Steam moving forward with plans to allow explicit games

[DarthSeduction]

Hopimg for it real hard. Though I think the biggest issues will be pricing. Most games produced here are worth around 5$. But i doubt creatora that ask their patreons for 20 to 30$ a month to play the newest version will be OK with selling their entire game for 5. And we have to keep in kind that AAA titles are 60$

Well, it would really depend on how much exposure you can get. We have to charge as much as we do because there's such a small paying audience. It's not like our product really costs that much to make, aside from buying assets and upgrading our systems, which are expensive, but not impossible. As a result, we can charge less, so long as more people are paying. If you only have a potential audience of 1k, you'll charge more, make it out to be a luxury. But if you have an audience of 100k, you could charge 5 bucks and make out like a bandit.

 

[random.person]

In the US, for instance however, there are vague laws on the books. One such law, regarding what the legal term is "Obscenity" allows the courts to make an individual decision on what is and isn't too obscene. A few years back they attempted to completely ban even virtual depictions of fictional minors, from loli to realistic 3d, but that law was struck down for being against free speech. So now it only protects real children and depictions thereof. However, because of the obscenity law, they can and have gone after some people with it. It carries lesser penalties, I think just fines, no registry or jail time iirc, but it's still enough to stop a developer or Steam from being willing to cross those lines. That's generally, aside from the worry in regards to the high risk, why even major porn studios avoid rape, and outright incest. You may notice that Porn Hub doesn't have an Incest tag, just a "Step-fantasy" tag.

Yeah, sometimes some legal boundaries are pretty vague. I don't know your legal system so I don't know the extent of such an obscenity law nor the consequences for both people and companies.
But in any case I still think that the real issue will be with depictions of minors, since there might be places where no court has stated that if they're fictional they don't fall under the criminal law for possession of such material. Incest is a relatively simpler topic, especially if we consider that we just had a fad for a TV show where the start of the plot is an incestuous relationship...

Hopimg for it real hard. Though I think the biggest issues will be pricing. Most games produced here are worth around 5$. But i doubt creatora that ask their patreons for 20 to 30$ a month to play the newest version will be OK with selling their entire game for 5. And we have to keep in kind that AAA titles are 60$

The worst consequence though would be that devs would be incentivized to abandon the free-game model with Patreon granting simply earlier access. I don't think it would affect too much the overall Patreon model though, because donating to support development is fundamentally different from buying a finished product, it's nearly the same difference between investing in a company and buying their products.

Another thing to add, I don't think parody games could end up on Steam because, well, imagine what would Disney do to the devs of a Diseny-IP parody...

 

[OhWee]

I like GOG better. GOG doesn't really 'do' the adult game thing, although Leisure Suit Larry is on GOG, and there's that HuniePop game...

I love DRM free. Always hated it when the Steam client wanted to phone home before I could play some game.

Or maybe GOG is onboard with adult games now... well censored versions anyways - with no restrictions on patches made available by developers via other means...

You must be registered to see the links

 

[DarthSeduction]

I like GOG better. GOG doesn't really 'do' the adult game thing, although Leisure Suit Larry is on GOG, and there's theatHuniePop game...

I love DRM free. Always hated it when the Steam client wanted to phone home before I could play some game.

Or maybe GOG is onboard with adult games now... well censored versions anyways - with no restrictions on patches made available by developers via other means...

You must be registered to see the links

They'd have to go the whole 9 yards on it for me to be interested. I don't want another platform that's gonna try to censor me. Also, I wouldn't add DRM to my game if I put it on steam, and you can always play in offline mode.

 

[OhWee]

They'd have to go the whole 9 yards on it for me to be interested. I don't want another platform that's gonna try to censor me. Also, I wouldn't add DRM to my game if I put it on steam, and you can always play in offline mode.

The one game I bought from Steam was a single player game (hence offline by definition), but every so often the client would 'lock out' the game until I logged onto Steam again. I haven't bought another game from Steam since.

And yeah, not disagreeing with you necessarily on the 'need to make a censored version' thing, but I'm curious to see how the visual novels mentioned in the article I linked end up being handled on GOG.

DRM free is a big deal to me.

 

[bigguy_foryou]

I'm not really sure having all these games available on a platform that heavily caters to children is good for society as a whole tbh. I do commend Valve for saying they'll permit just about anything though, as a principle that's pretty great. But it's not as if my opinion will have any impact on the matter.
I most certainly won't be playing these games on a public platform though, whether its successful or not, I'm going to continue to pick them up here.

