It's a sad day for aficionados of undead porn games, but a good one for pretty much everybody else: Valve has rescinded the adults only rating it had applied to the upcoming narrative RPG Nighthawks, meaning it will appear in standard searches on the storefront and won't be blocked from sale in some regions.
"Phew. What a roller coaster," Dave Gilbert, head of publisher Wadjet Eye Games, wrote on Bluesky. "Thank you everyone for your amazing support while we got this sorted. If you weren't able to wishlist before, now you can!"
I tested for myself, and sure enough, Nighthawks now appears in Steam searches even if you're not logged in. Previously, the adult rating meant it wouldn't show up unless you were logged in and had your account set to display AO-rated games.
In a separate post, Nighthawks developer (and former PC Gamer contributor) Richard Cobbett also expressed relief at the change: "Now I can get back to only stressing over people actually liking it!"
Oh, thank goodness. Now I can get back to only stressing over people actually liking it!
— @richardcobbett.bsky.social (@richardcobbett.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-09-15T20:03:50.795Z
The entire situation was bizarre. Nighthawks, a game about life as a new vampire in a world where the existence of vampires is known, began as a 2018 Kickstarter project; it promised depth, complexity, great storytelling, hand-drawn art, and absolutely nothing about sex.
The same is visible on the Nighthawks Steam page: A little sexy, maybe—it's vampires, after all, and you know how they are—but hardcore sex? Not so much.
Complicating matters further, Cobbett told us when the AO rating was first imposed that nobody was really sure what had caused it. "Vampires are inherently a bit sexy, and Nighthawks is definitely a mature game in terms of content," he said over the weekend. "However, regarding nudity, sex, and similar elements specifically, it's really all very mild, usually comedic in tone when it happens, and far less explicit than anything you'd see on HBO."
Why exactly Valve walked the rating back is also a mystery. Gilbert told me in a chat today that Valve didn't give him any "clear insights" into the initial rating, or why it was changed. He did say, however, that "Valve was very helpful in expediting the review on my appeal so we could get the AO rating dropped and the game itself approved for release. Regardless of how and why it happened, they did everything in their power to make it right. So I’m very grateful for that."
The experience of the surprise AO rating was very stressful, Gilbert said, and he was "basically swimming in cortisol" throughout. But he also acknowledged that, with the resolution in place, it was a "net positive" overall, and that the number of wishlists on Steam had "basically doubled overnight."
"I did not expect the whole thing to go as viral as it did. It called a lot more attention to the game that I am normally capable of on my own," he said. "I wish I could say I planned this as a guerrilla marketing stunt, but I’m not that dumb and I’m not that smart!
"I have no illusions that all of those new wishlists are sincere, and that a nonzero chunk of them aren't 'protest wishlists,' but anything that pushes the algorithm into thinking we are popular isn't a bad thing."
With "a decent night's sleep" behind him, Gilbert said he can see the humor in the situation, adding that he'll "be dining out on this story for a long time." He also recognizes, though, that he was very lucky to get the outcome he wanted, as quickly as he did.
"I had the contacts and the fanbase and the (relative) clout to make a bit of noise and get this handled quickly. Many devs in the same situation wouldn't be able to do that," Gilbert said. "At the very least, this has shed a big light on the problem and made Valve aware that this is a big problem many indies face. Hopefully it means that others will have an easier time of it going forward."
Classifying Nighthawks as a hardcore sex game does put a light on the imperfections (and frustrating opacity) of Steam's rating system (and yeah, now that we've got a happy ending we can admit it's kind of funny too), but the sheer number of games on the storefront means change to its classification system may be unlikely: More than 19,000 new games launched on Steam in 2025 alone.
Nighthawks is set to launch on September 22. and alongside Steam will also be available on GOG.
