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”

---

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)

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

The Korean game getting censored is directly from the SK government it has nothing to deal with NGOs.

I was more referring to AssCreed Shadowz. They literally put an interracial romance with one of the most celebrated female figures in Japanese history who is a direct ancestor of the imperial line. If groups like this aren't stopped then every game will have mandated humiliation rituals like this. Hasn't happened yet, but it will.

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

I was more referring to AssCreed Shadowz. They literally put an interracial romance with one of the most celebrated female figures in Japanese history who is a direct ancestor of the imperial line.

That's Ubisoft being Ubisoft. It was so bad that the Japanese Government complained about it and it's something.

Also you don't need nearly every single game to be looking like AC Shadows for the gaming industry to be obliterated. If half a year to a decade later every game is forced to follow a code where "no exposed skin of underage characters (vague terms BTW) past a certain point, no incest or contexts of incest, no portraying sex or sexual appeal in a positive manner, at least 1 character that is of a non white, non-yellow complexion and ethnicity is recommended but not required and no portrayal of sexual appeal or romance in underage characters or students, including dating scenarios" or something among the lines of this (because the Commonwealth Nations and Credit Card company CEOs round tabled together and decided on it and the code can take place internationally ignoring local legislations), it's more than enough to destroy the gaming industry until the code is inevitably yeeted out of orbit. One of the most prominent reasons is because the word "underage" covers a range so broad that you can trigger it accidentally and you are not given leeway for ignorance.

Arguably the only good thing about this is when the countries decide that it's not worth it, everything comes back to normal in a few years.

Needless to say things like Doom Mortal Kombat or anything from Rockstar will stay. They've been used to violent games with borderline gore.

 

[Terrifik]

https://x.com/ChibiReviews/status/1947276313355534629

I'm glad only 65k feel not knowing the patriot act.

 

[Welfare Bum]

Gabe is one of the few men in the world with the money, connections, and incentive to create his own payment processor on the level of Visa and Mastercard. If this continues, we might see Gabencard become a thing.

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

View attachment 7672683

https://x.com/ChibiReviews/status/1947276313355534629

I'm glad only 65k feel not knowing the patriot act.

The better option is to make sure governments can no longer use credit card companies to bypass national-level laws and had to censor locally for themselves and face the consequences of messing with the wrong crowd. Credit Card Companies or NGOs have no power to do this on their own, it's far-left, radical globalist commonwealth governments giving them power for plausible deniability.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Gabe is one of the few men in the world with the money, connections, and incentive to create his own payment processor on the level of Visa and Mastercard. If this continues, we might see Gabencard become a thing.

It's a daunting task that could wreck his relatively small (yes) company if it goes wrong. Musk has a better chance and is actually talking about it. He wanted to make X a WeChat-like "everything app" from the start.

 

[Wodanaz]

Please god let the video game industry crash soon.

 

[StacticShock]

that fucking sucks and it just confirms that banks have been bullying japan for a while now, i mean it's kind of deserved because they targeted l*li and sh*ta shit specifically but still, they stretched out to other things instead of just keeping pedoshit buried as it should be.

The better option is to make sure governments can no longer use credit card companies to bypass national-level laws and had to censor locally for themselves and face the consequences of messing with the wrong crowd. Credit Card Companies or NGOs have no power to do this on their own, it's far-left, radical globalist commonwealth governments giving them power for plausible deniability.

wishful thinking, especially with how lobbying works but you'd need a bloodthirsty retard to put theses faggots against the wall and they will try desperate moves, don't forget that.

It's a daunting task that could wreck his relatively small (yes) company if it goes wrong. Musk has a better chance and is actually talking about it. He wanted to make X a WeChat-like "everything app" from the start.

he also has dealings with blocking null's paypal too so there's that, if paypal was forced because of faggots above it which are both visa and mastercard then he has a valid reason to fund his own payment processor, according to the proceedings from the kerfuffle thing, registering a payment processor is a couple of millions and needs certain checks, not to mention it opens for litigation from the faggot duopoly...

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

Gabe is one of the few men in the world with the money, connections, and incentive to create his own payment processor on the level of Visa and Mastercard. If this continues, we might see Gabencard become a thing.

I see this happening if these Steam policy changes impact sales, or make life hard for Valve employees. All it will take is a few Valve employees saying "we hate dealing with this bullshit drama" and the company will go its own way. It is very likely to be an in-house processing service they only use for Steam, but it's a step in the right direction.

 

[The handsome tard]

I dont care for the porn games, I really dont but Im glad Steam has a function to block most of them from searches. They are cheap and numerous because everyone knows that you will play those things for a couple of minutes and then shame delete it until you install it back up.

With all of this said, I'd much rather that bank and Valve mind their own fucking business because I know that things like this hardly remain "just this one thing" for very long.

