A short history of adult games, from 1981 to 2026

Adult games are as old as home computer games. The first widely sold one in the West appeared in 1981, and Japan’s first commercial erotic computer games followed in 1982, published by companies that later became some of the largest names in the industry. Since then the history has followed one pattern: the games exist wherever a platform is open, and they are shaped by whoever controls access to it.

This page gives that history in dated steps, for Japan and the West, with the sources for each fact listed at the end.

Key points

• 1981 to 1982: adult games appear on home computers in both the United States and Japan.
• 1992: Japan’s PC industry sets up its own ratings body, and the dating simulation takes form.
• 1994: the ESRB’s Adults Only rating is created, and consoles and retailers close to adult games.
• 1996 to 1999: the visual novel becomes the main form of Japanese adult games, and story overtakes explicit content as the selling point.
• 2013 to 2018: open stores, crowdfunding and free tools let independent developers reach buyers directly. Steam opens in 2018.
• 2020 to 2026: payment companies and age verification laws become the main limits.

Timeline at a glance

The early 1980s: the first games

The United States

Softporn Adventure was published in spring 1981 by On-Line Systems, the company that became Sierra On-Line. It was a comic text adventure with no graphics. It sold about 50,000 copies at a time when Apple had sold only a few hundred thousand computers in total, and Sierra’s co-founder estimated it briefly doubled the company’s sales.

The second early landmark is remembered for the opposite reason. Custer’s Revenge, released for the Atari 2600 in November 1982, showed what protesters described as the sexual assault of a Native American woman. Its publisher denied that description. Women’s groups and Native American organisations protested, local governments voted to ban it, and it was withdrawn by April 1983. It sold about 80,000 copies. For decades afterwards it was the example critics reached for when the subject of adult games came up.

In 1987 Sierra remade Softporn Adventure with graphics as Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, which began a long-running comedy series and showed that adult humour could sell in the mainstream.

Japan

In Japan the same years produced an industry. The first commercial erotic computer games appeared in 1982. Koei, now known for historical strategy games, released Night Life and an erotic role-playing adventure with colour graphics that same year, and the second became a hit that helped establish the company. Enix, Square and Nihon Falcom all released erotic games for the PC-8801 in the early 1980s.

These games existed on personal computers for a practical reason. Console makers controlled what could be published on their machines and did not allow adult content. Computers had no gatekeeper.

1985 to 1994: an industry and its rules

By the mid-1980s Japanese adult games had developed a recognisable look. Tenshitachi no Gogo, released in 1985, is credited with introducing the anime-style character art that the medium still uses.

In 1992 the industry founded the Ethics Organization of Computer Software, a self-regulating body that rates PC games and sets content rules for its members. The same year, the developer Elf released Dōkyūsei, which established the love simulation: a game about building relationships with several characters over time. Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial brought that design to consoles in 1994, without adult content, and became the first major dating simulation success.

The United States reached its own settlement in the same years, with a very different result. After congressional hearings in 1993 about violent and suggestive games, the industry created the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which launched in September 1994. Its top rating is AO, Adults Only. Console makers refused to license AO games and most retailers refused to stock them, so the rating worked as a wall. From 1994 onwards, adult games in the West were a PC business sold outside the main shops.

1996 to 2005: story takes over

The most important change in Japanese adult games came in the late 1990s. In 1996 the developer Leaf released Shizuku, the first of the games it called visual novels. The format put text, character art and music in the foreground and reduced interaction to occasional choices. Leaf’s To Heart followed in 1997 and became one of the most influential games of its kind.

In 1999 the studio Key released Kanon, a story about loss in which the adult scenes were a small part. It sold more than 300,000 copies. Its success established the “crying game”, and from that point many of the best-known adult games in Japan were bought for their writing. Several were later re-released for consoles with the adult scenes removed, and adapted into television series. The glossary explains the vocabulary that grew up around these games.

This was the commercial peak. By one estimate for 2005, bishōjo games made up about a quarter of all software titles produced in Japan, with roughly 500 new releases a year.

The same period built the route to the West. JAST USA was founded in 1996 to publish Japanese games in English. DLsite opened in Japan the same year as a download store for self-published work. MangaGamer followed in 2008 as a joint venture of Japanese developers selling their own games abroad.

2005: Hot Coffee

In the West, the event that defined the next decade was not an adult game at all. In June 2005 a modder released a patch that unlocked a hidden sexual minigame in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It was downloaded more than a million times in four weeks. On 20 July 2005 the ESRB re-rated the game Adults Only, and Walmart, Target, Best Buy and other large chains stopped selling it. The publisher later paid 20 million US dollars to settle a shareholder lawsuit.

Hot Coffee showed every large publisher what an AO rating cost. Large publishers have avoided the rating ever since, and explicit games have been left to independent developers.

2013 to 2018: open platforms

Three things changed the position of those developers.

• Stores without gatekeepers. itch.io launched in March 2013 and let anyone publish a game and set its price.
• Monthly funding. Subscription platforms let players pay a developer every month while a game was being made. Many Western adult games have been paid for this way since.
• Free tools. The free visual novel engine Ren’Py made it possible for one person to build and release a game. By 2023 more than 7,800 visual novels had been made with it.

Nutaku launched in 2015 as a platform for adult browser and mobile games, and had 50 million registered accounts by 2020.

Then the largest store opened. In June 2018, after a period of inconsistent enforcement, Valve announced that Steam would “allow everything” except content that was illegal or “straight up trolling”, and would give customers filters to control what they saw. The first fully uncensored adult game under the new policy, Negligee: Love Stories, was released on 14 September 2018. Its developer withheld it from 28 countries to comply with local laws.

An explicit game could now be sold in the same store as mainstream games.

2020 to 2026: the new gatekeepers

The limits that followed came from payments and from the law.

• 2020 and 2021: card networks cut off a major adult video site, and Mastercard introduced stricter standards for adult merchants. Banks and processors became more cautious about the whole category.
• April 2024: DLsite suspended payments by Visa, Mastercard and American Express.
• July 2025: after a campaign aimed at payment companies, Steam added a rule against content that might violate its payment partners’ standards and removed a set of games. itch.io removed all adult content from search and later restored the free part of it.
• August 2025 and September 2026: Steam began requiring a credit card as proof of age in the United Kingdom, and then in Australia, before showing mature game pages.

The details are in the timeline of the 2025 removals, the explanation of how payment processors decide and the page on age verification.

What the history shows

Looked at over forty-five years, three things stay constant.

Adult games follow open platforms. They began on home computers because nobody approved software for them. They grew again when download stores, subscription funding and free engines removed the need for a publisher or a shop.

The limits come from gatekeepers more often than from law. Console licensing in the 1980s, retail policy after 1994 and payment rules after 2020 each restricted games that were legal to make and sell.

The work has always ranged widely. The same medium produced Custer’s Revenge and Kanon. Treating all of it as one thing has never described it accurately, and the companies that began in it include some of the most respected names in games.

How this page was put together

Every date and figure above comes from the references listed under Sources, most of them encyclopedia entries that cite contemporary reporting. The page covers Japan and the English-speaking West because those are the two traditions the sources document best. Other countries have their own histories, which are not covered here.

It was written on 2 October 2026. To report an error or suggest an addition, see the corrections standard.