In early June, Steam announced it’d be stepping back from curation entirely and not moderating what games make it onto the platform. This announcement came in response to some controversies over which games made it onto the platform, including the spontaneous notices some developers of erotic visual novels received stating that their games would need to be changed or face removal.
Instead of curating games themselves, Steam’s changes shift curation duties onto players and developers. Steam’s blog post on these changes stated that players could "override our recommendation algorithms and hide games," and that it wouldn’t "be making significant changes to what's arriving on Steam" until the curation tools were finished. Those tools were vague; there was little indication of how to find or use them, and there have been no published updates on these tools to the Steam news page. In fact, the curation tools that are currently available—the Store Preferences option accessible by clicking the drop-down menu near your username—have been available since 2016 and have remained largely the same since their release. I reached out to Valve for information on what these new tools might look like for users, but did not receive a response.
Though it’s only been a few months since the update regarding curation changes, there’s still a glaring problem: games with adult content are being held in the approval process until those tools are finished, and Valve’s SeanJ has told at least one developer that it may be months before their game makes it through the approval process.
What’s troubling about this is that the issue seems to only be affecting indie games, particularly creators of adult visual novels. Despite the claim that it wouldn’t be making significant changes to their approval process, Steam’s delay means that smaller developers are getting stuck in approval limbo because of the tools currently in development with no indication of when those tools will be ready. Though itch.io, GOG, Humble and similar platforms may offer alternatives, they simply don’t have the reach and popularity of Steam.
Worse, Steam has seemingly contradictory rules about what is and isn’t allowed on the platform. The service has tags for sexual content and nudity, so users can either search for or block games containing those features. Steam does forbid pornography and requires that adult content be labeled and age-gated in its Steam Direct program, but developers caught in the approval process claim that the offending adult content has been removed from the Steam release. The same was true of the visual novel issues back in May, where developers like Lupiesoft were told their games had to be modified or risk removal despite adhering to the platform’s guidelines.
If Steam isn’t allowing nudity, that’s one thing. But AAA games are rarely threatened by Steam’s policies, no matter how explicit the content; The Witcher and Grand Theft Auto 5 are unlikely to be threatened with removal despite containing nudity, sexual content, or both. It’s a standard that seems to primarily affect indie developers, who have to use Steam Direct to make it onto the platform despite potentially getting trapped in approval limbo. And as Kotaku reported this week, even independent games whose main focus is letting the player put together puzzles of scantily clad women are still making it onto the platform; the rules don’t seem to be consistent across the board.
People who publish through the company sign a non-disclosure agreement, making it difficult to find information about how the whole process works. Steam is notorious for radio silence, and the opaqueness of their sexual content policy—or lack thereof—is no different.
According to Jo Kreyling, co-founder and lead producer of Pillow Fight Games, Steam’s processes are a bit of a mystery even to users.
"Valve has always been an impenetrable fortress, in terms of its relationships with customers and with developers," says Kreyling in an email. "Everything about their review process has always been opaque, and over five games I've published on the platform, none of them had a similar review process. My history with Steam isn't long, but it has never been consistent."
Kreyling’s studio recently published Heaven Will Be Mine, a visual novel by Worst Girl Games. Kreyling wasn’t concerned that Heaven Will be Mine would be caught in the approval process, because Steam has been fairly clear that it’s adult-oriented games—that is, games targeted at adults with titillating nudity or sexual content, even within Steam’s guidelines—it's concerned about.
But that doesn’t mean that their filtration process is clear. Steam’s approval system isn’t just one clear yes or no. The storefront can be set up far in advance to allow players to wishlist a game, and is part of a separate review process that comes before the approval of a game build. It’s on the store page that adult content flags are set for consumer purposes, but even the adult content tag can be ambiguous. The flag could mean nudity or sexual content, but it could also mean excessive gore. ESRB and PEGI warnings may be more specific, but Steam doesn't require them.
This "adult content" toggle marks that a game's content is adult in nature, but that doesn’t mean it can violate Steam’s guidelines for acceptable content. Specific content warnings are more difficult to find—including accessibility tags, such as those for epilepsy warnings—and are set not during the submission process, where clarity might help some of the problems developers of adult-oriented games are running into. They're set on the storefront, which, again, has an entirely separate approval process.
Players of games with adult content likely don’t understand the complexities of submission, and end up frustrated that promised release dates, such as that of Negligee: Love Stories, go from a set date to an uncertain "When Steam Says OK." The lack of transparency around submission, both for developers who are uncertain why their games are being held but others are not, and for players who were promised a release date that might be missed, leads to nothing but annoyance. That annoyance can easily end up directed at developers rather than Steam and lead to lost sales.
Publishing through other services isn't always an option. Steam is a huge source of income for independent developers, meaning that a delay or lack of approval can significantly impact a games sales, and therefore the devs’ livelihoods. Though Kreyling said that Pillow Fight Games' development work could continue, losing Steam as a distribution platform would hurt a significant portion of the sales and publishing side of the business. This is a common fear for developers; though consumers do have other options, Steam holds a serious monopoly on digital distribution. If a game gets held or pulled, it hurts the already precarious chances that a game will sell.
It's hard out there for indie developers, and the opaqueness of Steam's sexual policy, combined with these new indefinite holds, only makes it harder.
