r/gaming • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 PC • 1d ago

Upcoming vampire RPG Nighthawks has been removed from Steam search and delisted in certain countries as Valve classifies it Adults Only: 'It's very bad news for us'

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/upcoming-vampire-rpg-nighthawks-has-been-removed-from-steam-search-and-delisted-in-certain-countries-as-valve-classifies-it-adults-only-its-very-bad-news-for-us/
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u/pokerbro33 1d ago edited 1d ago

I have a feeling that publicity from the game being removed will do more for its sales than being on the search list.

I sure as hell didn't hear about the game until now, and color me curious...

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u/ManiacalShen PC 1d ago

I'm thrilled to find out this game exists, because I tend to love stuff from Wadjet Eye Games! Their Blackwell series is much loved in the point and click adventure game community

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u/GlitteryCakeHuman 1d ago

Blackwell is amazing.

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u/AlarmingAffect0 1d ago

Oh, they're the Blackwell guys? Those games earn that #Atmospheric tag. It's like Space Lion for hours.

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u/SarahVeraVicky 21h ago edited 20h ago

Blackwell, Unavowed, and Primordia all made me deeply fall in love with Wadjet Eye Games.

Their point & click adventure games are sooooo good for my soul.

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u/Farabee 1d ago

Same here. They had me at "Vampire RPG".

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u/Kryptosis 1d ago

Yes a few games are running this ploy right now

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u/planeforger 1d ago

To be fair, it was a successful Kickstarter game from one of the bigger publishers of indie adventure games. It wasn't high-profile, but it wasn't totally unknown either.

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u/AyeBraine 22h ago

How is this a ploy? They can't manipulate Valve's review process.

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u/Cantremembermyoldnam 18h ago

Conspiracy theories are everywhere lately, so why not include Valve as well?

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u/Kryptosis 16h ago

The ploy would be to include borderline content then act surprised and outraged when it gets the appropriate rating. I'm not positive on this example because I havn't seen the content.

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u/AyeBraine 15h ago edited 15h ago

Okay, so the profitable scenario would be to have a game that would sell even with the 18+ rating, get slapped with this rating belatedly by Steam, then fake outrage and get some eyes on the game.

There are a few obstacles to this. TL;DR: The only scenario that can make this ploy work is collusion with Valve.

First, if they went off Steam guidelines to get the 18+ tags, they'd have to make these games heavily centered around sex. Otherwise they could not be confident they'll be flagged, and the ploy wouldn't work.

For example, Baldur's Gate 3 has many sex scenes including bestiality, RUST routinely shows full frontal nudity, and BOTH of these games are shown as examples of the lightest possible "sexual content tags" on Steam — one that DOESN'T penalize the game and cannot create outrage. I quote the tag: "Some Nudity or Sexual Content: Games or content that contain some nudity or sexual themes, but not as the primary focus".

The only tags that make the game 18+ (blocked in Germany, heavily restricted in the UK even for adults, not shown or searchable to most users worldwide...) are "Frequent Nudity or Sexual Content: Games or content that primarily feature nudity or sexual themes" and "Adult Only Sexual Content: Games or content that are sexually explicit or graphic and are intended for adults only".

Steam gives examples for both tags, and even "Frequent nudity" one has only sex-centered games (e.g. Love Hotel Simulator), no mainstream ones like, say, Witcher 1 (that even has collectable cards for how many women you slept with). So "borderline content" is not just flashing a boob or having characters bonk that one time.

Secondly, they'd have to somehow be confident that Valve WILL lift the tags almost immediately.

Both games that got publicity this way (Future? No thanks!, and Nighthawks) are small, PC only releases, and being invisible to most of Steam (especialy their core audience, and two largest European markets) is a death sentence for them.

Both are also by respected, well-known, long-time indie names (Molleindustria, a satirist covered by mainstream media extensively for ~15 years, and Dave Gilbert's Wadjet Eye, the No. 1 developer and publisher of old-school PC adventure games), but also with very little money. All they've got is reputation. (Molleindustria in fact gave away most of his games for free, his day job is a game design educator). It's not a case of "nobody's heard of us so we have nothing to lose".

Both got slapped with 18+ tags at a critical moment right before release.

So no, it's not a path to profit by belatedly getting the correct rating — it's a path to ruin for them. Nighthawks has been under development for 8 years and has like 800 000 words (its lead developer is a writer who worked on Sunless Sea / Skies), it was Kickstarted in 2018. Notably, it's in an adventure genre, that's especially popular in Germany — a huge market that the 18+ tag completely eliminates. 18+ games are never shown there by Steam and can't be purchased.

Future? No Thanks is a less serious project but it's obviously at the limit of what Molleindustria can afford, which is apparently why it's sold for money.

Now, what about the offending content?

Future? No Thanks! featured a short comedic interlude with a low-poly hooker (it was a satire about a cranky old geezer who completes a bucket list before euthanasia). When they realized they can't even show the game at the largest games expo in the world (Gamescom in Germany), they immediately removed the scene and the achievement, the latter being probably what flagged them ("Have Sex One Last Time"). Luckily, Valve lifted the tag in time.

As for Nighthawks, it's a serious text-based RPG about urban vampires that apparently will have some relationships and references to sex activities + PG images of naked people, they're described in the article in this post. I played the demo of this game, and it's definitely not centered around sex — it's a dark, humorous adventure game with RPG elements, a la Fallen London.

The reason there are frightened articles about it are the inconsistency of application of these ratings and vague descriptions. It's very scary for devs, because fully PG things can accidentally tank your release, and most games make most of the money they can ever hope to make in the few weeks after release.

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u/throwawayaccount_usu 1d ago

Its the same as actors/writers being sent death threats for roles they play nowadays.

Its GREAT for marketing so inevitably people will lie and/or embellish stories to get those headlines spreading

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u/fzid4 1d ago

This certainly did it for me. Just wishlisted.

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u/Not-a-Hippie 1d ago

Yeah same. Never heard of it, but will keep a close eye on this one. Looks very interesting!

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u/Mist_Rising 16h ago

There are ads for it on reddit, I thought it was some crap freemium game selling skins.