Business Steam rules updated to prohibit content that violates rules set forth by payment processors and banks - Valve's rules regarding what developers "shouldn't publish on Steam" have a new clause regarding standards set forth by payment processors.

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/steam-rules-updated-to-prohibit-content-that-violates-rules-set-forth-by-payment-processors-and-banks/

https://archive.ph/NXq04

Valve's rules regarding what developers "shouldn't publish on Steam" have a new clause regarding standards set forth by payment processors.

2025-07-16 17:17
Amber V



Valve has updated its rules regarding content that developers aren’t allowed to publish on Steam (as reported by Game*Spark [archive]). The “Rules and Guidelines” section of Steamworks Documentation now has an extra clause, and it suggests that publishers are required to comply with rules and standards set forth by various third parties involved in processing electronic payments. The rule seems to be predominantly related to adult content.

What you shouldn’t publish on Steam:
15. Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.

Prior to the update, the list included 14 clauses, prohibiting things like hate speech, malware, sexual content depicting real people and any form of exploitation of children. The new 15th clause suggests that Steam may additionally have to crack down on specific types of adult content in response to the requirements of payment processors and banks. There are currently no specific examples of what this may entail.

Update (2025/07/15 at 18:30 JST): According to SteamDB [wayback], a large number of games has been removed from the platform in the past 16 hours. Judging rom the list, it appears “sex simulator” type games with keywords such as “incest” and “slavery” make up the majority. There are some confusing cases like the removal of the Ace Attorney-inspired investigation game Trails of Innocence, although this could be a coincidental deletion.

On a related note, various video game and manga hosting platforms in Japan have in recent years run into trouble with payment processors and credit card networks. Due to certain content on the platforms going against the (often undisclosed) rules and standards of third parties handling payments, the platforms ended up without support for credit card payment. This has led to loss of revenue and even the closure of platforms like Manga Library Z. It is possible that Steam’s new rule is a means to prevent such complications from arising, however, as the specific “rules and standards” of the payment processors are also unclear, publishers might need to be extra cautious with releasing their games on the platform.

Related articles: “It’s a security hole that endangers democracy itself.” NieR creator speaks out against payment processors pressuring Japanese adult content platforms

Visa Japan’s CEO says disabling card payment for legal adult content is “necessary to protect the brand”

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Niche Gamer: Steam updates rules to comply with payment processor censorship (archive)
Wccftech: Steam Publishing Guidelines Updated With Clause Prohibiting Content That Violates Payment Processor and Bank Rules (archive)

Rock Paper Shotgun: Valve change Steam's rules to let banks and credit card firms prohibit "certain kinds of adult only content" (archive)

In particular, this could lead to a stifling of games that are in any way non-conforming, particularly given the current climate of repression in Valve's home country, the USA. I know about the rule change thanks to Youtuber and self-described former game developer NoahFuel Gaming, who has posted on Bluesky about the potential fallout for projects the banks and financial corporations consider "adult" because they deviate from reactionary framings of sex and gender. As the Youtuber writes: "Queer content gets flagged as 'explicit' even when it's PG. A trans dev making a personal story? 'Too controversial.' A surreal queer VN? 'Sexualized.' Financial deplatforming in action."

GamesRadar: Steam now prohibits games that violate the "rules and standards" of payment processors, banks, and more, and users are worried it might affect more than just "certain kinds of adult-only content" (archive)

"Yeah... this is something that looks innocuous at first glance but it's a trojan horse," another believes. "LGBTQ+ has a habit of being mysteriously flagged as 'adult only.'" On ResetEra, similar points are being shared, as one writes: "Today it's porn games, tomorrow any game with LGBTQ+ content because it ends up labelled as 'adult.'"

Notebookcheck: Steam tightens adult content rules after pressure from payment giants (archive)

As spotted [archive] by TheGamer, this triggered a mini-purge according to the Steam Database, with many problematic games such as "Incest Tales", "Wolf on Rail", "Sex Village", "Slave of the Police Officer", and many more, being delisted from the storefront.

GamingOnLinux: Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed (archive)

 

[HTTP Error 404]

What's funny is that those who want incest media to be stopped, will have a blind spot for star wars. Just in the same way that anti-racists wanted racist movies to be banned, yet thankfully, had a blindspot for Blazing Saddles.

Forget Star Wars, the people who went after this shit OPENLY DEFENDED CUTIES. A movie about pre-teen girls doing stripper routines and rubbing their crotches at the camera. Literal softcore CSAM. But somehow the silly almost certainly AI slop generated "uwu stepdad what are we doing on the bed [pomf]" games got their attention, becuase it's not about morality, it's about establishing their portfolio of skulls so they can keep going after others and start demanding danegeld to go away.

 

[teriyakiburns]

If you want to enact real change, get MasterCard to censor the furries

They already have.

 

[FlipTopBox]

While this weird Aussie feminist group is worthy of ridicule, they are essentially just useful idiots. Don't forget that payment processors have been targeting porn for a while at this point. Like I've said before, I shed no tear for "Sexy Daughter Incest Rape Sim 2025" but this won't stop there. What's stopping payment processors from choosing to not do business with FPS games or gun manufacturers? We already have parents of school shooting victims trying to sue Call of Duty and gun manufacturers for "promoting guns to children". I'm sure that would make a pretty convenient excuse. Point is that the feminists while retarded are not real main enemy here.

