According to several reports on social media sites, the “LGBTQ+” tag has been banned on Steam in China. While Valve has yet to issue an official statement or confirm users’ reports, those who have attempted to access games with the LGBTQ+ tag in China have reportedly been issued an error message stating that the page’s content has been flagged as “inappropriate” as it “violates local laws and regulations.”
Said reports, as detailed by user Neha on ResetEra, primarily seem to have come from the Chinese social media site Weibo. As a user on Weibo explained in a post on June 24, “Developers, please take note: Steam has now locked the LGBTQ+ tag in the Chinese region. Reverse searches no longer show the game” (machine translated from Chinese).
6月24日，有网友发现，steam国区用户 已经无法在客户端 打开LGBTQ+标签页
根据页面提示，相关内容因“违反当地法律法规而被标记为不当内容”。 pic.twitter.com/X9KVWSv1yL
— 李老师不是你老师 (@whyyoutouzhele) June 25, 2026
According to Neha, when attempting to manually search for the LGBTQ+ tag while using a Steam account registered in China, you will now be hit with the following error message: “An error occurred while processing your request: The content on this page has been identified as inappropriate because it violates local laws and regulations, and therefore cannot be viewed from your current location.”
Valve has yet to issue a statement or in any way validate the authenticity of the claims, but it would hardly be surprising if true. While homosexuality was decriminalized in 1997 in China and gender affirming surgery is legal (albeit with stringent criteria), several LGBTQ+ advocacy groups have been shut down in the country over the past decade.
Likewise, Valve has a lengthy history of conforming to regional laws and guidelines on the Steam storefront. Earlier this year, developer Ebi-hime revealed in a post on X that Valve had chastised her following the removal of several of her yuri visual novels on Russia’s Steam storefront. Similarly, the horror game Devotion was removed from China’s Steam store in 2019 for featuring a piece of in-game artwork that seemingly compared China’s president, Xi Jinping, to Winnie the Pooh and labelled him as a “moron.”
Kotaku has contacted Steam for comment, but did not receive a reply before publishing.
