Steam Early Access is reportedly no longer be available to games with "mature themes"

Valve

An indie developer was recently rejected from the program due to their game featuring sexual content.

Following the removal of NSFW games on Steam after pressure from payment providers, Valve has seemingly updated its terms regarding its Early Access program, preventing titles with “mature themes” from being included.

The details:

Earlier this year, games with NSFW content were removed from Steam after Valve revealed that several of its payment partners, including Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal, had pressed the company on potential violations of their terms of service. Valve went on to update its own rules in response, attempting to appease the companies, but the changes left users confused as they vaguely stated that "certain kinds of adult content" were banned from Steam.
According to indie developer Dammitbird, rules targeting adult content appear to have been implemented for Steam's popular Early Access program. The developer shared on X that they had submitted their game "Heavy Hearts" for Early Access but were denied because Valve is "unable to support the Early Access model of development for a game with mature themes." Heavy Hearts contains sexual content, and despite still being available on the indie platform Itch.io, it has been de-indexed after the site was pressured to remove NSFW games.
Dammitbird told GamesMarkt that they had asked their publisher for assistance in joining the Early Access program, believing they had met the requirements, and there had been no public announcement about the sudden changes. "The general rule is that your game should be about 65 percent done before doing EA," Dammitbird said. “Well, we are about 70 percent done, so the time was right anyway. But now, all of a sudden and without a policy announcement, the rules have changed, and now I can't join Steam EA."

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