Nighthawks is an upcoming Steam vampire RPG where you have to navigate a modern underworld after awakening as a newly minted member of the undead. You can’t have a vampire story without at least a little seduction, but Nighthawks steers well clear of anything more risque than you’d see in a PG-13 movie. It’s easy to understand, then, why the devs were so worried when they got slapped with an “adults only” rating from Valve just days before launch.
“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),” producer Dave Gilbert said in a September 13 Bluesky post. “We are working on it. Valve is under the impression that this game is way sexier than it actually is.”
The game’s actual Steam page describes the mature content as follows: “Nighthawks features strong language and adult situations, with occasional moments of non-explicit nudity in romance scenes. Most mature content is only conveyed using text, with no graphic sex scenes or sexual violence.”
In other words, it’s less explicit than, say, Baldur’s Gate 3, a game which does have full-frontal nudity and sex scenes worthy of late-night Cinemax showings. Despite that, Larian’s RPG never got an adults-only rating because, well, it’s not pornographic. Neither is Nighthawks, but with launch set for September 22, that age restriction was severely limiting the game’s visibility to prospective players.
“Much as I hate to turn down possible buyers,” writer and designer Richard Cobbett added, “if you acquire Nighthawks specifically for the sexy, you will swiftly be disappointed that it consists of a couple of butts and some largely comedic romance sequences with conveniently placed hands or scenery.”
It’s unclear why Valve slapped the adults-only tag on Nighthawks, but after a couple days worth of nonstop stress for the devs, it’s finally been removed. “I want to make a joke like ‘Sorry it’s not porn,'” Gilbert says, “but honestly I’m just happy this has been resolved.”
Valve’s willingness to seel pornographic games alongside mainstream titles on Steam has put the company in the unenviable position of having to define what pornography actually is, and its answers have never been perfect. The real question about Nighthawks is how it got slapped with the adult content tag in the first place, but that’s one that hasn’t been answered. At least it’s all worked out in the end.
“Now that this whole ‘adult content’ debacle is over, I think I can call it a net positive,” Gilbert concludes. “More people know about our game than ever. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. That said, I hope to never have to go through anything like this ever again. I wish I could say I planned this as some kind of marketing stunt, but I’m not that smart and I’m not that dumb.”