“Steam started blocking Australian users from viewing or buying 18+ rated games on September 9, 2026, unless they attach a valid credit card to their account. Valve’s rollout affects hundreds of mature-rated titles, including Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom Eternal, and it doesn’t matter whether the account is brand new or fifteen years old with a library full of paid-for adult games. Without a credit card on file, those store pages, search results, and even home-page recommendations simply disappear.”
22 year old steam account, never had a credit card on the account and never will. Locked out of games I paid for. And just like that, my time buying games through steam is done.
You can still install and play games you’ve bought (I have personally verified this), you just can’t view the store page, which is more than a little silly.
But yes, GOG deserves our money more: DRM-free and preserving old games. I always buy from them if I can.
I don’t have cyberpunk installed. I can’t install it.
What happens when you try?
Yeah, you need to go through ‘Library’, not ‘Store’.
Library > Search ‘Cyberpunk’ > Click it > Click ‘Install’
No, I don’t.
I need to be able to access games I paid for, without arbitrary lockdowns.
I can’t, so my time with steam is done…
Sure, do what you want, of course, but you said “I can’t install it.”, and that’s not true.
If you want to go support GOG by buying another copy of your games there, I think that’s great! But other people might not be able to or want to do that, and I wouldn’t want them to think they can’t play their games on Steam anymore when they can.
I wish you’d have opened with that…
Not that it makes any difference. I’m unlikely to play cyberpunk again any time soon, and either way, it’s a massive red flag from valve that has destroyed any confidence I had in the future accessibility of my steam library, and destroyed any willingness I had to give valve money in the future.
Like, you might not be 18. How on earth could they know? They didn’t check your I’d 22 years ago. So it makes sense to do so now.
You should still be able to install and play previously purchased games, just not buy new 18+ ones
Firstly, I can’t install games that are locked down, so I can’t access my own copy of cyberpunk, because I can’t reinstall it.
Even if I could reinstall it, but was locked out of future R rated purchases, that would be the end of my steam purchasing, because fuck that
Are you trying to reinstall from the store page? It should work if you search your library directly.
My account is “unverified” just like yours and I’m able to reinstall cyberpunk perfectly fine, even though the store page is locked down.
Haven’t tried that, because I don’t actually plan on re-installing, but it looks like it would work.
Either way, steam is dead to me now, so workarounds or not, they will see no more of my money
You are blaming the wrong party, blame the government for forcing Valve to do this, Valve isn’t doing this because they want to.
I kinda disagree. Steam is being lazy in this.
Social media and other providers know if they ignore the problem enough people will get mad at the gov.
I don’t disagree that the gov/regulators have approached this half baked however the onus should be on the provider to put together a solution. They ain’t.