Nighthawks, the long-in-development vampire RPG due to be released later this month, is the latest game to run afoul of Steam’s increasingly stringent rules regarding adult content. According to publisher Wadjet Eye Games, the game has been labelled ‘Adults Only’—causing it to be removed from Steam search and outright delisted in certain countries like Germany—despite claims from both developer and publisher that the RPG’s depictions of sex and nudity are very mild.
“We are aware that Steam has classified Nighthawks as an adult game and has excluded it from searches,” Wadjet Eye boss Dave Gilbert wrote on Bluesky. “We are working on it. Valve is under the impression that this game is way sexier than it actually is.” Gilbert further commented that “Valve is basically treating Nighthawks like a porn game!” in responding to a reply to his initial post.
A game being labelled Adults Only can affect its visibility in several ways. Adults Only games will not appear in Steam searches by default, requiring users to log in, verify their age (which requires the use of a credit card in some countries) and adjust their preferred content settings before they become visible. In addition, the label can cause games to be delisted outright in certain countries.
Why are porn games banned in Germany? What a stupid place.
IIRC they were very slow to label video games “art,” with the various protections that brings. That’s why Turok 64 had a buck-wild German port where all the humans are robots. Also why games with Nazis were either banned or massively censored until some time this century. Wolfenstein 3D was officially unavailable for ages, and as late as The New Colossus, they replaced a lot of blatant symbols and names with wink-wink alternatives.
Come to think of it, that affected games as late as The Orange Box collection. German TF2 has no blood, and dead players explode into junk props instead of ragdolling or gibbing. I don’t remember if Left 4 Dead was similarly censored to hell because I don’t remember whether they consider zombies people.
probably lobbied against by Grossen Kinkenspielezeug, they’ve got a lot of influence in germany
Fun fact: prostitution is legal in Germany.
They’re not. The seller just has to verify customer age, same as when e.g. buying alcohol in the supermarket or entering a gambling hall.
Valve has simply been refusing to do so, even though eID makes privacy-preserving age verification trivial, frankly.
even though eID makes privacy-preserving age verification
Quit spreading lies
The eID of the ePerso supports pseudosignatures, which allows the seller to only get to know “This ePerso belongs to someone of legal age who also knows its PIN” and the state to only know “someone I [the state] authorized to perform age verification did so”. That is privacy-preserving by any reasonable measure.
Well, it’s true. The planned solution would give the site just a yes/no answer to the question: “is this user 18 years or older”. That is as privacy-preserving as can be.
How is eID age verification not privacy preserving?
Don’t you love it when a game distribution company controls such a large market share that they can make or break any developer/publisher. Simply for breaching some vague “morality” policy pushed by a bunch of puritans.
God, I love capitalism. /s
And that monopoly itself is subordinate to the supermonopoly of payment processors which are basically their own geopolitical superpower now.
The sort of thing digital-only currencies were supposed to fix, until that became a wiggly line for cocaine enthusiasts to bet on.
Like everything else now.
I feel like there’s an opportunity here to make it more sexy to get all the horny sales.
Guys I’m really, really, really tired of purity culture
It’s the puritans forcing companies to cover the legal asses that’s the issue. Those people refuse to take responsibility for themselves & their kids, instead forcing the rest of the world to act as their personal morality police so they don’t have to.
I don’t think it was ever about the kids. Grown adults are freaking the fuck out on the regular about media and always have been =/
It’s about control. If it wasn’t sex, it would be something else. Eg.: it is already also several other elses.
Dude exactly. There’s a ton of self-righteous people that just believe certain things shouldn’t exist and if they ban all the sex stuff, they’ll move on to the next thing.
I’m pretty sure capitalists just do this when left to their own devices. They claim the market is impartial but markets seem to be really great at manifesting fascism in places
Especially when butt stuff’s “allowed”. I mean, c’mon. I’m not one to kink shame, yet… just own it.
Besides, if your invisible friend is duped by the ol’ trench run? Maybe lose that dead weight. 🤘🏼🤗
he said, to no one in particular
Baphomet has always loved you, btw.
Become an undead predator who stalks and murders human beings without conscience… But god forbid you see a tiddy.