 

[Jace on ice]

Everyone in here who smugly smirked and sneered about "gooners" and how this was a good thing is a gigantic fucking retard.

It took collective Shout less than three days to move on from Futanari Incest Sister 3 to trying to ban mainstream movies, games, and music.

You are complete and utter 75 IQ brainlets who cannot comprehend cause and effect.

Fuck off back to reddit or Mumsnet or whatever brainless retard hive you came from.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

Gabe is one of the few men in the world with the money, connections, and incentive to create his own payment processor on the level of Visa and Mastercard. If this continues, we might see Gabencard become a thing.

You do not understand the extent of the problem. Steam is worth 7 billion USD give or take. Mastercard MADE 25 billion last year and handled 9000 billion USD in transactions. And that's just MC, it's not including Visa and to a much lesser extent AmEx and Discover. It's also not covering the spider web of banks that are all connected directly to MasterCard. And they're the actual bedrock problem -- STRIPE is the actual payment processor, and they handled 1000 billion last year. 1% of global GDP. 16 billion in revenue.

To replace them means making your own credit card, completely from scratch. Your own credit card machines. Your own ATMs. Setting up agreements with banks -- who will actively blacklist you because you're disrupting things and MasterCard told them to blacklist you. Your own web presence. Navigating a nightmare hellscape of regulation specifically intended to keep you out. Dealing with banks having signed deals with MasterCard that explicitly preclude them ever working with you and your "untrustworthy network."

Gabe does not have the money to replace that. Hell, ELON does not have the money to replace that. No one does. No NATION does.

And that's just a monetary thing. Lets assume you want to step into the arena -- do your own payment processor. Ok. How do you take payments? Credit cards? Not without MasterCard's approval, and they won't give you approval without obeying them. But it also means you can't take Visa because it's the same payment network. So no credit card payments for you! Some payment processor. Congratulations, you're right back to square one.

Crypto? Good luck with that. No one uses crypto except weird autists online, cryptobros, and people buying illegal shit. Even if you did do Crypto, how are people going to buy crypto without being able to use credit cards? And what happens when Coinbase gets a memo -- "Block these Crypto addresses from these guys or we cut you off from being able to handle money." Congratulations, your crypto-bro alternative to Stripe and Paypal is now dead.

This has happened repeatedly already.

The reason MasterCard and Visa control everything financially is because they control the bank to bank money transfer network and if you want to deal with them, you obey their rules. They always had weird rules on porn (mostly cause porn companies fail the optics game almost as bad as the /pol/ "why don't you just declare yourself a proud nazi in public!?!" tards) but they didn't really go that far with things. That is, at least, until MasterCard's leadership got in good with George Soros (yes, really) and decided they had the right to culturally engineer the west. Now it's very much a huge fucking problem.

If Elon thinks he's going to do "XMoney" or "XPay" or "XCash" or whatever his XAutism makes him think he's going to Xdo, he'll find he HAS to get in good with MasterCard/Visa and Stripe and Paypal. Which means kissing the ring and doing what MasterCard, Visa, AmEx, Discover, Stripe and Paypal tell him to do, because if he disobeys them, they cut him off and he can't do XMoney or XPay or XCash AND he can't sell X Premium. And there's nothing he can do about it. He already announced an agreement with Visa for his XMoney thing. He already kissed the damned ring.

The only way out of this is legislation. But the US Government is completely subverted, beyond useless, and the people involve will absolutely, 100%, kill to keep this power and the boomers would rather us all die than risk the line not going up -- and any disruption to the big boy banks, the bank to bank transfer network, the payment processors, etc would risk that.

I hate to be the bearer of blackpills, but that's the state of play right now. We're basically just going to have to wait until the current MasterCard leadership dies of old age and hope the next batch isn't as activist minded. Unless some miracle happens -- Trump remembering the OCC rule about fair access exists, the one that was passed and Biden shitcanned via executive fiat as literally one of his first things he did while in office -- it's not going to get better.

If you want to enact real change, get MasterCard to censor the furries or the faggots or the free palestine guys. That'll drive the left into a tizzy and maybe they'll back off. But I doubt it.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

If you want to enact real change, get MasterCard to censor the furries or the faggots or the free palestine guys. That'll drive the left into a tizzy and maybe they'll back off. But I doubt it.

They have been censoring the furries a lil bit, didn't get much pushback that I know of. Free Palestine is interesting because some of those donations for needy families are ending up in Hamas coffers for sure.

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

trying to ban mainstream movies, games, and music.

Which one did they censor? SCP doesn't count.

If you want to enact real change, get MasterCard to censor the furries or the faggots or the free palestine guys. That'll drive the left into a tizzy and maybe they'll back off. But I doubt it.

Or you can learn from the examples that freed Doom, Rockstar Games and Wolfstein. They'll stop it if the EU parliament is forced to admit that it is not ok because the entire gamut starts from there. But otherwise yeah it's really grim and I meant it.

