Have you checked your Steam Wishlist today? If not, you might want to. Some players are finding their wishlists a little lighter as Valve has delisted over 5,000 Steam games from the platform. Based on user reports and the community-maintained Steam Banned and Removed Games List, this purge has been happening under the radar since early November 2024. While you might be ready to pick up a torch and pitchfork, the reality is that almost all of them were cheap cash grabs.
Often built with AI art, barely safe from copyright infringement, or simple asset flips, they offer titillating content with little value for a meager change. Such as Hentai: Waifu World, FightingGirl featuring not-Miku, and Ecchi Puzzle Games, among a thousand others.
You could say that this feels more like Valve is taking out the trash by delisting those Steam games. Personally, I do agree with this decision as 96% of them shouldn’t even be considered shovelware. They exist only to prey on people who don’t know any better. But the timing of Valve’s crackdown on its game library is quite noteworthy.
Virginia Senator Mark Warner recently sent a strongly worded letter to Gabe Newell himself, calling out Steam for hosting hate groups and fostering harmful content.
Adding to the mounting pressure, Germany recently implemented mandatory age-rating regulations for all games sold within its borders. Games without ratings must now provide the necessary content surveys or face delisting from the German Steam store. Valve announced that approximately 23,000 titles could be affected by this rule, which includes household names like Halo, Dawn of War, and Undertale. While over 65,000 games already comply by mid-November 2024, it has amplified the urgency for Valve to clean up the house.
Still, this situation reveals the long-standing inconsistency in Steam’s curation policy, especially when legitimate games offering ‘fanservice’ get caught in the crossfire.
Take Tokyo Clanpool, for example, a Japanese dungeon crawler with a niche but loyal following. Despite being available on platforms like PS Vita, Switch, and GOG, it was delisted. Games like Dungeon Travelers 2, Chaos;Head, and Full Metal Daemon: Muramasa, which passed GOG and console standards, have faced inexplicable rejection on Steam. Worse of all, Steam’s content moderators have known to never take a re-appeal — unless its customers made an extremely huge deal about it.
Because of that, it doesn’t come as a surprise this Valve delisting case has become a hot-button issue in some corners of the internet. Players affected by this ask the age-old question: should the company embrace stricter curation or fully commit to its chaotic, ‘free market’ philosophy? Steam’s laissez-faire approach has long been both its charm and its downfall, filling its library with everything from hidden gems to literal scams. Remember The War Z or its rebranding to Infestation: Survivor Stories (not to be confused with legitimate franchise World War Z) and The Day Before?
If Valve really wants to clean up its act without alienating devs and players, it needs to pick a lane. Either curate the storefront like Epic Games Store or embrace the chaos entirely. I strongly suggest the Half-Life maker take the former stance even if we have to lose some niche games in the process. Other storefronts like GOG, MangaGamer, and JASTUSA still exist anyway. Half-measures just leave everyone frustrated — and their wishlists mysteriously empty.
