Valve Will Not Censor Games on Steam
The news is out! After several controversies in the past few weeks over content that will or will not be allowed on the Steam platform, we have now received a clear message from Valve that they will not be dictating what games are valid or not and will be focusing on giving users tools to filter out games that they are not interested in seeing.
Visual Novels and Anime Games
Around May 18th, a message was sent out to various developers of games such as "Mutiny!!" and "Huniepop" that they would have to remove any suggestive adult content from their games or they would be taken down within two weeks.
This obviously became quite a controversial topic, since it was very clear that only anime-themed games with adult content were being targetted. Games like the "Mass Effect" franchise and "The Witcher 3" have openly marketed themselves as being sexually explicit for years now. It's not even as if Valve's relationship with the anime community has been that bad in the past, so this was beyond unexpected.
Now, Valve was quick to respond the very next day, when all of the involved developers received follow-up emails telling them to ignore the previous email, and that they would discuss this further.
--- #WAIFUHOLOCAUST UPDATE ---
HunieDev (@HuniePotDev) May 19, 2018
I have just received word from Valve apologizing for the confusion, saying to DISREGARD their previous e-mail about the violation, that they are in the process of re-reviewing the game and will follow up soon.
Active Shooter
A more mainstream controversy that popped up later in the month was the one surrounding the "Active Shooter" situation. In the game, you play as an armed combatant either attempting to kill NPC students or as a police force trying to take the school shooter down.
This game got the attention of the mainstream media since school shootings have been such a prominent issue in America for years now, but especially so in 2018. The very thought of glorifying such a heinous act as entertainment was unacceptable in many peoples' eyes.
If you ask me, do I think there's any harm in what is essentially a low-effort "Counterstrike" re-skin? Sort of, but not because I think it's a bad influence that will ignite the resolve of disgruntled high school students all across America to pick up their dad's AR-15. I think it's a bad idea to allow clearly low-effort, asset-flipped content, designed to sell off of shock value to be sold on Steam.
I'm assuming that this game is the reason for why Valve's message still included that they will remove games that are "straight up trolling".
The Resolution
So now that Valve has handed out judgment, anime-themed adult content on Steam should be safe from now on. The free market will dictate what games deserve to exist on the market and nothing more. But as was mentioned before, there does need to be an exception made for games that have been created within a short period of time to quickly stir outrage within the public.
Although, some developers such as Huniedev have now lost faith in Steam as a platform and have opted to expand their operations to other sites such as Fakku and Nutaku. It's unclear how much of an impact that, specifically, will impact Steam in the future, but it has definitely given some momentum to those competing services.
I don't know if it was a matter of pride or what, but I've generally tried to avoid "porn game" sites because I never saw HuniePop as a "porn game". To me it's a "real game" that just happens to have some nice melons in it.
HunieDev (@HuniePotDev) May 19, 2018
But given this new instability with Steam and frankly the overall growth and improvement and seriousness I've seen develop in many of these weeb stores, I'm willing to let that stance go.
HunieDev (@HuniePotDev) May 19, 2018
Many in the community are writing off this move as Valve simply "giving up responsibility" of controlling content on Steam, but they clearly stated that they are working on tools that will allow users to find games that they want to play. We'll have to see if these tools will be of any use whatsoever, but I have faith that they will continue to improve the platform in a way that still respects the freedom of people to dictate culture by themselves without the guidance of an almighty big brother.
Personally I'd probably never find content such as asset flips or games such as Hatred or this school shooter game if it wasn't for news coverage from gaming websites and youtubers. I usually find my steam games through google rather than through steam's own search engines. So I've never had the problem of trash preventing me from finding quality games, though that may be because I'm primarily a console gamer.
So basically I'm glad that games like Hunie Pop with more explicit content will be able to remain on the platform. The PC is where new and non-mainstream devs thrive and it's nice to see their efforts legitimised.
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Good news for gamers and freedom in general. Games that are explicit in nature or in bad taste should be able to be released, and then the free-market should decide whether said game is a success or not.
I agree that developers should have the freedom to depict whatever they want in their games 100%.
But I do want to stress that if you're planning on making a controversial game that centers around shooting up a school, it should be held up to some standard of quality. Hoping to bank on shock-value sales with a game that took a month of development is something that should be discouraged.
I concur wholeheartedly.
I have some mix feeling about this.
They have always had a few issues. I think they should be censoring out the bottom of the trash barrel and giving it the axe. There so much junk and bloat they really need work on things better. The last thing buyers should ever face on a platform is a conmen looking to make a quick buck off the buyers before fading off into the darkness with a sack full of money.
Most of their money comes from the top 100 games and even than its more like top 10. They deciding to not have a game due to what they deem as not being reasonable should not be something they fear away from. If they let the markets decided then really they don’t need 99% of the games they sell so that could become a dangers way to “determine things” as well. I’m sure there are lots of accounts they have with devlopers that are just not worth there time or expenses in maintaining.
Sometimes you have to keep on eye on the way "freedom" is sold to you.
Quite honestly, I'm with alberenza on this one. So long as I just search anything that I'm interested in playing, I've never felt like I was wading through miles of garbage.
I feel Valve's current tools are satisfactory for my everyday use, and they are saying it should only get better from now on.
I'm also not quite understanding how Valve would "need" any games in particular in a free market. Developers either make money or they don't.
Even though I don't want to play it, why does anyone have the right to say that the new "Zombie Solitaire" isn't good enough for the market? Somebody may want to pay for it, and they should have that right.
One of the biggest lures for developers to want to be on steam and pay the cut they do is value handles the processing of payment side of things. A really bad game is going have a bunch of charge backs and returns or other nonsense. If you are a company and you have a couple of charge backs not a big deal. If however a company notices they had 10k charge backs dealing with your company due to customers wanting their money back that starts to be an issue. On top of that you add in a hundred copies of that was where bought using stolen information that was discovered after the fact of merchant account paying out funds to the developer. Now you got an issue if it really is a low performing game. Even more so since that game not making a lot and any cent that developer is paid out is going be long spent and not recoverable.
Thankfully Value has a very solid and amazing relationship with a lot of card company and places like PayPal. What would have shut down a number of company ability to process payments is not the same treatment they get. I mean heck PayPal has been known to “leak” when certain sales events are going happen.
The other issue is the one man/small team of low quality asset filers and content thieves. They will go thought companies like some people change their shirt. It’s not a big deal for them to just make a new company or even have a friend be the “ceo” of that company so they can get another game on steam.
Stolen content can be a huge liberally since steam is after all disrupting it. Now most companies know it’s better to work with them than try and sue them for making available for sale stolen content. They simple do not employee enough people to quality control things very well with how many games are for sale on the platform.
I forget if there standard cut these days is 35% of a games sale or higher. Which for the most part is more than enough to deal with the bad and nonsense they do. They have to take in a lot just to make up for their costs to cover so many different games, charge backs, fraud, servers, and staff. If they where more selective I doubt they would need to take such a large cut.
At end of the day they are a private company. If they don’t want a game they have every right to say no. A game developer can go start their own website and sell their game from there and deal with distributing, payment processing, and customer services. That is not worth it for the garbage out there.