Molleindustria’s Future? No Thanks! is rated Teen by ESRB and 12 by PEGI. In the words of its developer and publisher, the game is “a narrative-driven, open-world adventure” about a cranky old boomer trying to complete a bucket list before they die. It looks silly and wholesome, which is why it’s baffling that Valve has decided to brand it as “pornographic” and slapped it with an 18+ rating on Steam.
Developer Molleindustria has been warring with Steam’s content guidelines since July, as the release of Future? No Thanks! had to be pushed back due to “mild nudity.” However, as spotted by GamesRadar, the story took an even sillier turn over the past 24 hours after Molleindustria took his game to Gamescom in Germany.
“We are currently at Gamescom in Cologne, everybody is asking us why they can’t see the PAGE of a Teen rated game,” stated Molleindustria in a post on Bluesky. “This has been the most humiliating and surreal experience in 20+ years of game making. I’m desperately looking for anybody who knows anybody at Valve that can at least tell me what’s going on.”
So, what exactly triggered the 18+ rating on Steam in the first place? At one point in time, Future? No Thanks! featured “untextured polygons” of “ass and boobs,” which were tied to an achievement titled “Have Sex One Last Time.” Molleindustria explained that since this was flagged by Steam last month, the dev team has since “removed the entire sex quest” and resubmitted the game… yet Valve won’t budge on its adult-only rating.
To make matters worse, I can’t access this game on Steam. As I’m in the UK, when I try to open the Steam store page for Future? No Thanks!, I get hit with a message stating that, due to the “UK Online Safety Act,” Valve “is required to verify that [I am] 18 or older before accessing mature sexual content.” I can’t even look at the game because I haven’t verified my Steam account by adding “a valid UK credit card.”
I don’t own a credit card–never needed one, and it seems kind of silly to get one just to look at 18+ rated games on Steam. Thankfully, there are ways around this sort of nonsense, but I just want to reiterate that Future? No Thanks! is a game that looks like this. Valve apparently considers this to be on par with the game Sex With Hitler.
It all feels like a rehash of what happened with Santa Ragione’s indie horror game Horses, which was banned from both Steam and the Epic Games Store for featuring an X-rated scene that was ultimately cut from the game. Even though the offending material was removed, Valve stuck by its initial decision, much in the same way that it’s chosen to maintain Future? No Thanks!’s adult-only rating, even though the PEGI 12-rated nudity is no longer in the game.