 

[Terrifik]

duo post

null chastize the kids about not staying on target.

https://x.com/XJosh/status/1947340377003802768

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https://x.com/XJosh/status/1947336067620721098

full retard war explaining patriot act to normies

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HTTP Error 404 said:
Forget Star Wars, the people who went after this shit OPENLY DEFENDED CUTIES. A movie about pre-teen girls doing stripper routines and rubbing their crotches at the camera. Literal softcore CSAM. But somehow the silly almost certainly AI slop generated "uwu stepdad what are we doing on the bed [pomf]" games got their attention, becuase it's not about morality, it's about establishing their portfolio of skulls so they can keep going after others and start demanding danegeld to go away.

 

[StacticShock]

Point is that the feminists while retarded are not real main enemy here.

pretty much so, not to mention that these jews have wormed themselves into owning guberment people by the fucking balls and they will kill, not in minecraft, actually fucking kill you to keep their power as is.

following what the other kiwi said i'd be delighted to see a petition pass to force europe to discuss this only to see how many degrees the politicians would bend their backs in order to not touch visastein and masterberg.

duo post
null chastize the kids about not staying on target.

retarded tourist endimyion taking the fucking bait in order to keep the grifting, he hardly touches the payment processor things and mainly focus on the group themselves forcing steam to bend the knee, i am only posting this because youtube is retarded enough to recommend me this moron.

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

not in minecraft, actually fucking kill you to keep their power as is.

Not now though. But you always have to remember that these are the same type of people who killed trillions of free thinking people like sardines in an oil spill for a single millennia under the name of God in the medieval era. Billions more by directing or indirectly funding communist regimes and staring WWII in the 20th century.

You stand in front of and stare at the descendants of this sort of scum.

 

[Fcret]

I will remind all burgers to write your representatives about the Fair Access to Banking act. It's easy to sit back and accept blackpills but we're on the verge of a generational shift in politics. The neolib boomers are dying and retiring en masse and we have an opportunity to push legislation from the ground up with younger congressmen before the lobbyists and bankers get their tendrils fully into them.

It costs you literally nothing to write a letter and it's your duty as a free man to tell your representatives what you think. Young politicians of all political alignments know how important access to financial services for politically-inconvenient speech are when you're a newcomer and don't have the full backing of massive political machines. Put aside your left/right warrin and push for bankers to bend the knee.

 

[Terrifik]

the third finger has currled

https://x.com/TheGatorGamer/status/1947298179109544075

https://x.com/luwudco/status/1947268745522479210

https://x.com/luwudco/status/1947321786514751969/photo/1

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

Also,

Note that they forced civitai to ban all of these since around half a year ago, nobody complained because they thought it was right.

The list also excludes underage characters and schools (background/school uniforms) but you get the big picture.

Some of them are not really vague, but others I think you can hit once you get a single foot wrong. They do not care about context. If they do we will not have ESRB in the first place.

the third finger has currled

https://x.com/TheGatorGamer/status/1947298179109544075

https://x.com/luwudco/status/1947268745522479210

https://x.com/luwudco/status/1947321786514751969/photo/1

View attachment 7673420
View attachment 7673419View attachment 7673424

Is this still Collective Shout/Australia or completely something else? Won't be surprised that it's the EU/UN for real this time unless the guy lives in Australia.

 

[Fcret]

Is this still Collective Shout/Australia or completely something else? Won't be surprised that it's the EU/UN for real this time unless the guy lives in Australia.

I think it's just Wise. Wise is used for personal banking by a lot of "unbanked" individuals which means it has a long-standing problem with illegal sex work being done using it so I think they just have a blanket ban on it for themselves rather than being enforced by the card networks.

 

[Poisonbreath]

It's been talked about plenty already, but why does the content matter if it's all fictional? If there's nothing real involved in the process (real people as characters, tracing, csam as reference, etc.) then why should it matter?

I don't really care how degenerate or disgusting it is if it's all fiction. I can just avoid it and the people who enjoy it. The freaks who enjoy it aren't going to stop being freaks that enjoy it if it gets banned. They're still going to be getting this stuff somehow, better to keep them in fiction and off anything real. Pushing them underground also makes them harder to keep an eye on and it'll probably be easier for the most malicious of them to do shit like groom kids.

 

[Terrifik]

Is this still Collective Shout/Australia or completely something else? Won't be surprised that it's the EU/UN for real this time unless the guy lives in Australia.

AUS. but no names for face but, AUS. gov is involved.

 

[Fcret]

It's been talked about plenty already, but why does the content matter if it's all fictional? If there's nothing real involved in the process (real people as characters, tracing, csam as reference, etc.) then why should it matter?

I don't really care how degenerate or disgusting it is if it's all fiction. I can just avoid it and the people who enjoy it. The freaks who enjoy it aren't going to stop being freaks that enjoy it if it gets banned. They're still going to be getting this stuff somehow, better to keep them in fiction and off anything real. Pushing them underground also makes them harder to keep an eye on and it'll probably be easier for the most malicious of them to do shit like groom kids.

