After being banned in the UK, Canada, and Australia, the developers have instead removed the game from Valve’s digital platform.

Valve halted Steam sales of the adult game No Mercy in the UK this week following a complaint from UK technology minister Peter Kyle. Kyle insisted that the deeply disturbing game be removed due to its extremist content. No Mercy featured incest, molestation and non-consensual sex, according to its Steam page, which also promised players that they could become every woman’s worst nightmare and never take no for an answer.

It has been pulled from sale in Canada and Australia, and on Thursday, the developer announced it would remove the game from Steam altogether, though it defended the content as harmless. Zerat Games says it has no intention of fighting the world, and specifically does not want to cause problems for Steam and Valve. Since it began allowing adult games on Steam in 2018, Valve has been extremely tight-lipped about curating the category, initially saying it would only remove games that contained illegal content or trolling. However, No Mercy could fall into the UK’s illegal category.

A 2008 UK law made it illegal to possess extreme pornographic images, including explicit and realistic pornographic depictions of non-consensual sex. The attention on No Mercy has also raised questions about whether Valve is doing enough to prevent minors from accessing adult content on Steam. The UK passed the Online Safety Act 2023, which requires strict age verification, such as identification or credit card verification, to view pornographic content. No age verification is required to create a Steam account and turn off the adult content filter, and physical gift cards can be used to purchase games instead of credit cards.

The Online Safety Act and other laws requiring adults to identify themselves to access online pornography have been criticized by free speech and privacy advocates, as have other efforts to regulate online content in the UK, US and elsewhere. In its original form, the Online Safety Act would have also empowered the UK government to require companies to remove legal but harmful content, but this language was removed because of concerns that it would restrict free speech.

Before No Mercy’s developer decided to remove the game from Steam entirely, a petition on Change.org was signed by over 13,000 people asking Valve to stop selling the game worldwide. Zerat Games said that the game had been misrepresented in online videos using graphics from a completely different game, but admitted that No Mercy depicted behavior that is abhorrent in the real world. However, the developer claimed that incest, blackmail, and male domination are common perversions that do not reflect poorly on the character of those who engage in them in a fictional, role-playing context and do not cause social or psychological harm.

Since 2018, Valve has tightened its rules on adult content on Steam, banning nude or sexually explicit images of real people, and in 2019 it refused to sell a game called Rape Day, but it continues to take a mostly cautious approach to content moderation.

Source: PCGamer, Legislation, Gov.UK