Valve stopped Steam sales of adult game No Mercy in the UK this week following a complaint from UK technology secretary Peter Kyle, who insisted that the "deeply worrying" game be removed due to its extreme content, as reported by news outlet LBC.
No Mercy included "incest," "blackmail," and "unavoidable non-consensual sex," according to its Steam page, which also promised players the opportunity to become "every woman's worst nightmare" and "never take 'no' for an answer."
No Mercy was also removed from sale in Canada and Australia, and on Thursday the developer announced that it would pull the game from Steam entirely, although it defended the content as harmless.
"We don't intend to fight the whole world, and specifically, we don't want to cause any problems for Steam and Valve," Zerat Games said in a statement posted to No Mercy's Steam page. That page is no longer accessible, though users who previously purchased the game still have access.
Since it began allowing adult games on Steam in 2018, Valve has curated the category with an extremely light touch, saying initially that it would only remove games that contained illegal content or were "trolling."
No Mercy may in fact fall into the illegal category in the UK: A 2008 UK law made it illegal to possess "extreme pornographic images," including "explicit and realistic" pornographic depictions of non-consensual sex.
"That sort of vile material is already currently illegal," Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told LBC about No Mercy.
The attention on No Mercy has also raised the question of whether Valve does enough to prevent minors from accessing adult content on Steam. In 2023, the UK passed the Online Safety Act, which demands "robust age checks" for viewing pornographic content, such as ID or credit card verification. No age verification is required to make a Steam account and turn off the adult content filter, and physical gift cards can be used in place of credit card payment to purchase games.
The Online Safety Act and other laws that require adults to submit identification to access online pornography have been criticized by free speech and privacy advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as have other efforts to regulate internet content in the UK, US, and elsewhere.
In its original form, the Online Safety Act would have also given the UK government the power to compel companies to take down "legal but harmful" content, but that wording was removed over concerns that it would limit free speech.
Former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, a member of the Conservative Party who argued for keeping the "legal but harmful" aspect of the Online Safety Act, told LBC that games like No Mercy must be banned to protect "children, vulnerable adults, and women."
"It's appalling and feeds into the insidious 'Andrew Tate' narrative which is taking hold amongst young men who spend too much time online," Dorries told the outlet. "I hate banning things, but sadly, social media has taken us to the place whereby for the protection of children, vulnerable adults, and women, we have to: this needs to be removed online, immediately."
Before the developer of No Mercy chose to remove it from Steam entirely, a Change.org petition received over 13,000 signatures calling for Valve to stop sales of the game globally.
"By treating rape as entertainment, No Mercy puts all women and girls at risk," reads the petition.
In its statement, the No Mercy developer said that the game has been misrepresented in online videos with "graphics from a completely different game," but acknowledged that No Mercy depicts behavior that is "disgusting" in the real world. The creator asserted, however, that incest, blackmail, and "male domination" are common kinks that don't reflect on the character of those who seek them out in a fictional, roleplay context, and don't cause social or psychological harm.
Valve has tightened its rules for adult content on Steam since 2018, disallowing "nude or sexually explicit images of real people" and making occasional exceptions to its hands-off policy, such as by refusing to sell a game called "Rape Day" in 2019, but it continues to take a mostly laissez faire approach to moderating its storefront.
As a result, No Mercy is hardly the only game in Steam's adults-only section that may qualify as "extreme" under UK law and be considered harmful by large parts of the public. Without leaving the adult section's front page, I encountered a game that promises "mind control, corruption, dominance, and submission" and another that says it includes "sexual violence" and "optional incest."
Valve has not responded to a request for comment.
