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We’ve learned via a developer that Valve is halting submissions and publications of adult games on Steam for the time being.

Developer Love In Space posted on Twitter claiming the delay of their new game, Shining Song Supernova, was due to Valve. They claim Valve is halting the submission process until they implement a better way for users to have more control over what they see:

We’ve now been updated by Valve in regards to Shining Song Starnova, the summary is that they are working on new features to give people more control over the content they see and SSS has been identified as needing these features in place before it can go live on Steam. [1/2]

Unfortunately we’ve not been able to get a timeline on this but we’ll continue to keep you all informed once we have new information as well as any other decisions we make in the meantime. [2/2]

We’ve also learned via TechRaptor that when they reached out to other developers of adult games, that even some titles already on Steam may need to be resubmitted.

We reached out to the publisher Sekai Project who confirmed the situation and said that they had other titles that they had been told to resubmit for. They were unable to share which those titles were, but also explained that it will impact existing titles as well as new ones. Sekai Project also explained they are exploring alternative platforms to release the games on as they had been waiting for over two months.

Following up on this I reached out to other developers who were impacted by the events in May. Several of them said they had received letters from Valve detailing that they were working on new tools that would require additional information to be filled out when the new system is implemented.

This follows up from last May when developers of adult anime-style games such as HuniePop were given warning their games would be removed from Steam for violating their terms of service. Valve soon after claimed there was a misunderstanding and meant to say they were re-reviewing.

After this, Valve stated their policy was to “allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.” Earlier in October of last year, Valve stopped developers from posting links to “uncensoring patches” for their games via the game’s Steam Community message boards.