Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: Valve Cranks Steam with Visual Novels, Then Reverses Wheel

Valve has openly allowed for most games to be sold on the Steam marketplace for well over a decade, outside straight-up porn titles that would require “AO” ratings from the ESRB and other exceptions. Getting games approved temporarily became rough when developers had to depend on the community for them with Steam Greenlight. But after realizing that didn’t work in terms of combatting issues regarding an overcrowded marketplace, and only made things frustrating for developers who wanted their games on the most popular PC gaming service, they ended it. Since then, it’s been mostly smooth sailing.

I say “mostly” because Steam is having significant overcrowding issues these days, and that’s not improving. It’s bad when a large company like Square Enix has to link to their gaming titles on Steam through their official websites for players to have easiest way to find them. Given that, just imagine how rough it is for smaller developers, especially when Valve takes a 30 percent cut. However, Valve appeared to find a way to combat the overcrowding issue over the weekend, with perhaps the worst plan.

On Friday, several visual novel publishers like MangaGamer claimed they received notices from Valve saying their games would have to remove sexual content within them by the end of the month. It took all of them by surprise, and they took to their blogs and Twitter to immediately voice their displeasure with Valve, which ensured that it reached the pages of the enthusiast press. The games targeted just happened to include anime and manga-style character designs, and the definition of “sexual content” was so vague that it could be applied liberally to plenty of software.

Though all the games targeted dealt with sexual themes, most weren’t pornographic in nature. In fact, MangaGamer mentioned that their game targeted, Kindred Spirits, offered “an earnest and tasteful exploration of sexuality,” making them less pornographic than several AAA games on Steam. Those who’ve played the game agreed with their assessment. Unsurprisingly, games like The Witcher 3 weren’t targeted as part of this crackdown, since Valve needs big games to attract a big audience and keep them on their service. Smaller developers aren’t quite as important, which made this another case of a big, faceless corporate entity picking on the little guy. It appears a team at Valve fully believed the false stereotype that all visual novels of this type are pornographic, eerily similar to one that existed for anime overall for years.

It didn’t help when developers like HuniePot, of puzzle/anime waifu chat game Huniepop, called this an “anime tiddy holocaust,” (I mean, come on) which only helped drive that stereotype. Given the, uh, integrity shown by them in the past, of course, it’s hardly surprising.

Valve gave the developers until the end of the month to remove the sexual content from their games, or they’d face potential removal. That’s a nigh-impossible task for a developer to fulfill within a mere thirteen days, since the plots and decision-making in these games are dependent on those moments. Others, however, are about sexuality, which would give these developers no choice but to remove everything. With the timeframe given, there’s a good chance this was only a guise of fairness, and that Valve was fully aware the teams had nowhere near enough time to adjust their games. Removal was always the plan.

After seeing several complaints about this everywhere, Valve appears to have backed off this, as the developers received notices that their games are no longer up for recertification. But the question is whether they changed their plans due to considering the publishers’ responses, or because they didn’t expect this negative a reaction from fans and the press. Given the history of how these situations tend to progress, there’s a much higher chance of the latter being true. This also means the issue may not truly be over.

But why did Valve decide to go through such lengths in the first place? Fixing the overcrowding issues is one scenario, but it’s possible the National Center on Sexual Exploitation could have also had something to do with it. They made a blog post insinuating they were solely responsible after waging a two-year campaign against them, though developers don’t believe it was them alone.

There’s been no official answer from Valve, which shows how this is in direct contradiction to their Steam Direct initiative, as VentureBeat correctly argued. Here, Valve promised they would be more transparent with developers and publishers on the service, instead of esoteric like they’ve been with this issue. It appears as if Valve won’t reverse course on any bad decisions unless they’re publicly pressured to.

The organizations whose games were targeted are breathing a sigh of relief here, but they’re still on edge. They’ll be observing Valve’s moves and motives with increased scrutiny from here on, and I’m sure they’re aware that this issue could reemerge in the near future.