Valve allows ISPs and payment processors to censor content on Steam

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At an unknown date in 2025, Valve updated its Rules and Guidelines for developers on Steam. Within these rules, they granted internet service providers (ISPs) and banks/transaction providers the power to delist games from their platform. Consumers have shown considerable criticism despite the nature of the content removed from the platform due to the vagueness of these rules leaving a window open for

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Unfair content policy creation

At an unknown time within 2025, the rules Rules and Guidelines for developers on Steam was updated by Valve due to pressures from payment vendors to delist content published with excessively mature content, however due to the vagueness of the following new rule within the policy:

15. Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.

Has brought concern from consumers and the press, as this enables payment processors, banks, and even ISPs to delist content based on what they solely deem to be unsuitable, which may extend beyond sexually explicit content.

Currently, the content being removed from the platform has included excessively sexual and mature topics, however, no significant game without this questionable content has been labeled as retired according to SteamDB currently.

Valve's response

The gaming news website Gaming on Linux contacted Valve regarding the matter, with its press team responding with:

We were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks. As a result, we are retiring those games from being sold on the Steam Store, because loss of payment methods would prevent customers from being able to purchase other titles and game content on Steam.

We are directly notifying developers of these games, and issuing app credits should they have another game they’d like to distribute on Steam in the future.

Consumer response

Consumer response is currently split, while many recognize that the content that has been taken down so far contains questionable topics, a majority both notice and dread the flaws of allowing third-parties to control what content would be allowed to be sold on Steam. A Reddit post written by u/TeaLycan shared their concerns about how the new rule can be abused to unfairly delist content via nondescript rules on the platform.

Consumers have linked this incident to an open letter written by the lobbyist group Collective Shout, especially since the delisted content matched closely to the content decried by the aforementioned letter.

It has also raised questions about the dominance of traditional payment providers and users have been suggesting various open and privacy friendly alternatives to established systems that would not allow for such influence to be exercised on the kinds of goods being sold and could even allow for anonymity when purchasing digital goods.

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