 

[random.person]

Didn't said that it was a major problem, just that it's the most common subject took as example here. And despite what you think, there's modern countries where Law don't make difference between an illegal act and its depiction, even if this depiction isn't an apologia. It's by example the case for incest in many countries where it's illegal. It's also the case for pedophilia. There's even countries where, as long as the girl look like underage, it will be illegal. This whatever the story, the context, the nature of it (pornography Vs eroticism) , and even her real age when it's photography and not 2D/3D cg. The only exception being educational/medical publications, and content prior to the law.
As far as I remember, there's also few case in the US Law.




Yeah, when I did research on the subject, Italy was the country with the must strange law regarding incest ; neither really legal nor really illegal. Another weird law is Spanish and regard bestiality ; it's illegal to practice, produce, import, sell and buy anything that is or depict bestiality... but legal to own it.

And indeed I'm from Italy. Incest illegal only if it causes public scandal. Probably the only ones in the whole EU with such an odd law.

I know that some countries have pushed child pornography laws pretty far, but as far as I know usually in modern criminal systems there is a general principle which requires an objective offense for a criminal law to be constitutional. This usually implies that sooner or later a court will decide against criminalization of depictions of fictional characters, since no offense is possible in that case: it's not punished possessing, making or distributing child pornography because those people like it or because it's morally bad, but because that material offends minors, who are vulnerable subjects that the law deems worthy of protection against such types of aggressions. If there is no person offended this principle of criminal law forbids criminalization, because otherwise it'd be a criminal law against thoughts and not against facts. And in modern constitutional States usually freedom of thought is guaranteed by the Constitution.
But of course it's possible that some countries don't follow such a principle or maybe not strictly. Though it should be pretty common at least in western european juridical systems.

Anyway what I actually meant to point out is that child pornography is a subject which has seen a lot of attention on an international level, hence why they tried in many countries to include purely fictional material in the definition, which has led to rulings against it.
On the contrary incest is very local subject, with some places where it's simply legal. Thus it's relatively more rare to find efforts against incest that go as far as criminalizing porn depiction of it. Legislators usually stop at criminalizing incest itself, just like they stop at punishing theft and not depiction of theft. It's just not perceived as such an issue.
Child pornography instead is at the center of an international effort against it, sexual tourism and human trafficking alike, since they are often related. And so since the problem is bigger the legal response is wider.

 

[TheFinder]

I think that the chances of getting the kind of games that you can find on this site on Steam are next to zero; can you guys seriously imagine a Dreams of Desire or a Milfy City available on Steam without heavy censorship? A game that features mom/sisters/aunt incest as well as mind control (which means rape)? I can already imagine the public outcry and the #boycottsteam campaign. The reality is that whether we like it or not, the content of the majority of the games here is still largely considered socially unacceptable and I don't think this is gonna change anytime soon.

 

[DarthSeduction]

that heavily caters to children

Since when has steam heavily catered to children? Please tell me you're 50 and simply don't understand video games. Because no, they absolutely don't heavily cater to children. The PC gaming market in particular has always been more of a late teen to adult market. Parents buy their children consoles. PC gaming is an expensive hobby that has us upgrading our hardware 2 or 3 times per console generation, it is also not catered at all to local multiplayer, and as a result, it's far less likely that a parent will spend the money for their child to become a PC gamer.

I think that the chances of getting the kind of games that you can find on this site on Steam are next to zero; can you guys seriously imagine a Dreams of Desire or a Milfy City available on Steam without heavy censorship? A game that features mom/sisters/aunt incest as well as mind control (which means rape)? I can already imagine the public outcry and the #boycottsteam campaign. The reality is that whether we like it or not, the content of the majority of the games here is still largely considered socially unacceptable and I don't think this is gonna change anytime soon.

You didn't read any of the data presented by OP I guess, because this is already happening. They made the decision to change it months ago, they're still working on the infrastructure.

 

[TheFinder]

Since when has steam heavily catered to children? Please tell me you're 50 and simply don't understand video games. Because no, they absolutely don't heavily cater to children. The PC gaming market in particular has always been more of a late teen to adult market. Parents buy their children consoles. PC gaming is an expensive hobby that has us upgrading our hardware 2 or 3 times per console generation, it is also not catered at all to local multiplayer, and as a result, it's far less likely that a parent will spend the money for their child to become a PC gamer.



