The first uncensored Steam game has been approved for release. Negligee: Love Stories is at the forefront of Steam’s new policies regarding what games would and would not be allowed on the service. Valve announced that it would no longer police what gets on Steam back in June, and would only step in if titles were illegal or “straight-up trolling.” Valve has started giving games that would not have gotten on the service before these changes the green light.
Valve added new tools that allow users to opt-in to seeing games with “Nudity or Sexual Content” and “Adult Only Sexual Content” on Steam. Following these new tools, Negligee publisher and developer Dharker announced the title’s September 14 release via Steam and the game’s store page. According to the developer it will be their first “100% uncensored game” on the service. The game was stuck waiting for Valve’s new policies and tools to take effect.
To opt in or out of seeing these games on steam, users can go to their account preferences and check the proper boxes in the “Mature Content” section. Developers like Dharker have been waiting months to release their games on Steam, the most popular games service on PC. In the past, Dharker have released censored versions of their games on the service and offered patches to users that re-enabled that content.
In recent years, Valve has opened the Steam floodgates. Firstly with Steam Greenlight, where users voted to allow games onto the service. Following Greenlight was Early Access, which was another way to get games to consumers with less quality assurance from Valve. Greenlight was replaced by Steam Direct which broke down more barriers for developers, which allows developers to release their games for a $100 fee. In 2017 alone, 7672 games were released onto Steam according to the third-party site Steam Spy.
For most games with explicit sexual content, Steam was off-limits. Developers had to self-publish and host their own work on their own sites, or look to more dubious delivery methods for their work. While AAA games like The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition had sex scenes featuring intricately rendered human bodies, other games like Negligee were kept off. Hopefully Valve’s determination to make Steam a platform for all games will help these developers.
