INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
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
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.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
And PayPal has routinely disallowed payments to file-sharing sites and VPN providers over concerns surrounding piracy of copyrighted
