Adult game developer’s PayPal funds held for over a month despite being legitimately sold on Steam
Steam adult game censorship is hitting payments. This probably won’t be the last time we hear about a case like this.
The battle over censorship on Steam isn’t slowing down, now the petition aimed at Mastercard, Visa, and activist groups has passed 250,000 signatures. Around the same time, itch.io was also forced to pull adult and NSFW games after payment processors came under pressure from the Australian group Collective Shout in late July. Frustrated players have even been reaching out to Visa and Mastercard directly to complain, but so far it doesn’t look like much has changed. To make things worse, one adult game dev from UK shared on Reddit that PayPal froze all the money he’d earned.
Adult game developer locked out of 80k GBP by PayPal
A developer of adult games on Steam says PayPal has withheld around 80,000 GBP in earnings for over a month, money he needed to cover a corporation tax bill. After asking him where the money came from, PayPal froze the payout when they found out it was from an adult game - even though the title is legal under UK law. Complaints have gone nowhere, and PayPal claims he violated their terms of service. The developer argues PayPal is interfering in a legitimate business transaction, since the sales went through Steam and not PayPal directly.
This money was supposed to be used to pay a large corporation tax bill due in August.
However, for 4+ weeks now PayPal have refused to release ANY of the money to me. They interviewed me and asked where it came from. I said it came from programming work I did for video games. They asked me where the games were sold, I said Steam. Then they asked me what specific game it was and demanded I link the store page.
I linked the store page and when they realised it was an adult game they refused to release my money. They have also not refunded it to the lead developer either.
I've been told that I've violated PayPal's terms of service. Bear in mind PayPal is very far removed from the actual sales of this game.
The game we developed is perfectly legal. It doesn't contain any genres that violate UK laws. It's about cheating in relationships, basically.
Since PayPal relies on card networks like Mastercard and Visa, this situation is closely tied to the ongoing adult games censorship on Steam. Banks actually set the rules for Mastercard and Visa because the card companies aren’t banks themselves, they rely on other banks for payouts, collections, and currency exchange. Regulators in the countries where these cards operate set the rules that payment processors like PayPal have to follow.
Because PayPal uses these card networks to move money to clients’ bank accounts, they can freeze funds if someone’s flagged as non-compliant. At the end of the day, regulators are the ones calling the shots, and the card networks mostly just follow the rules. So it’s probably not the last time we’ll see cases like this pop up in the coming weeks.
- Steam
- censorship
- PayPal
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Author: Olga Racinowska
Been with gamepressure.com since 2019, mostly writing game guides but you can also find me geeking out about LEGO (huge collection, btw). Love RPGs and classic RTSs, also adore quirky indie games. Even with a ton of games, sometimes I just gotta fire up Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, KOTOR, or Baldur's Gate 2 (Shadows of Amn, the OG, not that Throne of Bhaal stuff). When I'm not gaming, I'm probably painting miniatures or admiring my collection of retro consoles.
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