The developers of Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival have criticised the recent crackdown on adult content in video games, calling it "ridiculous" for the medium, but believe the game's explicit horror content will survive scrutiny because Hellraiser is a well-established franchise. The comments follow a campaign by Australian anti-porn group Collective Shout, which last year pressured payment processors including Mastercard, PayPal, Visa and Paysafe to threaten withdrawal from Steam and Itch.io unless the platforms removed adult games, creating ongoing uncertainty for developers of games containing sexual content.

Narrative director Antony de Fault said the campaign "spooked" the team but prompted no changes to the game, which features a demo set largely in a fetish club with sexually explicit content and nudity. Game director Emil Esov argued that Hellraiser's status as an established IP dating back to the 1980s effectively grandfathers it in, making it easier to defend than an original title would be. Despite this confidence, the game—due on Steam on 8 October—still lacks age classification for sale in Germany and has not been submitted for certification in Japan, echoing recent difficulties faced by Illfonic's Halloween: The Game, which was cancelled for PS5 release in Japan over similar issues.