Nighthawks, the long-in-development vampire RPG due to be released later this month, is the latest game to run afoul of Steam’s increasingly stringent rules regarding adult content. According to publisher Wadjet Eye Games, the game has been labelled ‘Adults Only’—causing it to be removed from Steam search and outright delisted in certain countries like Germany—despite claims from both developer and publisher that the RPG’s depictions of sex and nudity are very mild.
“We are aware that Steam has classified Nighthawks as an adult game and has excluded it from searches,” Wadjet Eye boss Dave Gilbert wrote on Bluesky. “We are working on it. Valve is under the impression that this game is way sexier than it actually is.” Gilbert further commented that “Valve is basically treating Nighthawks like a porn game!” in responding to a reply to his initial post.
A game being labelled Adults Only can affect its visibility in several ways. Adults Only games will not appear in Steam searches by default, requiring users to log in, verify their age (which requires the use of a credit card in some countries) and adjust their preferred content settings before they become visible. In addition, the label can cause games to be delisted outright in certain countries.
Why are porn games banned in Germany? What a stupid place.
IIRC they were very slow to label video games “art,” with the various protections that brings. That’s why Turok 64 had a buck-wild German port where all the humans are robots. Also why games with Nazis were either banned or massively censored until some time this century. Wolfenstein 3D was officially unavailable for ages, and as late as The New Colossus, they replaced a lot of blatant symbols and names with wink-wink alternatives.
Come to think of it, that affected games as late as The Orange Box collection. German TF2 has no blood, and dead players explode into junk props instead of ragdolling or gibbing. I don’t remember if Left 4 Dead was similarly censored to hell because I don’t remember whether they consider zombies people.
probably lobbied against by Grossen Kinkenspielezeug, they’ve got a lot of influence in germany
Fun fact: prostitution is legal in Germany.
They’re not. The seller just has to verify customer age, same as when e.g. buying alcohol in the supermarket or entering a gambling hall.
Valve has simply been refusing to do so, even though eID makes privacy-preserving age verification trivial, frankly.
Quit spreading lies
How is eID age verification not privacy preserving?
Well, it’s true. The planned solution would give the site just a yes/no answer to the question: “is this user 18 years or older”. That is as privacy-preserving as can be.