You didn't read any of the data presented by OP I guess, because this is already happening. They made the decision to change it months ago, they're still working on the infrastructure.

I read everything and it all sounds well and good (I obviously support this stance) however we shall see how they will actually behave when a game like Dating My Daughter (game that I like by the way) will get on Steam.

 

[DarthSeduction]

I read everything and it all sounds well and good (I obviously support this stance) however we shall see how they will actually behave when a game like Dating My Daughter (game that I like by the way) will get on Steam.

DmD will have an issue that most games won't. I'm sorry, but there's no arguing that D is any older than 14. And 14 is a stretch given solely because of her body.

Dreams of Desire on the other hand, sure, and the question many of us have asked, including myself, is will Incest be included. Incest is a wholly separate issue that is hotly debated as to whether it can stand in court.

If they go the route Patreon has and say no to any "obscene" content, then no, DoD won't. But they aren't making these changes for non porn. I own every Witcher game on Steam. There's HBO style sex and nudity in those games. So if it was simple adult content and not porn, there would be nothing Steam had to change. The fact that they're changing things, creating a new infrastructure, so to speak, means that they aren't talking about the stuff that is already allowed on their platform, they're talking about porn.

 

[TheFinder]

DmD will have an issue that most games won't. I'm sorry, but there's no arguing that D is any older than 14. And 14 is a stretch given solely because of her body.

Dreams of Desire on the other hand, sure, and the question many of us have asked, including myself, is will Incest be included. Incest is a wholly separate issue that is hotly debated as to whether it can stand in court.

If they go the route Patreon has and say no to any "obscene" content, then no, DoD won't. But they aren't making these changes for non porn. I own every Witcher game on Steam. There's HBO style sex and nudity in those games. So if it was simple adult content and not porn, there would be nothing Steam had to change. The fact that they're changing things, creating a new infrastructure, so to speak, means that they aren't talking about the stuff that is already allowed on their platform, they're talking about porn.

I have no doubt that they will actually bring porn games on Steam but many of the games on this site are not "simple" porn, they often feature highly controversial content like underage looking characters (like you said), non consensual sex, incest, bestiality and more; what I'm saying, and I may be wrong, is that I don't think that they will go all the way and allow any kind of content leaving the users as the only judges; time will tell I suppose.

 

[Ignazzio]

It's a great news but I'm really not so sure about our market being able to switch to it. Steam might be unaware but if there is an erotic market it is sooner rather than later flooded by extremes like incest, bestiality and rape. Even with all these filters I just can't imagine Steam allowing such a content. Incest, rape and loli are the biggest issues because of the laws in different countries and how they are perceived. Not to say most of our devs isn't really that good with titles and most of them is reaking incest from a distance. I can see scenario where loli is regionally blocked (cuz it's not that controversial in many countries) but incest or rape (and a few others) are just not really something any open platform wants to deal with.

 

[DarthSeduction]

It's a great news but I'm really not so sure about our market being able to switch to it. Steam might be unaware but if there is an erotic market it is sooner rather than later flooded by extremes like incest, bestiality and rape. Even with all these filters I just can't imagine Steam allowing such a content. Incest, rape and loli are the biggest issues because of the laws in different countries and how they are perceived. Not to say most of our devs isn't really that good with titles and most of them is reaking incest from a distance. I can see scenario where loli is regionally blocked (cuz it's not that controversial in many countries) but incest or rape (and a few others) are just not really something any open platform wants to deal with.

I'm actually hoping that, since they'll be opening the door to the japanese market, it will encourage them to be less discerning. Rape and Incest are very popular in Japan, as well as loli/shota, though not nearly as popular. It's no guarantee, but there's a good chance we end up having a foot in the door on allowing these things. There's no real reason not to with games, so long as they don't encourage people to take real life action. But that's the same argument as GTA or worse, Postal.

 

[anne O'nymous]

[...] but as far as I know usually in modern criminal systems there is a general principle which requires an objective offense for a criminal law to be constitutional. This usually implies that sooner or later a court will decide against criminalization of depictions of fictional characters, since no offense is possible in that case: [...]

