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[Büge]

Steam removes erotic game Seduce Me from Greenlight, citing vaguely-defined guidelines of "offensive content"

This baffles me. According to the preview video on the game's website, it's no more offensive than a late-night Cinemax flick. I dunno, maybe there's a QTE where a girl barfs up a bucketful of semen and you bash her skull in with a tent peg.

When did developers get so squeamish about nudity? I remember when you could get stacks of naughty shareware games alongside Commander Keen.

[Ted Belmont]

I don't blame Valve for not wanting to be 'the company that sold my innocent little boy a porn game'. Remember Hot Coffee?

[Mongrel]

I know it's teeeechnically correct, but this still made me laugh:

the industry's longstanding aversion to sex

[Shinra]

I don't blame Valve for not wanting to be 'the company that sold my innocent little boy a porn game'. Remember Hot Coffee?

But the primary demographic for videogames hasn't been kids for a long time. Part of the digital distribution medium even allows Valve to deliberately hide content based on user age groups. With a few more account level controls they could easily implement parental filtering. There's no reason for Valve to continue to block games like this from entering their service, esp. if they are leaving it to the Steam community to determine the quality of the game or lack thereof.

I'm not suggesting the lassiez-faire fuckfest that is the Android marketplace, where every third app is a nude picture screensaver for 1.99, but there should be a point of entry for visual novels and dating sims on the service, esp. considering that it's the primary digital distribution platform for videogames. I would love to see a project like Katawa Shoujo make it onto Steam, but with the rules set up the way they are it could never happen.

[Ted Belmont]

I don't blame Valve for not wanting to be 'the company that sold my innocent little boy a porn game'. Remember Hot Coffee?

But the primary demographic for videogames hasn't been kids for a long time.

San Andreas was rated M, and that didn't stop the media from flipping their collective shit.

Part of the digital distribution medium even allows Valve to deliberately hide content based on user age groups. With a few more account level controls they could easily implement parental filtering. There's no reason for Valve to continue to block games like this from entering their service, esp. if they are leaving it to the Steam community to determine the quality of the game or lack thereof.

Because a 13 year old kid could NEVER find a way around age restrictions. :eyeroll:

And while they may be leaving it to the community to determine the quality, that says nothing about the suitability of the product for the Steam catalogue.

I'm not suggesting the lassiez-faire fuckfest that is the Android marketplace, where every third app is a nude picture screensaver for 1.99, but there should be a point of entry for visual novels and dating sims on the service, esp. considering that it's the primary digital distribution platform for videogames. I would love to see a project like Katawa Shoujo make it onto Steam, but with the rules set up the way they are it could never happen.

In the end, Steam is a retail distribution service. While their fundamental operating model differs from brick and mortar stores, just like those brick and mortar stores, they have to maintain a certain level of decorum, lest they risk a shitstorm of concerned parents and family advocacy groups. While the actual amount of influence those groups may have is laughable, all it will take is one kid getting a porn game from Steam, and the media will jump all over it. Again, I sincerely doubt Valve wants to be making headlines for CORRUPTING OUR NATION'S YOUTH.

Anyway, I really don't see how this is is a big deal. Valve isn't saying "don't make porn games". They're just saying "don't put porn games on Steam". Lack of Steam presence has not, nor will it ever stop people from making, distributing, acquiring, and playing porn games.

EDIT: An official response from Valve, found on Kotaku, of all places:

"Steam has never been a leading destination for erotic material," Valve's chief spokesperson Doug Lombardi told Kotaku. "Greenlight doesn't aim to change that."

[Classic]

But the primary demographic for videogames hasn't been kids for a long time.

I'm pretty sure that's only true if you don't count highschoolers as kids, and even then I'm pretty sure it's iffy unless you use a very specific scheme for weighting games.

I'd like Steam to be a vendor even for smutty stuff (because does anyone else really do what they do?), but I understand the decision to play conservatively with this one.

[Shinra]

http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp

The average game player is 30 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.

The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 35 years old.

Forty-seven percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (30 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (18 percent).

So, most games on steam are going to be purchased by people in their 30s, and teenagers make up a pretty small portion of the game-playing population. Using the ESA's estimates, most gamers don't even start playing videogames until 16-18, which at that point I think it is fair to say that most gamers are going to be mature enough to handle a game with implied sex.

[François]

I don't have a horse in this race and I'm not sure to what extent it should matter, but in the interest of accurate discussion, screenshots like this one (absolutely NSFW!) might be taking it a bit further than "implied sex".

[Classic]

Dammit! I was hoping to find uncensored smut!
So... I guess Valve wanted to shut out a dating/hookup sim game?

