Nighthawks, a narrative-focused vampire RPG published by Wadjet Eye Games, has had one of the scariest weeks a PC game could have right before its September 22nd launch. Earlier this week Dave Gilbert, founder of Wadjet Eye Games, shared on Bluesky that Steam had whacked Nighthawks with an adults only rating.
Steam has an unfortunate habit of appending games with inappropriate ratings while providing little to no explanation or communication with the game’s makers; just ask the developers of Future? No Thanks! And just as in that case, the adults-only rating blocked Nighthawks from many players’ search results and blocked it entirely in certain countries, days before the game’s scheduled release.
While there are other PC storefronts, Steam is really the only one that matters for a game’s viability. Kneecapping a game’s discoverability by removing it from search results is a veritable death sentence that’s hard to circumnavigate without Steam’s intervention. And even if a developer modifies their game to appease Steam’s rating gods, the company still might not play ball. See also: Horses.
In an interview with PC Gamer, Nighthawks creator Richard Cobbett explained what might have triggered the rating. “In terms of content, we’re talking a few butt shots and some other censored naughty bits, mostly as part of companion romances and similar content,” he said. Meanwhile, as Steam takes such ruinous exception to mild bits of T&A, it will also promote a third-party “Hentai vs. Furry” porn game event on users’ store pages.
Fortunately Nighthawks‘ story has a happy ending. Gilbert shared that Steam has reversed course and removed the adults-only rating. While he says the whole ordeal was terrifying, he also feels in retrospect that it was actually kinda good that it happened.
“Now that this whole ‘adult content’ debacle is over, I think I can call it a net positive,” Gilbert wrote on Bluesky. “More people know about our game than ever. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. That said, I hope to never have to go through anything like this ever again.”
