Solo game dev Cara Cadaver has revealed that her indie horror game Vile: Exhumed has been banned from Steam, and having played the game myself, I can tell you the reason is…a little strange.
Speaking on social media, Cadaver says that Vile: Exhumed was banned from Steam for “sexual content with depictions of real people”. As she points out, the game wasn’t banned for “its use of gore in storytelling, or the violent themes”.
The twist? As Cadaver says in her post, the sexual content for which the game was taken off Steam is “all implied”. There’s no explicit depiction of any kind of sexual act within the game; there are plenty of shocking and disturbing images, and the narrative is pretty unsettling, but that’s about it.
Cadaver says she doesn’t want to censor Vile: Exhumed or make changes to it; she says she “will not retell a story about these topics in a way to make people who don’t understand it more comfortable”.
Together with publisher DreadXP, Cadaver says she’s currently looking into alternate ways to release Vile: Exhumed, and you can expect to hear “specific details” next week. Make sure to check out Cadaver’s X (formerly Twitter) account or that of DreadXP for further info.
For context, Steam delisted a bunch of adult games from its platform earlier this month, citing concern from payment processors regarding the explicit content present in those games. Indie platform Itch.io quickly followed suit (although the original version of Vile remains intact on that site, ironically).
It all stems from a campaign started by activist group Collective Shout regarding a game by the name of No Mercy, an explicit title the group says “fl[ies] in the face of efforts to address violence against women”.
The decision to remove Cadaver’s game from Steam is, frankly, bizarre. If the point, as Collective Shout sees it, is to “address violence against women”, then removing a game that directly tackles this theme in a frank and open way seems like a big mistake to me.
Of course, it’s entirely likely that Steam simply panicked and pulled the plug on any game that might stand even the slightest chance of upsetting its payment processors, even if that game is about as far from “fl[ying] in the face of efforts to address violence against women” as it’s possible to be.
Hopefully, Cadaver and DreadXP can find a way to release Vile: Exhumed somewhere else. In the meantime, you can read my review to find out why it’s not only an important game from a message standpoint, but also a great experience in its own right.
