Gabe Newell asked Valve lawyer 'What the f--- do I pay you for?'

Bloomberg detailed a heated debate inside Valve over whether porn should be allowed on Steam, during which Gabe Newell reportedly challenged general counsel Karl Quackenbush with the remark, "What the f--- do I pay you for if that’s your opinion?" Valve has long been described as taking a hands-off approach to moderation, but that stance has not been absolute.

If you turn Steam's safe search off, you'll already know that Newell won that debate: the platform now hosts a wide array of (at least semi-)interactive pornography at varying levels of quality. That hands-off policy—which has only banned games that are "illegal or straight-up trolling"—has left Steam staff making subjective calls.

Developers of anime-style smut have sometimes been ghosted, Valve removed the visual novel Rape Day in 2019, and pressure from global payment processors has tightened the space for adult content.

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