Nighthawks: Steam Classifies Vampire RPG as “Adults Only” Just Before Release

Bad news for fans of atmospheric story-RPGs: The vampire role-playing game Nighthawks from Wadjet Eye Games has been classified by Valve as “Adults Only”. As a result, the game no longer appears in the regular Steam search and has been completely delisted in several countries. And this just a few days before its originally planned release on September 22nd.

Nighthawks was intended to be an atmospheric noir RPG where players navigate a city riddled with conspiracies as a newly transformed vampire. Wadjet Eye Games is known for narrative-heavy adventures like the Blackwell series and Technobabylon, and has earned a reputation as a reliable indie studio in recent years. The classification therefore came as even more of a surprise.

Why is Valve classifying Nighthawks as “Adults Only” now?

Officially, Valve usually justifies such classifications with explicit sexual content that violates payment service provider guidelines. According to the studio, in Nighthawks, it's individual romantic scenes that were deemed too explicit. Author Richard Cobbett strongly contradicts this assessment: he states the scenes in question are comparatively harmless in the context of the game and are disproportionate to the harsh AO classification, which effectively makes the game invisible. The “Adults Only” category on Steam is not merely an age label; it results in titles disappearing from search and becoming unavailable for purchase in certain regions.

According to current information, several countries are affected by the delisting, including Germany. For players in affected regions, this means Nighthawks can no longer be found via the normal Steam search. A purchase is only possible via a direct link to the store page, assuming the game is still listed in that particular country at all.

Is this the first case of its kind on Steam?

No, and that's the truly interesting part of the story. Already in April 2025, Valve had quietly tightened its developer guidelines after payment service providers like Visa and Mastercard put pressure on them. At that time, over 100 games disappeared from the platform within a few weeks, many of them explicit adult simulation titles. Valve justified the move at the time by stating that it did not want to risk payment providers completely refusing service for the store. What's remarkable is that in 2018, Valve had gone the opposite way, allowing virtually every legal game to be sold as long as it was correctly labeled. The current Nighthawks case shows that this stricter policy can now also affect studios with a good reputation and comparatively discreet content, not just pure adult simulations.

From our perspective, this is precisely the point that should make developers nervous: if even a narrative-driven RPG with a few romantic scenes falls under the same harsh category as explicit erotic titles, the line between a “normal” maturity rating and “Adults Only” becomes almost impossible for studios to predict.

Wadjet Eye Games has announced that it will appeal the classification and is currently examining whether content adjustments could enable a re-evaluation. A new release schedule has not yet been announced.

Source: PC Gamer

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