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Title: Video Games Weekly: Censorship and stolen puritanical valor

Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2025 23:42:20 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/video-games-w...

Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or
Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and
ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a
reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second
contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know
about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget.

Please enjoy ΓÇö and I'll see you next week.

LetΓÇÖs all agree to stop talking about that awful conservative activist
group out of Australia. You know the one ΓÇö like a parasite, it attached
itself to the censorship campaign that erased thousands of adult games from
Steam and Itch.io, and successfully positioned itself at the center of the
delisting narrative. However, logic and evidence suggests this group had very
little to do with the mass removals.

This Australian anti-porn organization led a movement in April to remove the
edgelord simulator No Mercy from Steam, and since everyone agreed that game
sucked, the campaign worked and the title disappeared from the storefront.
This is where I believe the organizationΓÇÖs involvement in the current drama
ends.

It seems No Mercy spurred payment processors including Visa, Mastercard and
PayPal to turn their attention to the PC gaming market (an irony that I would
find funnier if it werenΓÇÖt actively eroding an industry I love). These
institutions took the opportunity to dictate the types of games they would
support, and in response on July 16, Steam added a clause to its ruleset
banning content that "may violate the rules and standards set forth by
SteamΓÇÖs payment processors," including ΓÇ£certain kinds of adult only
content.ΓÇ¥ Censorship on Steam is not new; Valve has for years had rules
banning mislabeled adult content, hate speech, anything violating local laws
and many other regulations. But outsourcing censorship to payment processors
is new, and hundreds of games were removed from the platform following the
rule change. On July 24, Itch.io rolled out its own changes and summarily de-
indexed every adult and NSFW game it hosted, which amounted to roughly 20,000
titles being hidden from search and browse pages.

The conservative Australian group claimed responsibility for the Steam bans
on July 19, three days after the platformΓÇÖs rule change went live. The
organization said the censorship was the direct result of two of its recent
efforts: an email campaign that sent 1,067 messages to Visa, Mastercard,
PayPal and others claiming Steam and Itch.io were hosting illegal sexual
content, and an open letter addressed to the same financial institutions,
signed by faith-based, anti-sex work and anti-queer activist groups.

There is no evidence that these campaigns were directly responsible for
payment processorsΓÇÖ renewed enforcements. In fact, itΓÇÖs ludicrous to
suggest that roughly 1,000 emails or an open letter would even register at
companies the size of Visa, Mastercard or PayPal. WhatΓÇÖs more, after taking
credit for the removal of hundreds of Steam games, the Australian group has
attempted to distance itself from the whole shebang. Actually, following
intense scrutiny from players, industry watchdogs and media outlets, every
group in this situation is trying to avoid accountability. Valve says
Mastercard made this happen, while Mastercard says itΓÇÖs just following the
law, and PayPal says itΓÇÖs simply doing what companies like Mastercard tell
it to do. Meanwhile, the Australian group is trying to avoid blame for the
sweeping Itch.io delistings while simultaneously attempting to exploit the
Steam bans and gain momentum for its conservative bullshit.

In the most likely scenario, the Australian activist group saw these PC
gaming audits coming and, in a strange act of stolen puritanical valor, took
steps to center itself in the conversation. We can stop helping it do so.
Forget its name and, as the IGDA suggests, direct your ire toward the
organizations with power in this situation, namely Mastercard and Visa.

Still. ItΓÇÖs notable that an organization backed by conservative Christian
groups that loudly oppose sex work, queer rights and freedom of expression
was able to so cleanly align itself with financial companies censoring
content on Steam and Itch.io. This uncontested endorsement is especially
worrisome in a political and social climate where women, the queer community,
people of color and those who donΓÇÖt conform to a traditional conservative
lifestyle are under attack. At a time like this, subversive and raw art is
more necessary than ever, but itΓÇÖs also in its most vulnerable position.
Choosing this moment to activate a censorship campaign is not only dangerous
for our most vulnerable communities, itΓÇÖs cowardly.

ThereΓÇÖs been some additional misinformation wrapped up in this censorship
mess, of course. Three games were incorrectly reported as delisted or removed
from Itch.io or Steam as part of this situation: Mouthwashing, Trials of
Innocence and Console Me. One game that was unjustly removed during the chaos
was the psychological horror game VILE: Exhumed ΓÇö read my interview with
creator Cara Cadaver right here.

