Key Takeaways:
- Nighthawks, the text-based vampire RPG from Wadjet Eye Games and writer Richard Cobbett, was mistakenly slapped with a Steam ‘Adult Only’ rating days before its September 22, 2026 launch
- The AO label removed the game from Steam searches entirely and delisted it in certain countries including Germany
- Valve reversed the decision following an appeal, with the team crediting Valve for “expediting the review”
- Developer statement confirmed: “At the risk of disappointing some players, Nighthawks is not porn” — the mature content is mostly text-only, with minimal non-explicit nudity
- The viral backlash accidentally doubled the game’s wishlist overnight, turning a nightmare into unexpected marketing
- This is part of a broader pattern of Steam’s increasingly aggressive content enforcement affecting indie developers making mature but non-pornographic games
Sometimes the gaming industry throws you a storyline that reads like it was written specifically for a game about vampires navigating a hostile world that misunderstands them. Nighthawks — the long-gestating text-based vampire RPG from publisher Wadjet Eye Games and writer Richard Cobbett — just lived through one of those weeks.
What Happened to Nighthawks on Steam
On September 13, 2026, Wadjet Eye Games founder Dave Gilbert took to Bluesky to share some alarming news. Steam had quietly classified Nighthawks as an “Adults Only” game, immediately excluding it from search results and delisting it entirely in certain countries — including Germany, a significant market for the kind of thoughtful PC gaming Nighthawks is squarely aimed at. This, with just over a week to go before the game’s scheduled September 22 launch date.
“We are aware that Steam has classified Nighthawks as an adult game and has excluded it from searches (and delisted it entirely in certain countries),” Gilbert wrote. “We are working on it. Valve is under the impression that this game is way sexier than it actually is.”
The AO label on Steam isn’t just a warning sticker. It’s effectively a visibility death sentence for games that aren’t actually explicit adult content. AO-rated titles disappear from Steam’s search results entirely unless a logged-in user has specifically opted into displaying that category in their account settings. In practice, it’s the platform equivalent of putting a game in a locked back room that most people don’t even know exists.
In a statement to PC Gamer, Nighthawks creator Richard Cobbett — whose writing credits include Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies from Failbetter Games — explained what this meant in practical terms: “It’s very bad news for us, because it immediately makes the game persona non grata in several important countries like Germany. We’re not sure exactly what triggered the issue, but we’ve obviously contacted Valve and we’re hoping that they will quickly remove the scarlet letter.”
As for what might have triggered Valve’s automated systems in the first place, Cobbett had a theory: “Vampires are inherently a bit sexy, and Nighthawks is definitely a mature game in terms of content. However, regarding nudity, sex, and similar elements specifically, it’s really all very mild, usually comedic in tone when it happens, and far less explicit than anything you’d see on HBO.”
“At the Risk of Disappointing Some Players, Nighthawks Is Not Porn”
After the dust settled, the Nighthawks team put out a statement on Steam that deserves to be quoted for the sheer elegance of its opening line. They wrote: “Last weekend, Nighthawks was mistakenly classified as ‘Adults Only’ by Valve. This put Nighthawks into a category usually reserved for porn games and rendered it almost invisible on the Steam storefront. At the risk of disappointing some players, Nighthawks is not porn.”
For anyone curious what the game’s actual mature content looks like, the statement was very clear: “Sexy? Sure. Deals with mature themes? Definitely. Porn? Most definitely not. Anyone playing Nighthawks expecting lots of sex and nudity will leave very disappointed. Any sexy scenes are text only, and the few scenes with nudity are presented with strategically placed props and hands covering up the naughty bits.”
The game’s official Steam mature content description backs all of this up — it lists strong language, adult situations, and occasional non-explicit nudity during romance scenes, with most mature content conveyed through text only. No graphic sex scenes, no sexual violence. For context, Baldur’s Gate 3 — a game featuring full-frontal nudity and sex scenes that drew actual late-night cable comparisons — never received an AO rating. Nighthawks was essentially getting punished for having fewer than ten percent of the same content.
Valve Reversed the Decision — And Deserves Some Credit Here
By September 14, Gilbert confirmed on Bluesky that the rating had been reversed and that “everything is set for launch on the 22nd!” In their Steam statement, the Nighthawks team acknowledged that while the situation was stressful, Valve was “very helpful in expediting the review on our appeal so we could get the AO rating dropped.” That’s worth noting — once the human review process kicked in rather than whatever automated system initially flagged the game, the resolution came fairly quickly.
