This is something I’ve been wondering about. Witcher 3 has an M rating yet its ‘sexual content’ is at the level of soft porn erotica at best. I’d say there is quite a difference between that and Submission Maid Mansion* featuring explicit sex and the more deviant aspects of pornography.
*not an actual game
I am OCD about going through my queue on Steam so I see everything. The last two days about half of my queue - 25 games or so - have appeared to be pretty hardcore porn games.
Note to self: do not go through Steam queue while wife is watching. Or daughter.
Well, since I’m from Germany… I am curious about this ‘restriction’ which actually isn’t one. The product is legal here and sells great according to the publisher - just not on Steam due to insufficient means of age verification. When you buy something in Germany not meant for young persons (under 18), porn or Call of Duty, your age has to be verified… like for sure…and that’s where - according to law - Steam falls short…
What I don’t understand is since when and why Steam is an exception to that rule (I can buy all the games labeled 18+ without verifying my age)… and why it isn’t anymore when it comes to these games…
@Navaronegun What’s your source? I doubt what you worte about ‘banning activities online that encourage of the trafficking of women’ applies here.
I enabled adult stuff and then went through my discovery queue and not a single erotic game in there. I feel cheated.
Same. To whom do I complain!?!?!
I’m remembering now that I really predicted this!
I wrote a post here 3 or 4 months ago replying to the news of ‘now Steam will accept everything, if isn’t illegal or outright trolling’. I replied to that with ‘wait, does that mean is going to accept porn? Porn is legal’.
And here where are now…
Controversy over games with decensoring patches seemed to be the trigger for the entire policy shift so it was a good bet porn was coming.
When Steam asked me about mature content it was four questions and made an explicit distinction between “Sexual Content” and “Adults Only Sexual Content” so unless they got overzealous games like The Witcher aren’t getting lumped into anything.
Exactly, games like Witcher with some softcore in them where it is not the main point are a different category than adult sex games that are about sex.
There really should be a different category for games that contain “mature content” (Boobies, that is. Ludicrous amounts of violence and death are totally fine!) and games which are explicitly sex games. I have absolutely no problem with the latter, but I also have absolutely no interest in them. I don’t think it really does anyone any good by filling up my queues with games like that.
It seems like if they just give these “new” games a specific category, say adult visual novel or something, it would be easier to weed them out. I am curious about the upcoming games. I’d hate to have to banish most of them to don’t see.
The other thing is, I almost never use Steam to look for games. I know what games I want based on other sources, but I am not sure the other sources will cover these kinds of games, once they come out.
They definitely need much better tagging and organization. Almost none of the tags that currently exist are specific enough to convey meaningful similarities, especially individually, which is how they seem to be used quite regularly. And I can’t block pretty much any tag because it will include games I do care about. Like, I don’t want VR only games because I don’t have VR. But the VR tag applies to games that merely offer VR support. And I do want to play some of those. Similarly, there are games I enjoy with nudity and sexual content. But I don’t play them for the nudity and sexual content, so I don’t want a pile of games that focus on that.
Dang it. I guess I should put those back. I just assumed that tag was for VR only games.
I think for VR you can turn off the “show virtual reality content” box while leaving the tag enabled and then you get the behavior you want. Complaints about tags still stand for everything else, though. Adding a few mature content filters hasn’t changed the reality that both their user analysis and general case filtering options are awful.
So since we get adult games now, or just porn, does this mean Steam is going to sell the movies too? I’ve seen zero reason to have a movie library on Steam compare to my existing can stream on most thing libraries, but if they don’t care about their content then it seems like a possibility.
Just to test, my girlfriend and I enabled the “adult sexual content” option in our preferences and went through fresh discovery queues. She got zero porn games, and despite the fact that I actually play visual novels and assorted Japanese games on Steam, I only got one thing resembling a porn game, and it’s been on Steam for a year. I did a second queue, and (along with a crazy amount of high-profile Japanese games, like Yakuza 0 and NieR Automata) got another year-old game from the same developer as the one game in the first queue, plus a random Russian HuniePop knockoff that was added a few days ago. 24 games, and only one “adult game” that was added after Steam changed their rules.
That would make sense. Which is why it doesn’t work that way.
One must also remember it is a tool being wielded by the community.
Are you saying that because the community can add tags? And to clarify, I haven’t seen a lot of weird ones despite that.
No, they don’t get to pick which tags are available. But they are the ones assigning tags to titles.
You will, for example, see a lot of stuff tagged as “psychological horror” because people think it’s funny to imply it’s scarred them in some way rather than because it’s actually horror.