Valve Opens The Doors On Steam To (Nearly) All Games

Steam Allows All Games On Its Platform Except Those Illegal or Pure Trolls

In recent years, Steam, or more accurately Valve, has fallen in for some criticism by its users about the way it has periodically decided to change the censorship rules regarding the games and content it hosts. We have seen only in recent months how Valve was looking to crack down further on the adult-themed games it hosted. Such changes have seen developers require to only submit watered-down versions and indeed, even resubmit with further censorship.

It seems now, however, that Steam is going to be relaxing this rule somewhat. In a report via DSOGaming, Valve has announced that they plan to be far more open in terms of the games they will host.

Valve has said:“If you’re a player, we shouldn’t be choosing for you what content you can or can’t buy. If you’re a developer, we shouldn’t be choosing what content you’re allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.”

What games will not be allowed?

In brief, Steam will only be outright disallowing any games that are illegal or purely for troll purposes. This is largely to comply with the wide range of laws they have to contend with throughout the various countries in the world.

“Laws vary around the world. So we’re going to need to handle this on a case-by-case basis. As a result, we will almost certainly continue to struggle with this one for a while. Our current thinking is that we’re going to push developers to further disclose any potentially problematic content in their games during the submission process. And cease doing business with any of them that refuse to do so honestly. We’ll still continue to perform technical evaluations of submissions, rejecting games that don’t pass until their issues have been resolved.” 

While they have not said so explicitly, this might, therefore, mean a more relaxed attitude to the games they host. Particularly ones of a more *ahem* ‘adult’ nature.

We will, of course, have to wait and see exactly what this means. It is, however, if nothing else, an interesting change that some could perceive as a U-turn on their former policy.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!