After years of allowing just about anything to live on the platform, Valve began cracking down on games deemed too explicit and/or offensive for Steam. This wasn't motivated by any desire to moderate the platform, but rather because payment processing companies, such as Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal, began putting pressure on the platform by threatening to pull support unless games deemed a 'brand risk' for these companies were removed.
We've since seen several games delisted from Steam, such as the indie horror game Horses and the lewd gacha game Brown Dust 2. We now have another game joining these ranks: Hong Kong 2097. For those unfamiliar, Hong Kong 2097 is the upcoming sequel to an infamous bootleg SNES game called Hong Kong 97 (nice spot, Automaton).
This shoot-'em-up was a political commentary on the upcoming handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China, and parodied the gaming industry by incorporating absurd and offensive features and imagery. 30 years later, HappySoft has returned to follow up on its controversial bootleg, but the studio has hit a stumbling block in Valve.
Steam's crackdown on racy games continues.
"Steam has declined to ship Hong Kong 2097 and retired the...
