eBay Now Restricts Sale Of “Adult Items,” Including Video Games

eBay has initiated a new policy that will curtail the sale of products that contain adult themes, and that includes video games as well as DVDs, artwork, books, anime, and more.

The "Adult Items" policy is intended to prohibit people from selling products that contain sexually explicit content in some shape or form. "We'll review the content of the listing, images, and the category of the items to determine if an item is allowed," said the company. "We want to make adult items available to those who wish to purchase them and can do so legally, while preventing those who do not wish to view or purchase these items from easily accessing them."

This is sounding very similar to the moment when Discord announced that it had banned all Apple users from NSFW servers regardless of whether they were above the age of 18. Apple will not host any "inappropriate content" in the apps that are on its App Store, and in order to safeguard its status, Discord put in place a blanket ban. Expectedly, this irritated a lot of users and it didn't account for context, like nudity in artwork, for example.

The full list of products that eBay's new policy applies to is here:

• "Adult items with content that is illegal
• Item that do not comply with our Illegal explicit content policy
• Sexually oriented materials, including items containing nudity and displays of sexual activitys, are not allowed. This includes the following:
• Adult films and video games with a rating of X, XXX, R18, or unrated for an adults-only audience
• Sexually explicit anime, comics, books, films, animation, manga, hentai, yaoi
• Adult magazines, nudist publications, or adult anime/manga that include sexually-explicit content, nudity, or sexual stories
• The following magazines and books can be listed in the Magazines category as long as the listing does not contain nude images or explicit content: Playboy, Playgirl, Mayfair, and Penthouse"

By the way, eBay requires its users to be above the age of 18 if they want to purchase products on its platform anyway. Furthermore, games that are rated "18" or "M" and depict sexual content include Cyberpunk 2077, Assassin's Creed Origins, South Park: The Stick Of Truth, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, to name a few. Whether or not these would be subjected to the same restrictions as the rules for adult-only games is not clear. However, as GamesIndustry.biz points out, it's going to be smaller-scale projects that happen to contain sexual content that will suffer the most under this new policy on eBay. We'll keep you in the loop when we know more.

Topics: News, Mass Effect, Cyberpunk 2077