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Nightdive Studios is fighting to keep long-lost games out of obscurity
by Philipp Rüegg
How an anti-porn campaign is also threatening safe-for-work games on Steam
31/7/2025
Translation: Patrik Stainbrook
It’s made quite a buzz. Steam has removed numerous games from its platform, with itch.io following suit. All of it down to financial service providers apparently exerting pressure on both portals.
But what’s behind this mass deletion? And who’s really putting pressure on whom? Well, if you’ve only heard about this topic in passing, you’ve come to the right place.
One Australian conservative group, Collective Shout, was involved in the campaign against No Mercy. The group campaigns against the sexualisation of and violence against women and girls. In this context, they also combat pornography, revealing advertising, independent sex work and various sexual fetishes.
In 2014, for example, the group wanted to prevent US rappers Snoop Dog and Eminem from performing in Australia because their lyrics reference violence against women.
After No Mercy: more games to be pilloried
In the wake of the No Mercy controversy, Collective Shout wrote an open letter to the CEOs of various payment providers on 11 July: «[…] we have since discovered hundreds of other games featuring rape, incest and child sexual abuse on both Steam and Itch.io.»
True, anyone who merely peeks at what games go online on Steam every day knows there’s undoubtedly no shortage of pornographic games, ranging from interactive porn to borderline or clearly transgressive fetish games. Apparently, there’s enough of a customer base for this. Still, they usually remain hidden from the vast majority of gamers. So far, Steam itself has only intervened when games have been reported as abusive.
Collective Shout itself hasn’t published a list of games that it considers to contain problematic content. The group is putting on pressure in another way. They think it’s an outrage that the aforementioned payment providers – including PayPal, Visa and Mastercard – generate profits with unethical and violent games.
The court ruling: a sore spot for payment providers
According to their own information, the group had already contacted Steam several times before about these games. No response. However, they’ve now found some influence in companies such as Visa and the like. Think about it: gaming platforms process all purchases via these payment service providers. Without them, the platforms can’t operate.
For payment providers, on the other hand, Collective Shout has hit a sore spot. In 2022, a Californian court ruled that Visa can be held jointly responsible if the company facilitates payments on platforms that distribute potentially illegal content. The lawsuit was filed by a woman who appeared as a minor in a non-consensual video on adult platform Pornhub.
This means that payment providers are theoretically obliged to verify all offers on their partner platforms for possible legal violations. Collective Shout’s open letter gave sufficient reason to believe that illegal content may be available on Steam and itch.io.
The easiest way to avoid legal risks is to consistently remove potentially problematic content from the platforms. And that’s exactly what happened here. Steam implemented this via a new guideline for game providers.
Steam introduces new rule and hands over responsibility
If you want to put a game on Steam, you have to adhere to the platform’s content guidelines. For example, your game can’t promote hatred, violence or discrimination. Child abuse «of any kind» is banned too. Sexual content must be labelled accordingly. Well-known people may not be shown naked or performing explicit acts.
Until now, these rules have left enough loopholes for many, many dirty games. Detroit: Become Human is also still available on Steam, despite the alleged child abuse. Steam seemed open to discussion in specific cases.
However, Steam is now evading responsibility with a new guideline that appeared in the rules recently – no public announcement, by the way. Banned content now includes anything 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.»
This means that on top of dealing with Steam’s guidelines, game providers also have to follow along with payment providers on Steam. This is overly bureaucratic and divorced from reality. Even worse, it gives payment processors the right to co-determine games offered on Steam.
Based on this new rule, Steam was able to remove well over a hundred games from the platform. Steam admits it faced pressure from payment providers.
Payment processors can determine what’s safe-for-work
It’s a bad sign of things to come, treating emotionally gripping games with complex themes such as Life is Strange or Detroit: Become Human as problematic, even threatening to do so. Studios could lose their sources of income without violating any laws. Or, to avoid any potential problems, they could just develop cosy games without any depth.
It’s possible that the restrictions will be relaxed again after more detailed checks. We don’t know how potentially thousands of candidates will be examined for violations yet. The portal is currently placing all NSFW games under general suspicion due to a few possible black sheep and numerous developers are losing their sources of income.
So, it seems Collective Shout’s open letter has had a major impact. One we can’t fully foresee yet.
Header image: Shutterstock/Casimiro PT
Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
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