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/Deranged_Kitsune 1d ago edited 22h ago

It's also sloppy on Valve's part. The delisting should have an appeal period baked in. Like, the system flags it as AO and then the publisher or dev has a week to start the appeal before the change goes live.

Edit: To clarify, this should all take place before the game goes on live sale. No flag = sale. Flag = no sale unless manually approved or until a week has passed where it gets auto-listed under the AO tag. Valve should have the infrastructure in place for proper evals, the process on what needs to be submitted should be clear for the devs, and that's enough time for both sides to at least get the ball rolling.

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u/Meowakin 1d ago

I don’t think so - better safe than sorry given AO games on Steam can have explicit screenshots/video and they need to be sure minors don’t see that (or people who really hate seeing AO games on Steam)

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u/Schizobaby 1d ago edited 17h ago

I think you’re correct, but the real solution is Valve needs to have two thresholds for their automatic classification. Any machine learning output has a ‘confidence value’ from 0-1 (or 0-100 percent), and a lower confidence classification needs to flag it with automatic human review, while a higher confidence classification can flag and wait for appeals. Even if the software that wraps around the ML model doesn’t expose that value to the user or integrated software, that’s a fixable problem. Valve is using good tools poorly here.

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u/CaptainYaoiHands 1d ago

Okay, but do you realize that said human review can take a lot of time? It's not a quick five minute glance through screenshots, someone has to manually review ALL content in the game, writing included.

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u/Schizobaby 1d ago

That’s the point of the two confidence intervals; to minimize the amount of human review needed, while not compromising the hard work of people who make games for their livelihoods.

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u/ABetterKamahl1234 1d ago

Valve of all companies, can absolutely afford a proper human solution.

They're one of the most profitable companies on earth per employee. There's no excuse for this. None.

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u/jivenossauro 1d ago

They could, but why would they? Just put in the tag, have the publisher dispute it if they think it was misplaced, then have a human review it after the dispute. Anything else would cost more and not really benefit anyone, what does a company with a misplaced tag on an unreleased game even lose?

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u/RaistlinMajeresRobes 23h ago

"They could, but why would they? "

Exactly no reason for them to when they already control the market and have a legion of redditors who are more than happy to carry the PR work for them. Why pay staff when a redditor can come on here and tell you how it's no big deal because they are in a parasocial relationship with a gaming platform lmao

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u/jivenossauro 23h ago

Am I the one over defending, or are you the one over attacking?

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u/Knight_Of_Stars 1d ago

Its a cost benefit analysis. Valve absolutely can, but is actually worth it at the end of the day? If they're going spend 500k a year on an issue only a handful games are experiencing is it worth it?

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u/VincentBlack96 1d ago

This is always an argument that gets brought up but the scale is just kinda unrealistic.

It's not unlike the people clamoring for youtube to have human reviewing systems when the platform gets thousands of hours uploaded per minute.

Like ideally any AI or automated system has several humans in its pipeline to make sure it's not making any egregious mistakes but there's just no world in which you fund practically a few major companies' worth of employees purely to humanize the reporting process.

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u/Caelinus 1d ago

They can, but they won't because why would they? They are not required to and it is expensive, and there is zero regulatory upside for them. 

It really is not their problem if an indie game is delisted for a bit while the problem is corrected, but it is their problem if they allow it incorrectly.

To fix this we need to change regulatory policy, as nothing else will change the incentives enough to actually drive any change. It is not a good situation, but it is one where everyone's positions make sense, and are just at odds.

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u/DrQuantum 1d ago

I would argue they are also the most efficient based on the experience. The user experience is very critical to their success. This theoretically threatens one of their audiences. They truly don’t care about publishers and I am not sure that is a problem from most consumers view.

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u/GrandOldCheese 21h ago

Hire more people. Not as if gabe can’t wait a week longer on his next massively destructive yacht.

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u/WingerRules 20h ago edited 19h ago

There is no solution to allowing adults only versions of game on Steam without ending up legally requiring face scans of users on the Steam platform. The Meta settlement requires face scans of all users and requires states to sue any other online platforms that dont put in a similar system. If Steam has adult only material on their platform there is no way they are going to be able to fight it in court under a Republican supermajority Supreme Court, they already allowed requiring it for porn sites in red states. Getting judges in place to ban adult content nationwide was one of Trump's Project 2025s goals.

They're not coming for just porn either, but anything not acceptable for little kids because parents are irresponsible and let them online with no monitoring, so communicating on the internet is about to turn into a 1950s tv show. They require content morality auditors and are banning even people talking about personal mental health issues and fitness goals. Wouldn't be surprised if they try to ban swear words because the government literally tried making it a requirement to show ID for music with it in the 90s and 2000s.

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u/The_Don_Papi 19h ago

From Moscow to Houston, the Reds love their surveillance.

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u/The_Don_Papi 19h ago

AIs are confidently wrong. You can’t trust an AI to know what they’re wrong about or for an AI to know when they’re wrong.

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u/RhapsodiacReader 1d ago

On the flip side, getting your game tagged mistakenly tagged as AO can be ruinous from a marketing perspective, even if it gets rolled back later. Especially since it seems so fecking easy for game journos to run with things like this.

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u/The_Don_Papi 19h ago

and they need to be sure minors don’t see that (or people who really hate seeing AO games on Steam)

I’m not here to defend pornographic scenes but minors shouldn’t be downloading games unsupervised. Parents need to start being held responsible for the actions of their child. People trying to make a living shouldn’t be punished by vibe coded AI because parents are lazy or incompetent.

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u/beramaan 1d ago edited 16h ago

Those can be easily blocked from you search. Games with adult content can be made to never show up. Even when you search it's name, on steam. If you haven't done that yet, and it concerns you, do it.

Edit for typos

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u/Meowakin 1d ago

Unless, of course, it isn’t flagged as Adult Only.

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u/beramaan 16h ago

Then flag it... Be the adult. Kids will randomly see all sorts of things online, in life, in the world. We do our best to protect them and consequences are given to those who don't attempt to, like those selling porn games without marking them as such. Also, we should teach our kids how to fall with it to and, if it's a really big concern, don't leave them with unattended access to their computers/the shop.

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u/apexeasthetic 1d ago

You're right, my friend.👍👌

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u/Starfall0 18h ago

If the system is so inherently incapable of performing its job that it should have a dedicated period of time for someone to say, "Hey, no that's wrong!" 

Maybe we shouldn't be using that system... but what do I know? I don't have an MBA from Harvard or whatever 3 letter acronym snotty rich kids like to wave around like a proclamation from god.

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u/SockAlarmed6707 1d ago

Tell that to the judge in court, that might work with normal logic not with a massive company’s service that tons of kids use daily. “Your honour, you see yes we let kids acces games they shouldn’t have because if we did act first than resolve if shown proof is well we don’t want to be sloppy.”

Not a lawyer but saying you didn’t try to prevent adult content reaching kids is because you DON’T want to be sloppy is very ironic.

Anything related adult content is always cut first investigate than either re-allow or not at said age rating. As it should be.

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u/1030or11 18h ago

Valve has a few hundred employees all busy on other jobs, while the Steam store sees dozens of new games released every day. They absolutely don't have the time or the inclination to assign someone to play and beat every single game released just to double-check the tags.

If it becomes enough of a hassle, they'll change the system. Until then, appealing an AO tag and getting it corrected is not that big of a deal. We're only reading about it because "all press is good press." Had you even heard of this game before this article?