"sooner or later", why not, but will it be on our living ? Because most of these laws are more than a century old, and still no court effectively decided against them. The better that happen is that, time to time, a court claim that "this" is at the limit of the law and, like no one was able to clearly prove that it was illegal/forbidden, then it is not. In fact it's even the opposite, and there's part of the western world where the tendency is to search all possible way to enforce the law, including depiction in what is illegal.
I also have concern regarding the lack of objective offense making a criminal law going against the constitution. One good counter example is homosexuality. Where's the offense, objective or not ? Nowhere. Still it's a crime in 38 over the 194 countries, while for 33 of them, it's legal since less than 20 years. This mean that 20 years ago, around one third of the countries saw homosexuality as a crime. A crime without offense and not countered by the constitution. The most known of them is both a western country, a modern country, and a country relying much on its constitution ; hello USA.

You also forget that illegality isn't only a question of criminal laws, but also of civil laws. It's not said "illegal", just "forbidden", but the result is the same. If you decide to goes against the forbidding, you'll have to face the law.
When Patreon started its ban, I did some search regarding laws around the world on these subjects. I don't remember all cases precisely but, mostly, half of the time when the act is illegal, the depiction was at least forbidden. And for Steam, it will change nothing that it is a mater of criminal laws or civil ones. Whatever it's illegal or just forbidden, they'll have to remove the game.

 

[Ignazzio]

I'm actually hoping that, since they'll be opening the door to the japanese market, it will encourage them to be less discerning. Rape and Incest are very popular in Japan, as well as loli/shota, though not nearly as popular. It's no guarantee, but there's a good chance we end up having a foot in the door on allowing these things. There's no real reason not to with games, so long as they don't encourage people to take real life action. But that's the same argument as GTA or worse, Postal.

I won't mind it as well. But even if only half of Japanese games would go to Steam our whole market would be dead. Rape is strong there but their games can be really subtle with its aproach while ours are basically plotless bunch of renders built around specific fetish. I can easily see Rance series or Virgin Roster on Steam even tho they're build around extreme fetish but it's really hard to imagine uncensored Dreams of Desire or Dating My Daughter. Our devs whould have to take some different aproach. I can see a couple of games being released on Steam (Babysitter, A Wife And Mother) but at this point transition would kill most titles. As for allowing such a games in western countries: it's a cultural matter based on (mostly) religion and its moral inclinations. Japan (like most Asian countries) consider things differently and has centuries of drawn tradition. Might be a while for things like loli and extreme fetishes to be legal in all western countries.

 

[Hadley]

This is a very good sign but Im still wondering how successful explicit steam game will be. I certainly dont want my steam friends to logon and see Im currently jaggin off to Dating my Daughter

Who cares. You can always go invisible if you, for whatever reason, give a fuck what other people think. But being on Steam alone will make most Games more money than they can get on Patreon.

I just hope this works out well for everyone and we don't have to fucking deal with Patreon anymore. If a Dev sells a 20€ Game in Early Access he is much more committed to actually finishing it as fast as possible than on Patreon where people basically milk their Patreons and try to get through with the smallest updates possible.

Theres a difference between games that have explicit sexual content and games about explicit sex content.
AO games can mean some jap titles with 1% scenes being explicit and the pure porn games never get on the platform. At least I haven't seen any so far.

They said everything is allowed that is not illegal. The fucking point is that they don't want to decide whats too much sexual content and whats fine, thats why they just allow everything. Before Games like Witcher were fine, but some smaller Games had to censor their Game.

Hopimg for it real hard. Though I think the biggest issues will be pricing. Most games produced here are worth around 5$. But i doubt creatora that ask their patreons for 20 to 30$ a month to play the newest version will be OK with selling their entire game for 5. And we have to keep in kind that AAA titles are 60$

You can't compare it to normal Games. Its always about Supply and Demand. Look at Bestiality Porn, there are some sites that want ridiculous amounts of money for pretty bad Amateur Videos. But apparently people pay it, because there is no Bestiality Pornhub to fulfill their needs.
And its the same for Games. If people want a Story where they get to romance their Daughter, do they buy the new Assassin's Creed for that?

Pricing will most likely be like most of the Hentai-Games at 5-30€. Since most Games will release as Early Access they will probably be cheaper until they are finished.

