In July, PC storefronts Steam and Itch.io both pulled hundreds of games from sale, citing pressure from payment processors like Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe. The games affected allegedly violate a vague set of standards set forth by those companies, mostly targeting games with any sort of sexual content. Now, the developer of one horror game is pushing back and taking the chance to support a good cause at the same time.
Vile: Exhumed is a horror game intended to launch on Steam right in the midst of the storefront removing huge swaths of games, but ended up banned from sale instead. According to developer Cara Cadaver, Steam pulled the game for “sexual content with depictions of real people,” which the game does not contain. Played entirely through a computer interface, Vile: Exhumed is a disturbing story of a stalker, pieced together through artifacts left on his computer, but according to Cadaver, nothing in it actually runs afoul of Steam’s stated policies.
“The game covers topics of assault, abuse, and entitlement, and uses a combination of FMV and practical effects to create images as horrifying as the themes,” she wrote in a new statement on the game. “There are a lot of intense visuals in Vile: Exhumed, but there is no uncensored nudity, no depictions of sex acts, and no pornography whatsoever – which is one of the justifications bad actors are using right now to censor games. What this actually results in is taking power and storytelling away from women, other marginalized artists, and ultimately, from everyone.”
In response to the game’s delisting, Cadaver and publisher DreadXP are now offering the game for free, outside of the Steam storefront. On a new website they set up, Vile: Exhumed can be downloaded entirely for free, with an option for players to leave a donation. Half of any profits received through donations will go to the developer, with the other half sent to Red Door Family Shelter, a domestic violence shelter in Toronto. The game is also being covered by a Creative Commons license, which allows anyone to redistribute it for free as long as proper credit is given to the developer.
Initially, payment processors and a far-right activist group called Collective Shout, which took credit for leaning on them to ban games, suggested that only titles with extremely objectionable content were affected. It’s true that some banned games fit that definition (though we’ve argued before that that doesn’t justify their censorship), but that’s clearly not the case for all of them.
Immediately after the wave of bans, indie developers began warning of exactly what’s happened in Vile: Exhumed’s case. When payment processors and storefronts can block content using the vaguest of standards, there’s no recourse when they decide that something violates those policies. That leaves games like Vile: Exhumed, which tackles disturbing topics like sexual abuse, vulnerable to being targeted, since mere discussion of those issues is deemed unacceptable, regardless of what the game has to say about them. The ultimate irony is that while groups like Collective Shout claim their censorship campaigns are aimed at protecting women, artists like Cadaver who actually try to shine a light on women’s safety end up harmed by them.
Because the bans come directly from payment processors, giving a game away for free is one way to cut them out, offering a way for them to continue reaching players. Recently, storefront GOG gave away a pack of adult games that had been removed elsewhere for free for 48 hours. Itch.io has also begun the process of restoring free adult games to search results, and various developers have either offered free versions of their games or moved to selling them directly from their own websites while they remain delisted elsewhere. A campaign to keep pressure on payment processors by calling their support lines also remains underway, but so far, none have backed down from the bans. Until that happens, moves like Cadaver’s donation-only distribution of Vile: Exhumed may be the only way to keep transgressive games from disappearing.
