News VR porn game Holodexxx denied on Steam

[Rum]

The developers of Holodexxx are at a loss. After spending months attempting to get their VR sex game onto Steam, they’ve hit a wall that no amount of self-censorship or mechanical refinement has been able to drill through: Valve’s nebulous definition of “pornography.”

Holodexxx is a game in which simulated versions of real adult performers interact with the player in virtual reality, with AI guiding elements of the performance. Its creators bill it as an ethical, sex-positive game being made in conjunction with and featuring real sex workers. Steam, at this point, carries a plethora of games that include adult content—some of which venture into much dicier thematic territory than Holodexxx. But that didn’t stop Valve from chasing Holodexxx off its holodeck.

In a recent lengthy blog, the game’s developers outlined everything they’ve tried over the course of multiple months. To begin, they submitted a “PG-13 experience” to Steam starring a clothed version of adult film actress Riley Reid, along with a censored video of live adult stars. Valve, say Holodexxx’s developers, blocked the submission “with a boiler-plate explanation that video pornography was not allowed on Steam.” So then the developers spent additional time creating a new demo without video of adult stars, in which the player could instead look at a model of adult film actress Marley Brinx in a virtual environment. Again, Valve blocked it on the basis that it was “pornography.”

At that point, Holodexxx’s developers went back to the drawing board and spent “months” on Holodexxx Home, a more elaborate interactive experience with dialogue systems and direct physical interactions. It involves undressing a character, but so do other games on Steam, so in theory, it doesn’t necessarily activate any of Valve’s tripwires. However, you can probably guess what happened next.

“We submitted Home and waited a few weeks,” wrote Holodexxx’s developers. “After poking Steam via help tickets, our build was reviewed two days later... and banned. The explanation was again, that Steam does not allow ‘pornography’ on their platform.”

In the end, Holodexxx’s developers say they spent “over” $20,000 in development time, but it was all for naught.

This is far from the first time developers of adult games have been stymied by Steam, whose rules around explicit content have never been fully outlined and remain inconsistent even after years of collective head scratching. Numerous developers have taken to releasing external adult content patches for Steam versions of their games to either get around bans or avoid playing Russian roulette with Valve’s opaque rules. What little documentation there is, meanwhile, has a tendency to change. As Daily Dot points out, Valve’s development toolkit banned “pornography” back when Holodexxx’s developers submitted their first demo, then specifically barred “adult content which includes a visual depiction that requires age verification of an actual human being” in January 2021. More recently, Valve once again altered that language to blanket ban “sexually explicit images of real people.”

Holodexxx’s developers think Steam could massively streamline this process by providing actual guidelines as to what constitutes “pornography,” allowing developers of adult games to submit a “paper review” of game features that might be in violation of the rules instead of spending time and money developing Steam-specific builds, refunding submission costs of banned games, and giving developers information on what specific changes they could make to avoid having their game denied multiple times.

At the very least, Holodexxx’s developers wish Valve was more open to a conversation around adult games, explicit content, and digital depictions of real people.

Kotaku reached out to Valve for more information about its definition of pornography and Holodexxx’s ban, but as of this publishing, it did not reply.

Sex Game Can't Get On Steam, Even After $20,000 Worth Of Attempts

The developers of Holodexxx are at a loss. After spending months attempting to get their VR sex game onto Steam, they’ve hit a wall that no amount of self-censorship or mechanical refinement has been able to drill through: Valve’s nebulous definition of “pornography.”

kotaku.com