Anyway Shinra, there's also this:

Seventy-three percent of all games sold in 2011 were rated "E" for Everyone, "T" for Teen, or "E10+" for Everyone 10+. For more information on game ratings, please see www.esrb.org.

From that same page which might be a more accurate indicator of a game's "target audience" which is what I'd assumed you meant by "primary demo". You're talking about the demographics of gamers, while I'm talking about the demographics of the games themselves.

Granted, that still leaves a quarter of ESRB rated stuff in the M and AO categories, which could be used to establish a definite trend toward more severe ratings being awarded.

[Doom]

Implied sex is when you go to bang Liara in Mass Effect and you get close-up shots of her model wearing a bikini but the camera cuts off at the collar-bone to trick you and then everything fades to black. Where did a lot of us first play Mass Effect? Was it... on Steam?

Steam is blocking full frontal nudity.

[TA]

Implied sex is when you go to bang Liara in Mass Effect and you get close-up shots of her model wearing a bikini but the camera cuts off at the collar-bone to trick you and then everything fades to black. Where did a lot of us first play Mass Effect? Was it... on Steam?

Steam is blocking full frontal nudity.

Steam recently picked up The Secret World, which contains plenty of full frontal nudity.

[patito]

Yeah honestly I don't see a problem with this, I'd rather not have a full on porn game on my steam game's list either.

[TA]

Yeah honestly I don't see a problem with this, I'd rather not have a full on porn game on my steam game's list either.

So ... don't buy it?

[patito]

I'm saying though, if I was interested in playing the game, I wouldn't buy it on steam anyway, I would buy it by shadier means if you get my meaning.

[Bal]

Eroticism was not the focus of any game mentioned so far, and I imagine that was the problem.

[Shinra]

I don't have a horse in this race and I'm not sure to what extent it should matter, but in the interest of accurate discussion, screenshots like this one (absolutely NSFW!) might be taking it a bit further than "implied sex".

oh

uh

wow.

I'd still think they could put in a section for A-O rated games if they were careful about gating what made it in. I just don't think it's reasonable to continue to the legacy of brick and mortar stores deciding what companies are allowed to succeed at game development. If there's a market of adults out there willing to pay for the game, essentially blocking it from all forms of distribution other than self-publishing it is kind of horseshitty.

[François]

You know, my first thought on the subject might be that another company entirely could start up a dedicated porn Steam-equivalent. But whether that happens or Valve decides to make an AO section (Steam Redlight! ) or whatever, all other possible concerns aside, where would be the supply? Would they have that much to sell? Bad porn games are not difficult to find, but would quality porn games follow? They'd just have to cross their fingers and hope people made some, which is no small thing because the Western world doesn't have a history of quality porn games. (Not that I would know though. I'm serious, I legitimately have no idea. Feel free to correct me.) In Japan there are companies like Illusion or Kiss that do relatively high-budget porn games, but they don't directly sell outside of their region, and then there's scads of amateur/indie developers of varying talent and skill operating through the likes of dlsite.com, so the culture is there. But to start such a thing in the general English-speaking world, what would you build on, the Leisure Suit Larry back catalog? Localized Japanese games? We don't even know if this Seduce Me thing is gonna be any good, and even if it had been left on Greenlight to run its course we still would have no idea because most people would be voting for or against tits, not for or against inscrutable abstract puzzles (?) that make the conversation minigame in Oblivion look like a masterpiece of clarity.

[Büge]

I'd still think they could put in a section for A-O rated games if they were careful about gating what made it in. I just don't think it's reasonable to continue to the legacy of brick and mortar stores deciding what companies are allowed to succeed at game development. If there's a market of adults out there willing to pay for the game, essentially blocking it from all forms of distribution other than self-publishing it is kind of horseshitty.

Thank you, Shinra. I agree. Places like Wal-Mart and Gamespot have made adult game development in the western hemisphere impossible (or at least, have made the prospect unprofitable) because they refuse to stock anything with an AO rating. This is supposed to be the digital frontier. If anyone was going to take a chance on this, I thought it would be Valve.

[Brentai]

Look, if you want to understand any corporation's decisions, then do a cost-benefit analysis.  Does Valve stand to gain more by greenlighting this porn comic than they stand to lose from agitating the zealous drones who tend to also buy Modern Warfare games at release price?

[Shinra]

Look, if you want to understand any corporation's decisions, then do a cost-benefit analysis.  Does Valve stand to gain more by greenlighting this porn comic than they stand to lose from agitating the zealous drones who tend to also buy Modern Warfare games at release price?

I don't think those are the people who are going to get mad, though. I would like to see what percentage of the main game buying demographic is actually offended by things like this.