If you’re a Steam fan, you probably understand that there’s more porn game content on the platform that years past. But maybe you feel that’s merely a mirage, or a feeling, that’s not connected to reality. Kind of like when you buy a bag of chips, open it, and realize there really aren’t that many chips to gorge on (that’s always a bummer).
With Steam, there’s not much in the way of bummers. At least not when it comes to porn game content.
If you’re unsure about how much adult content, or NSFW content, resides on Steam (or you’re pretending you don’t know), feel free to gorge on our top steam adult games blog. If that doesn’t confirm that porn games and Steam are happily dating, I’m not sure what will.
Steam and Porn Games – What Happened?
There was a time that Steam, or parent company Valve, sought to reduce instances of adult content on Steam’s gaming platform. But oh how the times have a changed.
Shortly following 2018, Valve unexpectedly reversed its adult game policy. They began allowing adult game content on the platform. They didn’t advertise this, they quietly changed the policy and removed enforcement.
This adult game policy shift wasn’t a rocket ship moment. Adult games didn’t flood Steam immediately. Likely reasons for that? No game developers knew it was coming, some game developers found out late, and Steam gamers weren’t looking for adult games because, well, they didn’t know about it initially.
Why did Steam make this shift?
There’s seemingly no public reasoning behind the policy shift. But if we’re guessing, and we are, Steam saw the writing on the wall as porn game sites, particularly free ones, became more popular.
People were looking for porn games on the down low. Steam probably understood this. So Steam decided not to miss out. Clearly, Steam charges for most games unlike free adult gaming sites. But there’s a whole lot of folks willing to pay for adult games so long as the quality is improved.
Now, Steam didn’t make it a free for all. There was, and remains, additionaly scrutiny in the process. Steam removes games featuring questionable or illegal content. Steam requires that gamers who desire access to the adult section be 18 or older and set that preference in their settings. The settings portion of this change likely led to the slower popularity of adult games on Steam. People simply had no idea they could access these games until they figured out to change their settings appropriately.
So how’s it going?
Steam post monthly gaming stats, such as most played and most sold. Adult games commonly breach these lists.
In 2018, there were less than 100 adult games. Today, that number has swollen to over 500. Adult game growth on Steam is accelerated.
All of this hasn’t been without the obvious issues, mostly in the way of content moderation. Steam does the best that it can, but moderating adult content on any platform can present frustrations and obstacles. But overall, Steam has kept to the task and their adult game library has continued rapid growth. There’s even a sex chess game now.
So we’d say its going really, really well. It appears Steam plans to stay the course. And with that, we’d expect an obvious continued trend-line north on new adult and NSFW games on the platform.