Valve’s arbitrary curating process sure is getting out of hand lately. The latest ban is for a game that’s 22 years old from Interactive Strip and United Independent Entertainment called Wet: The Sexy Empire.
The AO-rated title had its Steam page approved to go live and the game was scheduled to release on March 11th, 2020 but right before release the game was banned from Steam.
You can view a cached version of the Steam page to see that everything was in order and that it was not only labeled as Adults Only but also received an official ESRB rating of Adults Only.
According to the SteamDB entry, Wet: The Sexy Empire was banned on March 5th, 2020.
It’s impossible to know why it was banned since the forum page on Steam along with the entire community hub has been wiped clean off of Valve’s service.
The really bizarre part about it all is that Wet: The Sexy Empire is still currently available to purchase over on the GOG.com store for only $5.99. However, it’s known as Lula: The Sexy Empire instead of Wet: The Sexy Empire.
The reason for the name change could have been due to ownership changes for the distribution rights that took place back in late 2018, as briefly discussed in a GOG forum thread. During the hand-over of IP rights the game was briefly removed from the GOG catalog, but later it was brought back.
As for being banned from Steam, it could be due to the game featuring brief snippets of real life models that are used during interstitial sequences when making the in-game films, as well as the stills that appear on posters, flyers and a TV screen in the background.
For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Valve has been disabling and banning adult games from the Steam library that feature real-life models. They’ve recently been enforcing this rule with an iron fist.
Featuring depictions of real-life models in the game could have netted Wet: The Sexy Empire a ban, even though the models are either barely on the screen, are featured in still images, or are sometimes fully clothed.
You can check out the NSFW walkthrough below from Digitális Dimenziók at the 12:18 mark to see an example of how the real-life models were used in the game.
Even though the game doesn’t show any explicit genitalia or actual penetration, it does contain partial nudity and lots of implied sexual acts.
Majority of the visual content is constructed via pixel-painted sprites, but even the minor inclusion of real-life models was enough for Valve to drop the ban-hammer on a 22 year old game.
You can get an idea of what the artwork is like with the NSFW intro sequence below.
Some people have argued that because Valve can’t verify the ages of the models used in adult games that it’s why they’re not taking any risks and banning all games labeled as Adults Only, even when they don’t contain any actual nudity or explicit sexual content, like Bad Ass Babes for example.
However, if simply having still photos or brief flashes of real people appear in AO-rated games is grounds for a ban, then does that mean any game featuring developer photos in the credit sequences or Easter Eggs sprinkled throughout the game would also net the game a ban, too?
It’s always been said that once the censorship train gets rolling it doesn’t stop, and now we’re seeing classic eroge titles getting banned from Steam even though they’re still allowed on milquetoast platforms like GOG.com.
(Thanks for the news tip Zero)
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