I think a bigger point is that even if you have a problem with it as fictional content, it's not really appropriate for regulation to happen on it at the level of financial institutions.

If you hate drawn loli pornography, then it should be regulated via an actual statute with actual hard guidelines about what is and what isn't allowed so there's no arbitrary fucking of people and people who are wrongly impacted have a method of recourse via the court system. No one wants to do this though because it's easier to just browbeat payment processors than deal with the messy challenge of convincing voters and legislators.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

I think it's just Wise. Wise is used for personal banking by a lot of "unbanked" individuals which means it has a long-standing problem with illegal sex work being done using it so I think they just have a blanket ban on it for themselves rather than being enforced by the card networks.

Wise still goes through Stripe / MasterCard. They're still beholden to the machine, they're just being allowed to exist. Probably so if it comes up in congress or a court of law they can point to Wise and go "no, see, they're not debanked, we allow them a little reservation where they can't cause any trouble for respectable people or goyim."

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

AUS. but no names for face but, AUS. gov is involved.

So this is still Collective Shout then. Because we know Collective Shout is the Australian Government.

It's been talked about plenty already, but why does the content matter if it's all fictional? If there's nothing real involved in the process (real people as characters, tracing, csam as reference, etc.) then why should it matter?

The definitions are extended to include fictional characters to facilitate witch hunts. Cross the line by only a foot and you are getting canceled and/or deplatformed, no tolerance, no mercy.

Think of the Dark Ages where you will die for researching philosophy, but the priests can have entire harems of 10 year old boys. Obviously you will not die because we still live in an ostensibly civil society where conflicts are resolved non-violently, but it's of the same nature.

 

[God of Nothing]

It's been talked about plenty already, but why does the content matter if it's all fictional? If there's nothing real involved in the process (real people as characters, tracing, csam as reference, etc.) then why should it matter?

I don't really care how degenerate or disgusting it is if it's all fiction. I can just avoid it and the people who enjoy it. The freaks who enjoy it aren't going to stop being freaks that enjoy it if it gets banned. They're still going to be getting this stuff somehow, better to keep them in fiction and off anything real. Pushing them underground also makes them harder to keep an eye on and it'll probably be easier for the most malicious of them to do shit like groom kids.

may as well just legalize drugs
after all, people are going to get to it anyway, right?
and when we legalized weed, its use totally didn't blow up and make the problem worse

I think a bigger point is that even if you have a problem with it as fictional content, it's not really appropriate for regulation to happen on it at the level of financial institutions.

If you hate drawn loli pornography, then it should be regulated via an actual statute with actual hard guidelines about what is and what isn't allowed so there's no arbitrary fucking of people and people who are wrongly impacted have a method of recourse via the court system. No one wants to do this though because it's easier to just browbeat payment processors than deal with the messy challenge of convincing voters and legislators.

This guy gets it.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

So this is still Collective Shout then. Because we know Collective Shout is the Australian Government.

I missed this. What connection do they have with the AUS fedboys? That would certainly explain why Steam and Vice folded so quickly.

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

I missed this. What connection do they have with the AUS fedboys? That would certainly explain why Steam and Vice folded so quickly.

The moment I see them complaining about Rockstar Games and forcing the Credit Card Companies and Steam to comply to Australian censorship laws I INSTANTLY knew what is going on. This is obvious Australian Fedwork taken to a global scale.

This is the entire list of criteria for a ban and a list of games they banned in their own soil. It's more or less the same things that Collective Shout and the credit card companies used as pretext to remove games from Steam.

Also I have to note that they are likely not the only commonwealth country behind this entire string of events that led to the Steam ban; it's very likely that the European Union itself is involved in some of the other platforms.

 

[Poisonbreath]

may as well just legalize drugs
after all, people are going to get to it anyway, right?
and when we legalized weed, its use totally didn't blow up and make the problem worse

I don't really think this is comparable. Hard drugs are illegal but you're still allowed to both do them and depict them being done in fiction, and I don't think being allowed to depict it in fiction led to some kind of explosion of drug abuse. Loli isn't CSAM and furry feral isn't animal abuse, it's a depiction of a child/animal and not an actual child/animal. This is why tracing and abuse photo references were pointed at as examples of it being wrong and something that should be gone after, since those are involving the real thing and require something real for it to be created. It's harmful to the living being that is used.

I just really can't care if someone wants to get off to fake shit, even if it's repulsive. I can't honestly say anyone has been harmed if John Smith the degenerate twitter gooner beat his shit to nazi guro/necrophilia 3D hentai games in the comfort of his filthy roach-infested coomden. No matter your stance on morality and how foul it is, it's legal in places like the US at the least. Payment processors shouldn't have the ability to control it like this. Not only will it extend to anything they want to take down, but you'll see it spread out to things like books and film/tv as well.

 

[Black Yoshi]

Looks like 4chan is trying to set up a gamergate sequel in retaliation:

https://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/510964903#p510981963

(Archive) https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/510964903/