Government-funded Gamescom title returns to Steam after adult rating controversy

Valve-rated Future? No Thanks!, a teen satire game about assisted dying, as adult content, and the storefront previously wouldn’t budge on the rating or explain why. The geo-block in Germany has finally been removed, but Valve still hasn’t given a reason.

Steam has re-reviewed MolleIndustria’s Future? No Thanks! and removed its adult-content rating, five weeks after it first classified the teen-rated satire game as an adult title. Now, the milder age rating finally displays the title and its store page in Germany and removes the age-verification check in the UK, both of which had automatically hidden the game from Steam’s default filters.

MolleIndustria stated in a Bluesky update: 

“It looks like Steam re-reviewed Future? No Thanks! and removed the "frequent nudity or adult content," reverting the Germany geo-ban and the age verification by credit card in the UK. It officially has only "some nudity or adult content," as every good game should.”

A contentious review process

The game’s Steam store page now lists the title’s mature content description as “implied off-screen s*xual activity” and conversations about “s*x, gender and death,” recategorizing the game into a less-restricted “Nudity and S*xual Content” bracket.

MolleIndustria’s Future? No Thanks! had been rated as adult content on Steam for more than a month after Valve first objected to nudity in the game’s build, even though the studio removed all mentions of adult themes from the title and resubmitted it for review.

Slapping an adult rating on a game effectively removes Future? No Thanks!’s Steam store page from default filters, causing a widespread geo-block in Germany, where Steam pages don’t appear for games without qualifying age ratings.

What frustrated Molleindustria is that Valve still hasn’t told the studio what in-game content is triggering the label, leaving developers unsure what to change and without a timeline for resolution.

Molleindustria had a Gamescom demo booth for Future? No Thanks! running in Cologne this week, paid for in full by the German government, while the game remained stuck with an adult rating that nobody at Valve would explain. On Bluesky, Molleindustria pushed back on Valve, stating:

“We are here in a booth sponsored by the German government.

Here's the PRESIDENT OF GERMANY this morning, posing in front of a game that Steam considers too p*rnographic for this whole country.”

Satire missing its mark

For context, Future? No Thanks! is a satirical adventure title about an old man completing a bucket list on the last day before his scheduled anesthesia. However, Steam still treated the content as adult material or as a game portraying adult quests.

Earlier, toward the end of June, Valve flagged a build of Future? No Thanks! By July 22, the game had been under review for what Molleindustria described as three weeks, compared with the one-to-five-day standard turnaround Valve lists in its own onboarding documentation.

Instead of contesting the findings that flagged the build, the studio cut the content entirely and resubmitted the build, but Valve still kept the adult classification. August rolled around, and Steam still wouldn’t show the game’s store page to most viewers. With that in mind, Paolo Pedercini, a designer for Future? No Thanks!, took to Bluesky and stated:

“Update: even after we removed the entire s*x quest, Steam misclassifies Future? No Thanks! As p*rnography, making it invisible to most Steam users and completely geo-locked in Germany. We are currently at Gamescom in Cologne, everybody is asking us why they can't see the PAGE of a Teen-rated game.”