1980s

One of the earliest video games to feature sexual themes was the 1981 text-based Softporn Adventure, published by On-Line Systems for the Apple II. Despite heavy piracy, the game still sold 25,000 copies, roughly equivalent to 25% of the number of Apple II computers sold at the time. In a 1981 article in Time Magazine, On-Line reported that they were making a version of the game for straight women, though this never materialized.^[7]

Several pornographic games, such as X-Man, were created for the Atari 2600 in the early 1980s. The video game company, American Multiple Industries, released three unlicensed games for the Atari 2600; Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em, Custer's Revenge, and Bachelor Party.^[1] The games were poorly received (particularly Custer's Revenge, which is considered to be one of the worst games ever made), and AMI went out of business in 1983.^[8] Company Playaround purchased the rights to these games and began distributing them under new titles in 2-in-1 cartridges.^[9]

In 1983, Entertainment Enterprises, Ltd. released an arcade game called Swinging Singles, which was mostly meant for bars, adult stores, and sex clubs. The game requires the player to drive through the city maze, gathering dots like Pac-Man before reaching a brothel where the player is required to fight off venereal disease and collect keys to unlock sex scenes.^[10][11]

Also released in 1983 was Strip Poker: A Sizzling Game of Chance for the Commodore 64 and other 8-bit platforms, which Artworx Software created.^[12]

In 1986, Martech released a strip poker game featuring digitized pictures of Samantha Fox on the Spectrum, C64, and Amstrad. The same company would later release the controversial Vixen, featuring another page 3 model Corinne Russell.^[13]

Also, in 1986 On-line Systems (now called Sierra On-Line) asked game designer Al Lowe to create an adult game in the graphical adventure style made popular by their King's Quest series. Lowe took the basic elements of Softporn Adventure, greatly expanded it, and released it as the 1987 game Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. Sierra did not advertise the game, and retailers were loath to carry it, so initial sales were low. However, word-of-mouth spread, and soon the Leisure Suit Larry series was a success, spawning two sequels before the end of the decade, 1988's Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places), and 1989's Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals.^[14][15]

1990s

With CD-ROM and multimedia-based games in the 1990s, most adult games featured video clips with limited interactivity. Both pre-rendered and real-time 3D graphics were also used. While most games could be considered nothing more than pornography, some attempted to include actual stories and plots. This can be seen in some games with less explicit content, equal to an R- or PG-13-rated movie.

1990 saw the release of the first game in the Gals Panic series. The game derived gameplay elements from an older title called Qix, which did not have sexual images. The object of the games is to slowly remove pieces of the playing field while avoiding an enemy or groups of enemies. Removing the playing field slowly reveals pictures of models in escalating states of undress. The game had nine sequels throughout the 1990s (with a final game in 2002).

Voyeur by Philips came out in 1993 for their CD-i console. While the game does not show any explicit nudity, it allows the player to spy on several characters in lingerie, and foreplay and explores taboos such as BDSM and incest.

In the 1990s NEC (on the PC Engine series and PC-FX) and Sega (on Saturn) were the only companies who officially allowed sexual content on their consoles in Japan, but eroge was more prevalent on the NEC PC-98 and FM Towns computer platforms.

2000s

Modern console publishers often have policies against depictions of nudity and explicit sexuality, particularly Sony Computer Entertainment with its PlayStation brand of consoles. BMX XXX for the PlayStation 2 was censored in the American release, while versions on the Xbox and Nintendo GameCube were not and featured nudity.^[16] However, Sony allowed nudity in the title God of War (2005), and also developed by Sony, a game based on Greek mythology set in Ancient Greece, where nudity was perceived differently. Nudity was subsequently featured in the game's sequels, God of War II (2007), God of War: Chains of Olympus (2008), God of War III (2010), God of War: Ghost of Sparta (2010), and God of War: Ascension (2013), which were also based on Greek mythology. The full -motion video quiz game The Guy Game (2004) gained notoriety for its use of an underage model. The scenes in question led to a lawsuit by a woman who explained that she was only seventeen years old when the footage was taken, thus classifying it as child pornography which is illegal to own or sell in some countries.^[17][18]

Sex scenes and nudity have also appeared in Quantic Dream's Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy) and Heavy Rain, released for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 respectively.^[19]

Sexuality and sexual frustration is also a theme prevalent in the Silent Hill series of survival-horror games.

A new generation of adult social games has emerged that bring multiple users together in sexual environments. Examples include Red Light Center, Singles: Flirt Up Your Life and Playboy: The Mansion. While it is not explicitly intended for purely adult-oriented entertainment, the virtual world of Second Life, which is made up almost entirely of player-made content, has an array of very exotic adult entertainment including nudity and full-on sexual activities.

Adult games may take the form of bootlegs, circumventing mainstream publishers who may have policies against such games. Patches or hacks to mainstream non-adult games may add sexual and pornographic themes, mostly for humor, especially when sexuality was never intended in the original game. Examples include the Tomb Raider video games, the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Hot Coffee mod, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, (which both have multiple such mods), Half-Life 2's FakeFactory Cinematic Mod and ROM hacks for console emulators.

The Internet has allowed adult games to receive wider availability and recognition, including amateur games in Flash or Java. It has also allowed amateurs to create and distribute adult text adventure games, known as "Adult Interactive Fiction" or AIF.^[20]

Modern consumer virtual reality headsets, such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, allow users to engage in virtual sex through simulated environments. An example is VR Kanojo.

2010s

Blizzard Entertainment's 2016 game Overwatch has inspired a notable amount of fan-made porn. Short porn videos featuring official characters have been animated via Source Filmmaker and are popular on porn sites such as Pornhub. Despite its popularity, Blizzard has issued cease-and-desist orders to some of the creators.

Indie games have expanded the reach of adult games, and Steam now allows adult games onto its storefront.^[21] Patreon provides direct funding to adult developers, allowing games like Hardcoded to appeal to niche markets that previously would not have been created.^[22]

The continuing rise of open-source software development practices has also influenced adult video games, allowing communities of amateurs to collaboratively create and distribute adult games via the Internet.