Schedule I Could've Been a Farming Sim If Steam Refused to Platform It
Thankfully, it was all right.
Although Schedule I is undeniably one of the most beloved video games of 2025 and the second-most played indie title of the year, behind only Silksong, it's no secret that its core premise of building your own drug empire can be seen as questionable by some.
That fact wasn't lost on the game's creator Tyler, who recently revealed he had a plan B ready in case Steam refused to host Schedule I – and from the way it sounds, if he'd had to enact it, the game would have been far less likely to succeed as it did.
TVGS
Speaking to GamesRadar+, the developer revealed that during the early stages of development, he had a backup plan in case Steam denied Schedule I, which would have involved scrapping "all the drug stuff" and turning it into a simple farming game.
"Thankfully, it was all right," Tyler noted, and his relief is more than understandable, seeing as there are countless farming simulators, whereas drug kingpin sims are few and far between, meaning the game would more than likely have become just another why-play-it-when-we-have-Stardew-Valley title instead of a universally recognized gem.
The dev further pointed out that censorship hasn't entirely spared Schedule I, recalling a period when the game was effectively banned on the Australian version of Steam – Tyler's home country, no less – because it hadn't received an age rating, something he believed was only necessary for console and physical releases.
Ultimately, even Australia with its notoriously uptight protect-the-children rules backed off and approved the title, leaving The Game Awards 2025 as the only entity still seemingly afraid of Schedule I, having not nominated it in a single category despite the game's monumental success.
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