One of the most popular gaming platforms sells gross porno games

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The most common way to buy PC games is to download the games to your computer. Unlike mobile phones and game consoles, there is no online store, but many to choose from. And none to ask for your ID. All you have to do is to enter a date of birth. Whether it is real or not, you can access the page for such games.

Steam is perhaps the most popular platform for buying games with 132 million active monthly users in 2021. Here you will find well-known game titles like Football Manager, Farming Simulator, and The Sims. However, we have discovered that it also allows the sale of porno games.

Gross depictions of sex

Some of the games here call themselves graphic short stories. You scroll through images that follow a story. In addition, there are some animated scenes.

In one of the games, a young man moves to a new place. His task is to get to know the different women in this place. The women are portrayed as slim, but with large breasts. In addition, they are very scantily clad and looking for one thing – sex.

As a player, you can make various choices such as looking sneakily at women in alleys, asking them to pick up a book from a shelf so you can peek under the skirt, and more.

In addition, these games contain detailed sex scenes. Including:

• Oral sex with exposed genitals.
• Different sex positions with visible genitalia.
• Full nudity on both sexes.
• Different settings that lead to sexual intercourse.

The game also has a vocabulary that matches with porno movies. And although the images are made with computers, the characters in the game are very realistically portrayed. Obviously, there are movies and images available online, but active participation and the ability to influence choices are unique to the computer game medium.

An easy barrier to overcome

Steam has a 13-year age limit for creating an account. But some of the games on the platform have content intended for an older audience. Steam refers to this as “products that contain generally mature content.” In addition, it says: “the product may have content that is not appropriate for all ages, or watching in the workplace.”

To access the page of such games, one must enter the date of birth. Once this is done, the game page will open. In the commercials of some of the above games, gross sex scenes are also shown in animated films and pictures.

Mostly, the games are a bit hidden, so you have to actively search for the game’s title with words like “nudity,” “sex” or similar keywords. But on one occasion, such a game also appeared as suggestions on the platform’s main page.

How to restrict such games

An easy way is not to use Steam at all. Other game stores, such as the Microsoft Store/Xbox, have rules that do not allow games that can be described as pure porn. Steam also has guidelines for game developers, but in practice, this is not so strict.

But even if you only buy games in other game stores and not on Steam, it is not a whole guard against nudity and other content that can be problematic. Games can still contain elements of nudity without being described as pure porn. The difference is that these Steam games are pure porn.

What if your kids already own other games inside Steam?

Then it’s a little worse to just walk away from the entire Steam account. However, there are several options for hiding games with inappropriate content.

• Click on the profile name in the Steam store. Select store settings. Here you can opt-out of adult-only content, sexual content, and nudity.

This will not remove such games from search but hide them. To completely restrict such games, you can turn on some type of parental control. Here you can choose to only allow the games you select on behalf of the children.

This will also lock the store page completely, allowing kids to only access games that have already been purchased and downloaded.

• Select Steam and Settings in the left corner of the menu. Select Family and turn on Family View. Here you can choose to allow your child to only access certain games that are in the library (useful if parents and children share the same device). Then enter a four-digit code.

Finally, is it too dangerous if children and young people play porno games?

Some professionals say that children and adolescents can get a wrong perception of body and sex if they watch porn. Other professionals point out that porno itself portrays men, women, and sexuality in inappropriate ways. However, 49 percent of 13- to 18-year-olds say they have watched porn online (Children and Media, 2020). It increases with age and is significantly larger among boys than girls.

Putting limits on game porn in a game store will not prevent young people from seeking out and watching porn. It is possible for them to evade technical solutions, friends can have access to such videos and games, and more. Therefore, technical solutions will never replace the importance of dialogue with children about the topic.

Nevertheless, it may be worth putting up some barriers, especially considering the youngest.

Photo: All images are screenshots of the Steam store.

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(Translated from Norwegian by Ratan Samadder)