mystral: Valve is a private company. They have a right to decide which content they want to sell or not.
And frankly, even if they personally didn't care, selling adult-only porn games on Steam could potentially be a huge PR nightmare if the media got wind of it, considering that most people still think video games are for kids.
Much better to just not take the risk, from Valve's point of view. It's not like the game would make them tons of money anyway.
dirtyharry50: I can understand what you are saying there and it makes some sense until I consider Valve having no problem carrying Saints Row 3 where you can run around whacking people with huge dildos.
So really it seems to me that at this point, there is sort of a soft core and hard core line being drawn, very soft core I should add.
At least in the USA there is no question that carrying any X-rated content on Steam would be a huge and very costly mistake. I would not expect anything with a focus on sexual content to have an ice cube's chance in hell of getting on Steam anytime soon.
I don't think it's a soft core/hard core line being drawn. Again you have to see it from a PR point of view.
Steam can legitimately sell Witcher 2 as an RPG or Saint's Row 3 as an action game, the sexual content is not the focus of either game. If there ever was a scandal about those, Steam could just pretend they didn't notice that content.
When it comes to a porn game, there is no way to sell it as anything other than a porn game. And imagine some conservative parent browsing the site and seeing that there are porn games on Steam?
As I said, huge PR nightmare right there.
I'm not a prude, nor do I have any moral objection to porn, and like many Europeans I do find that the American acceptance of violence and rejection of sex makes little to no sense.
This doesn't change the fact that Valve is an American company, and that no matter what they think about porn, they do have to cater to American values when it comes to their product.