed.zip 2 points 16 hours ago

While that's very much true, that's not really what I take away from it. The bible could be 100% true and this wouldn't really change anything in this particular case.

What it instead tells me is that people will pick out whichever parts of the bible suit their biases and follow them, all so they can feel good about themselves despite ignoring the half of it they don't like. I also don't see many Christians avoiding mixed fabrics despite their god supposedly saying that's a no-no two different times.

[-] makeitwonderful@lemmy.today 1 points 17 hours ago

There's a lot of killing in the bible as well. Moses and Joshua committed genocides sanctioned by the Christian god. I can see how people who hold the bible in high regard could be motivated to downplay the horror of murder.

[-] yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 points 17 hours ago

I honestly think its because, as per every cheesy plot in the history of ever, love beats hate.

[-] Gutek8134@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

If the problematic content isn't crucial part of the game, they can try to go for the "official 18+ patch" like some VN re-releases, which would be like adding a peanut in a separate box

[-] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

Absolutely, have the game without it and a free (or with a stupid price like 10 cents just to ensure legal age requirements) DLC that's parked as adult only. But I think in this case it might be too engrained to the core of what the game is, that they can't, and if that's the case it makes sense to mark the entire game as adult IMO

[-] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 17 points 1 day ago

Stupid question - since I have adult mode turned on in Steam, I get weird hentai games like "Slut Goblin" and "Big Tiddy Blackjack".

I'm guessing the games they're promoting are not adult games, but include sex, which is what's causing a issue? They want their game to not be behind that setting?

Is it possible to create a Adult mod or "Directors Mod" to bypass it? Something that a player can choose to get it if they want the more explicit scenes?

[-] urushitan@kakera.kintsugi.moe 35 points 1 day ago

Yeah, but it makes it a double edged sword. Why can Cyberpunk, which has a ton of sexual content, be a front page game while this, which is far more tame need to be locked behind the adult section?

[-] EggInDisguise 19 points 1 day ago

Because the latter doesn't have a massive team of lawyers available to sue over it.

[-] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago

Unless your game actually has adult content (and lots of it!) you don't want it hiding behind some adults-only flag where few people will see it.

Basically a death sentence for your game.

[-] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

The issue is that they don't want the game to be flagged:

If the game remains flagged this way, it will “have very serious implications on its accessibility and visibility,” says Pedercini.

[-] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Meanwhile, there are "all-ages" anime visual-novel games on steam with official patches hosted by the developers off-site which turn them into full-on pornos - which is the version of the game they are actually trying to sell and what people are buying it for.

And not a peep from Valve on that because it's off-site.

Must be very frustrating to developers of mainline games that by being honest and engaging with valve openly, they face far more hassle than groups who designed their game specifically to circumvent the rules.

[-] Sabata11792@ani.social 12 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Steam is OK with porn games. Banks are not. Banks have the power. Steam has to not get debanked.

I fully expect to have to download a patch from the dev when buying a porn game because of the censorship. If its not on Steam or a few other trusted platforms I won't bother paying.

The user adding the "optional" content after purchase make it not Steams problem while getting past bank censorship.

[-] arules@retrofed.com 3 points 12 hours ago

Then why isn't Valve a Bank⸮

[-] CalemitousVariantK@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago

They probably have more cash money than a lot of banks who haven't fully marked the value of their assets to market value since about 2008. I don't actually have a list of who's who, but creative accounting has been an open secret for some time and will likely become fashionable again either this year or next. Unless someone wants a banking crash or (more likely) is just too stupid to hire anyone that can stop one.

[-] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I'm only remarking on the irony that porn developers might have an easier time because they can intentionally develop the clean 'steam-version' of their game to pass review without having to declare any contents at all.

[-] lizardo@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It’s shocking that a commercial game developer didn’t consider this possibility at all. The article’s complaints about capitalism and the identity of the artist feel more like trapped in a box instead of thinking.

[-] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

They probably thought since it's nowhere near the level of some games that were allowed to go without the tag, they probably didn't need to worry about it.

[-] I_Jedi@lemmy.today 9 points 1 day ago

They should've sold the game on JAST or DLSite. They find sexual content to be perfectly satisfactory.

this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
125 points (100.0% liked)

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