The news BioShock 4 enters a new circle of development hell

In most contexts, IΓÇÖd be pretty stoked on the thought of a hell-based
BioShock, but this is the worst possible iteration of that idea. According to
Bloomberg, BioShock 4 failed a recent review with executives at its
publisher, 2K Games, and itΓÇÖs heading back to developers at Cloud Chamber
for a narrative revamp. Plus, Cloud Chamber studio head Kelley Gilmore is
gone and creative director Hogarth de la Plante was moved to a publishing
role. Not much is known about the game thatΓÇÖs assumed to be BioShock 4, but
it was revealed in 2019 alongside the formation of Cloud Chamber, so itΓÇÖs
already been in development for quite a while.

In related Rapture news, 2KΓÇÖs remake of the original BioShock was canceled
earlier this year, Bloomberg reports. Ken Levine, the creator of the BioShock
series, is currently working on a familiar-looking FPS called Judas at his
own studio, Ghost Story Games.

GOG gave away millions of games to protest censorship

GOG partnered with developers to release 13 games with adult themes for free
from August 1 to 3, in protest of all the censorship going down on Steam and
Itch.io. None of the free titles were specifically banned in the censorship
campaign, but they featured sexual, queer or violent content that could
easily be targeted by similar efforts. GOG handed out its free games to more
than 1 million players.

Itch.io is reindexing free NSFW games

After deindexing all of its adult games on July 24 ΓÇö like, all of them ΓÇö
Itch.io on August 1 relisted all free games in this category. Itch.io is
currently auditing thousands of adult and NSFW games that it swept up in the
payment processor ban, and itΓÇÖs unclear how the platform will support
titles with these themes going forward. One of Itch.ioΓÇÖs longstanding
partners, Stripe, said it will no longer facilitate transactions of titles
"designed for sexual gratification," but thereΓÇÖs apparently room for
negotiation in the future.

Battlefield 6 will land on October 10

In a shocking twist, EA also revealed that Battlefield 6 will have
multiplayer content.

Age verification is coming to an Xbox near you

The video game world is feeling the effects of the UK's Online Safety Act.
Platforms including Discord and Xbox are implementing new age-verification
methods to comply with the law in the UK, and Microsoft is planning to expand
its program to other regions. It's in no rush, though, saying it'll use the
UK as a guinea pig for these systems first, and then implement what it learns
across the globe.

Sony is suing Tencent over its blatant Horizon clone

At its unveiling in 2024, viewers instantly called out Polaris QuestΓÇÖs
Light of Motiram for looking an awful lot like Guerrilla Games' Horizon
series ΓÇö our headline called it a "pretty blatant Horizon ripoff," even. It
took the better part of a year, but PlayStation's lawyers have finally kicked
into gear. Sony is now suing Tencent, which owns Polaris Quest, over what it
calls a "slavish clone" of its IP.

Raven finally has a union contract with Microsoft

Recent layoffs at Microsoft have only heightened the importance of proper
labor organizing in video games, and one of the industryΓÇÖs first unions is
finally making things official. Three years after initiating the process,
Call of Duty support studio Raven Software has ratified its union contract
with Microsoft. Raven Software initially voted to organize under Activision
Blizzard, but after Microsoft completed its acquisition of the studio in
October 2023, it continued negotiations with the tech titan.

Play VILE: Exhumed, the game that Steam doesn't want you to see

After VILE: Exhumed was removed and permanently banned from Steam for reasons
that don't actually apply to the game, developer Cara Cadaver and publisher
DreadXP have rolled out their own distribution model, and prices start at $0.
You can download and play the game right now for free, and there's an option
to throw some money Cara's way. A portion of the profits will benefit the
Toronto-based charity Red Door Family Shelter.

Additional reading

Kris HoltΓÇÖs indie game roundup

Sam RutherfordΓÇÖs review of the Legion Go S powered by SteamOS

Have a tip for Jessica? You can reach her by email, Bluesky or send a message
to @jesscon.96 to chat confidentially on Signal.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/video-games-w...
puritanical-valor-234220878.html?src=rss

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