There’s not even any tiddies! They’re all (according to the dev) covered by scenery. But you can have sex with a bear in BG3 and that’s not adult content
The sex with Halsen as a bear is like the only scene you don’t actually see, it is merely implied. But the other sex scenes are just a slight change to camera angle away from full on visible penetration.
Except Minthara. There’s a solid LXIX scene with her, and while not exactly porn, it would definitely make a teenager watching skinemax in the eighties very happy.
LXIX?
It’s a number in Roman numerals that’s nice.
Oh, lol.
It also pronounces a bit like “LICKS”, which is a very nice coincidence.
10’s: I remember (M14) going to a friends place to play GTA SA. He was the lucky few who had a dad that didn’t care about it’s 17+ rating. We all know the first thing we did after jacking a car.
Back then the game was still available to purchase from most game shops. Leisure Suit Larry wasn’t tho.
Yea but BG3 was highly marketed and anticipated, whereas this will be the first time many are hearing of Nighthawks.
Valve should treat all games equally. So this is just favoritism bullshit.
Legally, they have to treat them differently, if Steam sells a game like BG3 and some government doesn’t like it, they have a PEGI rating to point to.
But if Steam sells a game like this without a rating from an age rating agency and a government doesn’t like it or requires ages verification for it, that’s on Valve.
Valve also collected massively more money from BG3 sales than it would ever get from this game.
Well I hope Valve realizes they just gave the devs of this game the best excuse to un-hide them! >:3
Kids can watch any porn they like for free on the hub, but heavens forbid an adult wants to pay for and jerk off over RPG character tits.
FYI to anyone interested in games with sexual content: You can change the default settings so these games do still appear when searching.
The problem with this is that in the UK and now Australia, to view ‘Adult’ games you need to verify your age with a credit card. Something that isn’t common to have in either country. And in Germany the game is completely delisted.
Wait, so how both country pay for the game?
What do you mean?
They’re presumably not sending cash, so what’s the payment method? Direct bank transfer?
Debit cards normally.
Shouldn’t that work the same way? It can still pull your data from your bank for age verification, at least thats how it works here (malaysia). So people who use gift card are the one got blocked off.
I’m pretty sure they don’t pull any actual customer data from the bank (GDPR) and just assume minors don’t have credit cards. I haven’t checked for all of Europe, but in Germany and Austria you have to be 18 to get one, so the fact you have one in your name can act as sufficient proof that you are an adult without transferring any actual personal data.
Debit cards on the other hand are legal for minors and common for people as young as 12.
Yep I can see them in search but I’m an Australian with no credit card, that’s all I can see.
And unfortunately this doesn’t help buy shit that is banned in your region.
Luckily GOG isn’t affected at this stage.
Oh but it is. As a german I can tell you that a lot of adult themed games are not available in germany. It is “fun”, they send me advertising Mails with this games, but when I try to open the links then nothing is there only a redirect to the store homepage.
That’s the garden variety censorship though, right? Your government deciding no one should be allowed access, not just restricting access behind mandatory state sanctioned identity theft like some of the more “Enlightened” countries have.
Sure, but it is still wrong to say that GOG is not affected by it.
Yeah, maybe. Different pathways to the same end I guess still gets you to the same end… In Germany.
Because it’s too small so nobody cares about it. If it ever approaches the type of market penetration Steam has, they’ll be getting the same pressures from the puritans too.
I think the normies just find the niche hard to appreciate. People don’t think about things like ownership and DRM until they are forced to.
This is really unfortunate.
I dont think Wadjet has ever published a bad game, although I think this is the first non-point and click adventure they’re involved with.
I’m really curious to see how this game turns out, and this kind of complication means that it being a success is much less likely, even if it deserves it.
Im in australia, so it probs will be banned here anyway
At least in Germany you have to classify your game. You don’t have to get it checked by an organisation (USK) for online publishing like steam (but you could if you wanted) but you have to at least fill out a questionnaire.
If you publish without anything, you will get your ass whooped properly.
Sounds to me as if they did nothing.
Well, we’ve got one side of the story. If the dev gives us what they gave Valve, then maybe we can see who is right.
Kickstarter backers have had playtest access for like a year or two now. The classification is complete nonsense.