 

[random.person]

"sooner or later", why not, but will it be on our living ? Because most of these laws are more than a century old, and still no court effectively decided against them. The better that happen is that, time to time, a court claim that "this" is at the limit of the law and, like no one was able to clearly prove that it was illegal/forbidden, then it is not. In fact it's even the opposite, and there's part of the western world where the tendency is to search all possible way to enforce the law, including depiction in what is illegal.
I also have concern regarding the lack of objective offense making a criminal law going against the constitution. One good counter example is homosexuality. Where's the offense, objective or not ? Nowhere. Still it's a crime in 38 over the 194 countries, while for 33 of them, it's legal since less than 20 years. This mean that 20 years ago, around one third of the countries saw homosexuality as a crime. A crime without offense and not countered by the constitution. The most known of them is both a western country, a modern country, and a country relying much on its constitution ; hello USA.

You also forget that illegality isn't only a question of criminal laws, but also of civil laws. It's not said "illegal", just "forbidden", but the result is the same. If you decide to goes against the forbidding, you'll have to face the law.
When Patreon started its ban, I did some search regarding laws around the world on these subjects. I don't remember all cases precisely but, mostly, half of the time when the act is illegal, the depiction was at least forbidden. And for Steam, it will change nothing that it is a mater of criminal laws or civil ones. Whatever it's illegal or just forbidden, they'll have to remove the game.

The matter is a complex one, of course, so I was simplifying, due also to the fact that there are a lot of lost in translations when it comes to juridical terms. So I can't really go further in the matter because I probably need to take a course in common law to be able to express the european civil law juridical doctrine in proper technical terms.

Regarding homosexuality though if I'm not mistaken where it still holds in the USA is because they haven't criminalized being homosexual but rather the act of sodomy, which per se is not homosexual, thus allowing them to argue that it doesn't discriminate because it's forbidden for everyone and it pertains to acts, not to sexual inclinations.
But I remember also there being a Supreme Court ruling stating that the State has no right to infringe upon bedrooms to enforce this kind of law, since that is a place where customarily the State refrains from being present. I don't remember this really well though, we touched briefly on it in a course on comparative law, but it was kind of a trivia so I didn't focus too much on it.

P.S:
Not to be derogatory of the USA, but having a federal Constitution and lots of State Constitutions centuries old really doesn't help you solve this kind of issues. And the nature of common law doesn't help either since jurisprudence is slow compared to legislation and your Supreme Court is very politically oriented due to how Justices are nominated.
So, well, you're kind of a fringe case in western law, like the UK.
The others are all civil law systems and have more recent Constitutions due mostly to WWII.

 

[redknight00]

Cautiously optimistic about it, anything that gives more money to people who deserve is okay in my book.

I am, however, worried about the legal aspects of, mainly how they will handle illegal content and copyrighted material, such as parodies or even Honey Select games. The later is particularly important to me as 3 of my subscription have that issue.

All in all, I don't think it will solve all problems of the porn game industry or make AAA companies invest in porn, heck I probably won't even buy anything but Arenus because 99,9999% of the porn games from patreon are not worth it or not finished.

Also, I still believe the Patreon is the best option for a starting developer, the loose rules and monthly money flower before completion or even a decent amount of content are much better to improve themselves.

 

[DarthSeduction]

I won't mind it as well. But even if only half of Japanese games would go to Steam our whole market would be dead. Rape is strong there but their games can be really subtle with its aproach while ours are basically plotless bunch of renders built around specific fetish. I can easily see Rance series or Virgin Roster on Steam even tho they're build around extreme fetish but it's really hard to imagine uncensored Dreams of Desire or Dating My Daughter. Our devs whould have to take some different aproach. I can see a couple of games being released on Steam (Babysitter, A Wife And Mother) but at this point transition would kill most titles. As for allowing such a games in western countries: it's a cultural matter based on (mostly) religion and its moral inclinations. Japan (like most Asian countries) consider things differently and has centuries of drawn tradition. Might be a while for things like loli and extreme fetishes to be legal in all western countries.

I've definitely played japanese games with as little if not less to them than Dreams of Desire. I agree that DmD might have issues, but those, as I've said before, are more likely to fall behind the underage problem, as 2 of the girls are definitely loli, and the only reason D isn't is because she's got gigantic unrealistic breasts. I agree that it might be a while for that. The US obscenity laws are a problem. And places like the UK are even worse. So yeah, certain games won't make the swap, but if honestly, if they're a basic framework built around a fetish and not a fully realized game, is that really even a loss?