Nighthawks, the long-in-development vampire RPG due to be released later this month, is the latest game to run afoul of Steam’s increasingly stringent rules regarding adult content. According to publisher Wadjet Eye Games, the game has been labelled ‘Adults Only’—causing it to be removed from Steam search and outright delisted in certain countries like Germany—despite claims from both developer and publisher that the RPG’s depictions of sex and nudity are very mild.
“We are aware that Steam has classified Nighthawks as an adult game and has excluded it from searches,” Wadjet Eye boss Dave Gilbert wrote on Bluesky. “We are working on it. Valve is under the impression that this game is way sexier than it actually is.” Gilbert further commented that “Valve is basically treating Nighthawks like a porn game!” in responding to a reply to his initial post.
A game being labelled Adults Only can affect its visibility in several ways. Adults Only games will not appear in Steam searches by default, requiring users to log in, verify their age (which requires the use of a credit card in some countries) and adjust their preferred content settings before they become visible. In addition, the label can cause games to be delisted outright in certain countries.
Why are porn games banned in Germany? What a stupid place.
IIRC they were very slow to label video games “art,” with the various protections that brings. That’s why Turok 64 had a buck-wild German port where all the humans are robots. Also why games with Nazis were either banned or massively censored until some time this century. Wolfenstein 3D was officially unavailable for ages, and as late as The New Colossus, they replaced a lot of blatant symbols and names with wink-wink alternatives.
Come to think of it, that affected games as late as The Orange Box collection. German TF2 has no blood, and dead players explode into junk props instead of ragdolling or gibbing. I don’t remember if Left 4 Dead was similarly censored to hell because I don’t remember whether they consider zombies people.
probably lobbied against by Grossen Kinkenspielezeug, they’ve got a lot of influence in germany
Fun fact: prostitution is legal in Germany.
They’re not. The seller just has to verify customer age, same as when e.g. buying alcohol in the supermarket or entering a gambling hall.
Valve has simply been refusing to do so, even though eID makes privacy-preserving age verification trivial, frankly.
Quit spreading lies
Well, it’s true. The planned solution would give the site just a yes/no answer to the question: “is this user 18 years or older”. That is as privacy-preserving as can be.
Except the place that holds your information now know that you used a particular service.
False. The most privacy-preserving a service can be is by not collecting the information in the first place
Once again: that place would be the offline chip on your own physical ID card. There is no government database for this.
The eID of the ePerso supports pseudosignatures, which allows the seller to only get to know “This ePerso belongs to someone of legal age who also knows its PIN” and the state to only know “someone I [the state] authorized to perform age verification did so”. That is privacy-preserving by any reasonable measure.
The central service verifying age status still knows that they’re being contacted by what service. That means that centralized server knows what services you’re using.
How the fuck do you consider that private? All you’ve done is centralized the spying
Have you even bothered to do any research at all into what pseudosignatures are and how they can be used? Or are you just trolling?
Valve could simply set up an instance of an eID server software and get a digital certificate for it authorized by our respective national PKI chain. Functionally the same to how TLS certificate chains work. There is zero technical need for any information to flow between Valve and any other party - the state or otherwise - about who is being age verified. And Valve would not be able to get any information about you other than what I’ve already explained.
Seriously, the brainrot on here seems to be as bad as on Reddit. And btw: This has been state-of-the-art for more than ten years.
Apparently you can’t fucking read. Here’s how this shit goes:
You make an account on Pornhub. Pornhub then asks the government if the eID you pointed to them is an adult. The government, knowing who is fucking asking and who fucking owns the eID now knows you have a PornHub account.
Sure, they didn’t give your info to PornHub, and the government doesn’t know exactl which account is yours. But that doesn’t matter. Neither of those organizations should be collecting that information about you.
But go ahead and keep licking that technofascist boot.
You’re either misinformed or are willingly spreading misinformation.
The other reply already explained but I’m going to repeat in my own words again so that you may understand:
Your data is stored on your physical ID card. You create an account on Pornhub. Pornhub then asks you to prove your age. You hold your card against your phone or card reader, provide your PIN and the information that was requested (in our case a pseudonym and a yes/no whether you’re over 18) is transmitted directly from your device to pornhub.
There is no government server (or any third party server for that matter) involved in the process. The only thing the government knows is that they once gave pornhub a certificate to prove to users they really are pornhub.
That would be you, because you keep being wrong with virtually every single line. Here’s how it goes with pseudosignatures:
You make an account with Valve. Valve has previously received the appropriate certificate to perform age verification from the state, so Valve does not communicate with the state now: They present their certificate to the hardware chip in YOUR ePerso, which then creates a pseudonymous signature to send back to Valve that digitally proves the legal age of whoever the ePerso belongs to (and nothing more).
No thanks, but you go right ahead - someone entrenched in blind ideology is for sure not an ideal mark.
How is eID age verification not privacy preserving?
The central server that verifies your age now knows all the services you’re using. That’s not privacy - that’s centralized power
There is no central server. My data is stored on my physical ID card and my device communicates directly with the service that wants to verify my age.
https://www.bsi.bund.de/DE/Themen/Verbraucherinnen-und-Verbraucher/Informationen-und-Empfehlungen/Digitale-Verwaltung/Online-Ausweisfunktion/online-ausweisfunktion_node.html
The code is public and you can build the authentication app yourself if you don’t trust the app stores.