Valve's M-Rated Issues

Valve has had several issues recently with particularly mature games. Annoyingly, however, Valve appears to be a bit unclear about what's allowed and what isn't. I personally believe that Valve has bigger issues than what games they allow though.

Parental Controls:

Valve doesn't offer nearly enough parental settings when it comes to Steam. I had to do some digging, but I did discover that Steam has optional parental controls. They aren't well advertised and are under the "Family" tab of Steam's settings, followed by "Manage Family View". Not only is this not immediately indicative of the standard "Parental Controls" options that are typically found in game consoles, movie players, and various other devices, but the options available to parents are also very lacking.

Parents are given the option of allowing certain Steam features, including community based features and the store. Parents can also allow games on a game-by-game basis, which is theoretically fine, but they don't allow brood grouping like age ratings or age rating descriptors, such as "Violence" or "Mild Language". Although it's debatable if such a feature would even work on Steam.

Age Rating Integration:

What's the age rating for Half-Life 2? If you'd be so kind, open Steam, go to the store, and check for me. Team Fortress 2, Portal, Portal 2, and other Valve developed examples all lack an ESRB age rating on their store page. Grand Theft Auto V, PUBG, Skyrim, and many other major releases do have ESRB age ratings listed on the side of their store page.

The special treatment isn't exclusive to Valve games by the way. Euro Truck Simulator 2, Rust, and Puyo Puyo Tetris are a few examples of popular games that lack a clear ESRB age rating. Valve clearly doesn't care if a game even has an official ESRB age rating, which not only limits a parent's potential to monitor their child's activity, but also makes it difficult for others to stay informed as to what they're buying. I can personally say that I played Team Fortress 2 prior to being 17 purely because I wasn't made aware that it was rated M.

Staying Informed in what your Child is Playing:

You'll often hear people who don't have children and are also heavily integrated in the gaming scene tell parents to keep an eye on what their child is playing. Valve almost seams like they're trying to make that as difficult as possible. Whereas Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft require an ESRB age rating to be accepted on their platforms, Valve has no such requirement. Games like Half-Life 2 make no indication on their page what age rating a game has, and while it features no nudity, it still features mild language and heavy violence.

A parent might buy their child HuniePop thinking it's just a puzzle game. Then the parent finds out it's controversial and decides based on that assumption that Puyo Puyo Tetris is also controversial due to also being a puzzle game with characters on screen. I honestly can't tell you if the controversy of HuniePop is warranted or not because YouTube doesn't allow nudity, it lacks an ESRB age rating, and no one can agree if it has nudity or not. I'm also not about to spend ten dollars on Bejeweled with porn for the sake of research.

Staying informed on what games are good for your child is a daunting task that needs to be done on top of work, paying bills, making food, doing laundry, and several other time consuming tasks. Telling a parent to monitor what their child is playing doesn't help anyone, because the resources to find out if a game is suitable for your child, and you have to know what your child is capable of handling, as age ratings are more of a suggestion than a rule.

The Big Controversy:

Valve has recently had issues involving HuniePop, which as I mentioned earlier, may or may not feature nudity. Valve appears to have wanted to remove HuniePop from Steam, but offered few details as to why. Many people reacted negatively to this idea, and Valve either changed their mind or had sent the warning to the developers in error.

Valve's initial decision to remove HuniePop came out of nowhere, as the game had been up for three years with no issue, and the Steam version apparently censors the game in some ways. 

I personally have no issue with Valve removing games they don't see fit for their platform. I do have issue with Valve's lack of details surrounding the reason for the desired removal. It's a tired comparison, but why would censored nudity be removed while Grand Theft Auto V's uncensored nudity, violence, language, and torture scenes be allowed? Possibly because Grand Theft Auto V has an ESRB rating, but Valve should be clear with their reasoning so the developer can fix the problem.

While I might defend Valve a little bit in terms of them removing what they want from their platform, I also see no issue in the customers complaining at Valve's desired removal. Customers need to complain when a company does something they disagree with. I get upset with the idea that voicing your annoyances makes you entitled. Companies need to know what they should do to make their customers happy. In fact, I'm still annoyed with how much Valve is able to get away with because there isn't any viable competition.

I hope that Valve, customers, and developers can figure out how to make Steam a better platform for family entertainment, but without removing options for other people.