Why Fictional Content in Adult Games Matters to Horror Gamers
I’m 58, and I’ve been gaming since Pong bounced on a black-and-white TV in my living room in 1975. I’ve lived through every moral panic — Night Trap on the news, Mortal Kombat in front of Congress, Hot Coffee, Manhunt — and I thought we’d settled this. Fiction is fiction. Then I watched this interview with Dr. Ashley Guardo from the NYU Game Center, where she researches how we interact with fiction, and she asked the question I’ve been asking myself: why is there so much animus about fictional content in adult games?
Her answer stuck with me. She said almost every adult on the planet consumes some kind of fictional sexual content, but almost all of us are taught to feel shame about it. And shame, as a sociologist, is how society controls bodies. Religions, politics, work culture — they all tell you how your body should be used to be productive. So when someone spends hours playing a porn game, or a horror game where you do terrible things that you’d never do in real life, it makes people uncomfortable — not because it’s illegal, but because it’s pleasure for pleasure’s sake. And in America, we don’t know what to do with that unless it makes a baby or makes money.
That shame is exactly what we saw last year when Visa and Mastercard pressured Steam and itch.io to pull fictional content adult games. Here’s where it hits me as a horror guy. In Resident Evil you can strangle a zombie with your bare hands. In Dead Space can stomp a corpse until it pops to get ammo. In Silent Hill 2, the whole game is about guilt, murder, and sexual frustration. I’ve done things in horror games that would put me in prison for 500 years in real life — and nobody writes an article about it. I put that clip on YouTube, I get monetized. I get a high five.
But the minute that fiction is about sex instead of violence, the shame switch flips. Same console, same controller, same fictional world that never happened — but now we have to have a meeting about it. I’ve seen this exact double standard since 1976. You can show a kid ripping a spine out in Mortal Kombat and people argue “it’s just a game.” You show two fictional adults in a bedroom and suddenly people forget how fiction works.
That’s what Dr. Guardo was getting at with the tag system. In horror, we’ve learned to tag our fiction so people can consent to it. We put “body horror, gore, torture, death” on the store page so you know what you’re walking into. The consent isn’t between the characters — they’re not real — the consent is between the creator and you, the player. You read the tag, you click buy, or you don’t. Adult games did the same thing. Tags like “fictional, consensual, horror, kink” — paragraphs of them. If you don’t want a cinnamon roll, you don’t buy a cinnamon roll. You don’t call Visa to burn down the bakery.
If we say fictional sexual content is too dangerous to be allowed, even when it’s tagged and behind an adult gate, then where does that leave horror? Because my favorite horror games are ALL about things we should never do. That’s the point. It’s a safe place to feel fear, guilt, and yes, even arousal, without hurting anyone. Take away that safe fictional space and you don’t make the world safer — you just make people go somewhere darker where there are no tags at all
I’m 58. I started with two paddles and a dot in 1975, and I’m still here in 2026 watching the same argument with better graphics.
We already ran this experiment in the 90s. We tried to ban the violent games. We put warning labels on them, we dragged developers in front of Congress, and what happened? We got the ESRB. A tag. A box that says M for Mature, 18+ only, you decide. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked because it let adults be adults. You read the tag, you consent, you play. Or you don’t.
What Visa and Mastercard did in July 2025 was rip that system up. It wasn’t a law, it wasn’t a court, it was a payment processor deciding what kind of fiction you’re allowed to pay for. Today it’s adult games with fictional content. Tomorrow it’s my horror games because someone decides torture is too much, or gore is too much, or a monster that looks too young is too much. And when that happens, you won’t find those games on a tagged store with a refund button — you’ll find them on some offshore site with no tags, no age gate, and no one checking anything.
My promise on this site has always been simple. I buy my own games, I play them start to finish, and I tell you the truth. No PR script, no shame. I don’t have to like every flavor — red bean, cinnamon roll, whatever — to defend the bakery. If it’s fictional, if it’s tagged, if it’s behind an adult gate, let adults decide. No shaming. Just gaming.
What do you think? Where do you draw the line between fiction you don’t like and fiction that shouldn’t be sold? Drop it in the comments — I’m actually reading them!
My Steam Account Was Hacked at 58: How I Got My Entire Library Back in 6 Hours
For Steam — July 2025 adult content policy https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/onboarding\
Dr. Ashley Guardo: Official NYU Game Center faculty page:https://gamecenter.nyu.edu/people/
Leave a Reply