Where adult games can be sold in 2026: stores, subscriptions and direct sales

An adult game can be sold through a general store, a specialist store, a subscription platform or the developer’s own website. Each route allows different content, takes a different share and carries a different risk of being cut off. Since July 2025, the main risk on every route is the same: the payment companies behind the store.

This page compares the options as they stood in October 2026. Policies in this area change often, so each section names the document to check before you commit.

Key points

• Steam has the largest audience and accepts labelled adult games, with an undefined exclusion added in 2025.
• itch.io is the easiest to publish on and has the most explicit list of banned themes.
• DLsite is the main store for the Japanese market and has had card payments suspended.
• Subscription platforms fund development over time. Their rules tightened in 2026.
• Direct sales give the most control and require a specialist payment processor.
• The Epic Games Store, consoles and mobile app stores are closed to explicit games.

The options at a glance

General stores

Steam

Steam accepts adult games. Its publishing rules prohibit “adult content that isn’t appropriately labeled and age-gated”, which means labelled and gated adult content is allowed. Games with explicit content are sold under an Adult Only label that customers have to switch on before they see it.

The same rules prohibit sexually explicit images of real people, and since July 2025 they include a final item: content that may violate the rules and standards of Steam’s payment processors, card networks and banks. Valve has not said which adult content that covers. The games removed when the rule appeared were mostly ones with incest themes, according to SteamDB’s records at the time.

Publishing costs 100 US dollars per game through Steam Direct. Valve’s standard share of sales is 30 percent.

Two further things affect adult games on Steam. Adult Only titles are not offered in every country, and players in the United Kingdom and Australia now have to pass an age check before they can see mature store pages.

Check before you commit: the Steamworks onboarding page, and the content survey you fill in when you submit a game.

itch.io

itch.io lets anyone publish without review, and the developer chooses how much of each sale the site keeps. The default is 10 percent.

Its creator FAQ says fictional, illustrated and rendered adult content is generally fine if it is legal. It then lists what cannot be sold: non-consensual content, whether real or implied; underage or “barely legal” themes; incest or pseudo-incest; bestiality; rape, coercion or force; sex trafficking; and voyeur or hidden-camera content. Anyone collecting money must also follow the acceptable use policies of the processors on their account, which are PayPal, Stripe and Payoneer.

That last point is the practical limit. Stripe does not support adult content at all. After deindexing all adult content in July 2025, itch.io returned free adult content to search a week later and said paid adult content would come back slowly while it spoke to payment partners. We could not find an announcement that this is complete, so check how paid adult pages are treated before relying on itch.io for discovery.

Check before you commit: the creator FAQ and itch.io’s updates page.

GOG

GOG chooses the games it sells, and it sells them without copy protection. It carries some adult titles, and in August 2025 it ran a public campaign against the delisting of legal games. A developer cannot simply upload to GOG; the game has to be accepted.

Stores that are closed

The Epic Games Store does not accept games rated Adults Only for their sexual content, and its content policy prohibits content that explicitly or frequently depicts sexual activity. Console makers do not license Adults Only games. Apple’s App Store and Google Play do not allow sexually explicit apps. Developers who want to be on those platforms release an all-ages version.

Specialist stores

DLsite

DLsite has run since 1996 and is the main store in Japan for self-published games, comics and audio, most of it adult. It reported more than 9 million users in 2022 and supports more than a dozen languages, with a translation programme for bringing works into other languages.

Its weak point is payments. In March 2024 creators reported being asked to change product descriptions to satisfy card companies, and in April 2024 DLsite suspended payments by Visa, Mastercard and American Express across its platforms. Check which payment methods your likely buyers can use.

Nutaku

Nutaku is a platform for browser, download and mobile adult games, owned by Aylo and based in Montreal. It reported 50 million registered accounts in early 2020. Much of its catalogue is free to play with in-game purchases, so it suits games built around that model. Games get onto Nutaku by agreement with the company.

Publishers: JAST USA and MangaGamer

JAST USA, founded in 1996, and MangaGamer, founded in 2008, are publishers with their own stores. They license games, mostly Japanese visual novels, and handle translation, release and sales. For a developer this is a publishing deal with a contract, and the publisher decides what it takes on.

Subscription platforms

Subscription platforms pay for development as it happens. Supporters pay monthly and get builds as they are released. Many Western adult games are funded this way for years before any store release.

Patreon

Patreon allows adult work under its Adult/18+ rules, which were revised and finalised in March 2026. For illustrated and animated work, characters must be unmistakably adults, judged on their physical features and the surrounding context. Subscribers to an Adult/18+ creator must be 18 or over. Patreon’s content guidelines list the themes it does not accept.

SubscribeStar

SubscribeStar runs a separate site for adult creators, approves each creator by hand and takes about 5 percent plus payment costs. It was long seen as the more permissive alternative. In March 2026 it changed its terms to ban several fictional themes, including incest and rape, and then told creators it would rework the wording because it was ambiguous, as Niche Gamer and GamesMarkt reported. SubscribeStar said the changes were for compliance with its payment partners.

The lesson from 2026 is that the permissive alternatives answer to the same payment companies as everyone else.

Selling from your own site

Selling direct means the developer becomes the merchant. The benefits are control over price, presentation and the customer relationship. The costs are payment processing and compliance.

• Processor. Stripe will not take the account, and PayPal may not. Specialist processors for adult businesses, such as CCBill, Segpay, Epoch and Verotel, will consider it.
• Review. A specialist processor examines the live site before approval. It expects terms of service, a privacy policy, a refund policy, an age gate and a contact for complaints.
• Fees. They are noticeably higher than mainstream card rates.
• Content. The processor applies the card networks’ rules, so the themes the networks treat as brand-damaging are refused here as well. How payment processors decide covers those rules.
• Law. A site that hosts explicit material takes on age verification duties in the UK and in a number of US states.

What cannot be sold through card payments anywhere

Across the stores and platforms above, the same themes are now excluded wherever cards are accepted: sexual content involving anyone under 18 or presented as under 18, non-consensual sexual content, incest, and bestiality. itch.io lists them explicitly, SubscribeStar added them in 2026, and Mastercard’s rules name several of them as examples of brand-damaging content.

Whatever a developer thinks of that line, it is where the line currently is. A game that crosses it has to be sold without card payments, which rules out every mainstream route.

How to choose

• A finished, self-contained game fits Steam first, with itch.io and a specialist store as additional outlets.
• A game released in episodes fits a subscription platform, with a store release when it is complete.
• A game aimed at Japanese-style visual novel readers fits DLsite, or a publisher such as JAST USA or MangaGamer.
• A free-to-play game fits Nutaku’s model.
• In every case, keep a website and a mailing list of your own. Steam, itch.io, DLsite, Patreon and SubscribeStar all changed their adult content rules between 2024 and 2026.

How this page was put together

Each store’s rules are described from its own published documentation where that exists, and otherwise from reports that quote the company. Commission figures that are not published are described in words and left without a number. This page does not draw on first-hand sales experience on these platforms, and it is not legal or financial advice.

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