Schedule 1 creator had a backup plan if Steam rejected it—pack up the product, don a farmer's hat, and 'pivot it to be a farming game' like Stardew Valley

Shady characters in Schedule 1
(Image credit: TVGS)

Schedule 1 was one of 2025's freshly-cooked batches of surprise hits. Y'know, the kind that comes out of basically nowhere and lands square in the top sellers list—and while it was a year marked with these success stories, it was also the year that saw Steam starting to put the kibosh on adult-themed games. Which, one might worry, could eventually include drugs.

As a matter of fact, its creator Tyler tells our friends over at GamesRadar that this was enough of a concern to develop a backup plan in case Steam didn't accept the game to its platform: "Early during development, I had a plan where, if Steam wouldn't take it for whatever reason, I could just pivot it to be a farming game. Just strip all the drug stuff out, make it a farming game—but thankfully, it was all right."

Which isn't entirely surprising, given the Australian Classification Board is… let's call it thorough, historically refusing classification to games like DayZ, RimWorld, Disco Elysium, and most recently Silent Hill f—albeit often temporarily while the board puts those games under a microscope.

Schedule 1 not being unleashed on the land down under doesn't seem to've stopped its roll, though—the game has a proud all-time peak of 459,000 players on Steam, and even months away from its initial chart-busting release, it's still got a very healthy 24-hour peak of over 13,500 players.

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Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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