The only way out of this is legislation. But the US Government is completely subverted, beyond useless, and the people involve will absolutely, 100%, kill to keep this power and the boomers would rather us all die than risk the line not going up -- and any disruption to the big boy banks, the bank to bank transfer network, the payment processors, etc would risk that.

Evil triumphs if good men do nothing. This is why the first thing they do is to lower your ability to speak out by going after easy targets (like pixiv fanbox). If too many people start getting concerned to the point where the Mainstream Media report it in a negative light and multiple commonwealth countries are actually put under risk of pushing too far, they'll stop it. Otherwise there's "no holding back". It's like this since ancient Babylon and it always will be -- if you see a bad law, start pushing back immediately before it's too late.

 

[Jace on ice]

Which one did they censor? SCP doesn't count.

They have a list of things they intend to target on their website ranging from Call of Duty, to Taylor Swift's music, to Forever 21.

I genuinely think we may have found the final boss of no fun allowed. These hags literally hate everything.

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

They have a list of things they intend to target on their website ranging from Call of Duty, to Taylor Swift's music, to Forever 21.

I genuinely think we may have found the final boss of no fun allowed. These hags literally hate everything.

Oh that list. I don't know what else but as far as I hear you say it sounds like stuff that are completely unrealistic to even cut.

 

[evrae]

Posting on this site in support of this shit is indicative of a failure to understand something as basic as a breakfast question. It isn't just porn, we've seen this easily extend to "hate" or even "offensive" speech as this site has found out the hard way with how difficult it is to even donate to Null. It isn't just porn that these puritans chase after, they're squeezing your freedom to express yourself in all directions all the time.
It won't stop at weird degenerate porn, just like how it won't stop at Kiwi Farms, this group alone tried to gun for GTA and that David Cage game for reference! There will always be more. Groups like these start with easy wins that are hard to support because it pushes the window further and further, granting them the momentum they need, and when more serious shit starts getting pressed upon, it's hard to stop.

I personally hate this degen shit, I hate lolishit (which isn't even part of this situation to begin with, but everyone seems to keep fucking bringing it up), I hate porn. But what I hate even more is payment processors, and quite frankly I don't fucking trust them to be benevolent overlords much like how I don't trust government overreach by extension (as an aside). You give the fucking chance to these cunts and they'll gladly ride with it as far as they can, far, far beyond what you think should've been targeted in the first place.

"Why would you allow weird fetish cartoon porn?" to "Why would you allow porn?" to "Why would you allow these things that don't adhere to [schizophrenic moral code designed to lord over you]?", it is the same shit as "Why would you say such things and post on Kiwi Farms?" to "Why should you say 'nigger'?" to "Why won't you use my pronouns?" to "Why won't you tie your ID to your internet connection?" and so on.

This canary is covered in shit, piss, vomit. To put it bluntly: it fucking reeks and nobody is a fan of carrying it around. Unfortunately, it's the only canary that picks up carbon monoxide we seem to have in a mine riddled with tunnels full of gas. Much like how the Farms is the other shit covered canary that only sniffs out the gases the first can't pick up on.

Rape and eat payment processors.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

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.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

Yes, the second they normalize going after porn and say, online gun stores, they'll go after hate and non-mainstream opinions, especially opinions like "maybe MasterCard shouldn't do this" and "maybe globalism isn't the best thing for the average person."

It's not ok just because it's porn. If I want to buy and play "Sex With Hitler 3: Sig Howdy" in the privacy of my own home, that's between me and God, not some stupid cunt in Australia and not some Jew running MasterCard.

 

[Do Not Touch Me Pls]

Yes, the second they normalize going after porn and say, online gun stores, they'll go after hate and non-mainstream opinions, especially opinions like "maybe MasterCard shouldn't do this" and "maybe globalism isn't the best thing for the average person."

I assure you that if multiple countries (yes, commonwealths included) didn't stand up against the government's covid lockdown policies back in 2022, a huge portion of the world, especially at the east will be eating bugs in VR pods and starving to death because their Decentraland job pays under minimum wage.

These people are cowards unlike Nurgle and the Dark Eldar and this is no exception. The more you pushback the less likely they are going to press on.

I personally hate this degen shit, I hate lolishit (which isn't even part of this situation to begin with, but everyone seems to keep fucking bringing it up), I hate porn. But what I hate even more is payment processors, and quite frankly I don't fucking trust them to be benevolent overlords much like how I don't trust government overreach by extension (as an aside). You give the fucking chance to these cunts and they'll gladly ride with it as far as they can, far, far beyond what you think should've been targeted in the first place.

I told you so moment. A second and worldwide Comics Code Authority would be absolutely fatal for even a year.

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.

It gets worse. The United Nations are the lawmakers and they extended the definition to include fictional children in 2019. UN Peacekeepers have triple digit child rapes per YEAR.