The team still doesn’t know exactly what triggered the AO classification in the first place, which is part of the broader problem with how Steam’s content moderation works right now. The system is opaque enough that developers can find themselves in crisis without any clear explanation of what crossed a line or how to avoid it next time.
The Accidental Marketing Win
Here’s where the story takes a turn that the developers themselves couldn’t quite believe. The backlash to the AO rating went viral. Coverage spread across games media. Gilbert’s Bluesky posts got picked up. And in the middle of all the panic, Nighthawks’ wishlists essentially doubled overnight.
“Well, it was stressful to go through and we were basically swimming in cortisol the past few days, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a net positive,” the team wrote. “When I posted my frustrations on social media, I did not expect it to go viral. We got some press coverage out of it and wishlists essentially doubled overnight. All good things! I wish I could say I planned this as a guerrilla marketing stunt, but I’m not that dumb and I’m not that smart!”
For a game that Kickstarted back in 2018 — nearly 4,000 backers pledged over $136,000 to bring it to life — finally making it to release after eight years of development and then accidentally generating massive coverage days before launch because Steam thought it was porn is the kind of chaotic-good outcome that indie game development occasionally produces.
But the Developers Also Called Out the Bigger Problem
The good news for Nighthawks shouldn’t obscure the systemic issue the incident exposed. The team was very direct about the fact that their outcome was not typical — and that they’re aware of how lucky they were.
“I am also very aware that I am extremely lucky to have the fanbase and the (relative) clout to make a bit of noise and get this handled quickly,” the statement read. “Many devs in the same situation wouldn’t be able to do that. At the very least, our situation has made Valve aware that this is a problem many indies making mature games may face during the submission process. Hopefully it means that others will have an easier time of it going forward.”
That’s a genuinely important point. Wadjet Eye Games has been making acclaimed adventure games for years — titles like Unavowed, Old Skies, and the Blackwell series. They have an audience, a relationship with games press, and enough community goodwill to go viral on Bluesky. A first-time indie developer facing the same erroneous AO classification would have had no such safety net.
The Context: Steam’s Content Enforcement Is Getting More Aggressive — And Less Consistent
The Nighthawks situation didn’t happen in a vacuum. Back in July 2025, Valve quietly updated its publisher guidelines to add a new clause prohibiting content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by its payment processors, related card networks and banks, or internet network providers — with the update specifically calling out “certain kinds of adult-only content.” The change was driven by pressure from payment processors and credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard, who have been pushing digital storefronts to clean up adult content on their platforms.
In response, Steam began removing games — largely those with explicit sexual content, particularly titles with incest themes — and Itch.io temporarily deindexed NSFW content entirely from its browse and search pages. The policy has been widely criticized for being vague and leaving developers unable to predict what will or won’t trigger enforcement, since the actual standards of the payment processors are never published.
What’s followed has been a pattern of inconsistent enforcement that catches clearly non-pornographic games like Nighthawks while leaving other genuinely explicit content untouched. Multiple queer developers have spoken out over the past year about their games being flagged or suppressed without adequate explanation. The satirical open-world game Future? No Thanks hit a nearly identical situation to Nighthawks recently, flagged for mild nudity. Robert Yang released a free compilation of his award-winning games after facing ongoing censorship battles on both Steam and Itch.io. And Kotaku noted, with some irony, that at the exact time Steam was treating Nighthawks as too explicit to appear in searches, it was actively promoting a third-party “Hentai vs. Furry” adult game event on users’ store pages.
The underlying tension isn’t going away. Valve is caught between payment processors demanding compliance and developers who need clear, consistent, appealable standards to build their businesses on. Nighthawks got lucky — its resolution came fast, the viral coverage turned into a marketing win, and the game launches on September 22 on Steam and GOG for PC, Mac, and Linux. But the system that generated this crisis in the first place is still running exactly as it was before.
For more on the challenging landscape facing indie studios right now, check out our coverage of the Build A Rocket Boy shutdown and Capcom’s welcome decision to scrap Monster Hunter Wilds’ paid character edit vouchers.
