Steam Just Decided Adult Games Can't Be Works-In-Progress Anymore

The ongoing corporate war against anything remotely sexual in gaming has just taken another weird, oddly specific turn.

Valve has quietly begun blocking games with "explicit sexual content" from being released on Steam Early Access. There was no grand policy announcement, no blog post. Developers just started getting rejection letters, leaving them scrambling to figure out why a system they've relied on for years has suddenly slammed the door in their faces.

The Unannounced Purge

According to a report from Pascal Wagner at GamesMarkt, developers are now receiving a new, chillingly vague message from Valve. "Your app has failed our review because we're unable to support the Early Access model of development for a game with mature themes,” the rejection states.

The studio Dammitbird, developer of the adult game Heavy Hearts, was one of the first to get hit. They were about 70% finished with their game, well within the typical range for an Early Access launch, when they were blindsided by the new, unwritten rule. Suddenly, a crucial path to funding and community feedback was gone.

The Puppet Masters

So why the sudden change? This isn't just Steam being weird for the sake of it. The strings are almost certainly being pulled by the payment processors. Companies like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal are on a moral crusade, pressuring any platform that uses their services to crack down on adult content.

The likely theory is that these processors are spooked by the very idea of a game that's still in development. A finished game can be reviewed and approved, but an Early Access title could, in theory, add new content down the line that violates their ever-tightening, oppressive guidelines. (Even though a 1.0 release can also get huge updates but…hey who said it’s logical?)

A Bizarrely Specific Ban

This whole thing is just... weird. I get that Steam is in a tough spot; they need payment processors to function. But targeting Early Access specifically is a strange line to draw in the sand. A finished, 100% complete adult game is apparently fine, but a game that's 70% done is a bridge too far? It makes no sense.

It feels like a half-measure designed to appease their corporate overlords without having to ban adult games outright. It’s a policy that feels arbitrary and, thanks to the lack of any official announcement, deeply disrespectful to the developers who have built their business models around the Early Access system.

This is just the latest battle in a long, depressing war against creative freedom. While developers and journalists continue to protest, the distribution channels for any game that dares to be sexual are getting narrower by the day. And this bizarre, nonsensical new rule is just another brick in the wall.