Up to 23,000 games could be pulled from the German Steam store if Valve hides all titles without age ratings in November. Valve has written this in a new blog post with which the Steam operator wants to once again inform developers about the upcoming change. This is the first time that Valve has announced the number of titles that will be affected.
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Dame According to the blog post Developers of 65,000 games already have an age rating – either from USK or through Steam’s self-classification questionnaire, which has been mandatory for new titles for several years. However, age information for approximately 23,000 older games is still missing. They may be removed from German stores on November 15 if their developers or publishers do not add the mark.
Photoshop automates cable retouchingDepending on Valve’s numbers, about one in four games is affected. It’s unclear how Valve actually calculates the number of 88,000 titles – the unofficial Steam database SteamDB lists a total of 120,000 games in the global Steam library. This does not include addons and DLC, which may require their own age rating.
Many indie classics “saved”
On November 15, Valve wants to remove from the Steam Store in Germany all games that do not have an age rating on their store page. This means that Valve complies with the amendments to the Youth Protection Act. It imposes labeling requirements on digital platforms that distribute films and video games. Such platforms are only allowed to offer games and movies if they have a “clearly noticeable label”.
Since 2020, a self-assessment questionnaire has become mandatory if you want to publish a game on Steam. This only affects previously published games whose developers have not yet taken care of age classification. On October 2, Heise Online samples revealed that some indie classics were affected. Many of them, including “Return of the Obra Dinn” and “Slay the Spire”, now show signs of their age. Therefore they will not remain hidden from the store.
However, new statistics from Valve now show that thousands of games could fail if their developers do not make the effort to obtain license plates in time.
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