Itch.io is delisting NSFW games due to pressure from payment processors
Update on NSFW content
The group responsible is "Collective Shout", the same org has targeted Steam before.
There are calls on social media now to contact Mastercard, Visa and co. and file complaints.
Puritanical US based payment processors need to stop getting their panties twisted.
I don't even understand how they give a shit. Seems like the perfect place for shareholders to want them to make as much money as possible, it's a limited market.
People with a lot of money doesn't really want just money. They want power to impose their views over the rest. Money is just a mean to do so.
They give a shit because they are being pressured into giving a shit by religious nutjobs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_in_Media
You're still thinking within reason. Megalomania doesn't.
It's not about money, but power. "The world bent its knee at our word." Simple as that. People can be and are that crazy.
It's an Australian organisation pressuring the payment processors.
It's not just happening recently with Steam and Itch.io, it's been happening for a while.
Some smutty art creators on Patreon have been chased off that platform because of payment processors telling patreon they'd pull the plug if Patreon kept that type of art on the platform. Those same artists have then reported being unable to set up, for instance, Stripe for their paywalls.
Porn stars have complained about being unable to set up accounts with payment processors.
Same with ad companies that are deathly afraid of being seen next to NSFW images, so for instance Imgur has cracked down on them.
I never thought I would say this, but cryptocurrency might have a use after all.
This is exactly what it was designed to solve before cryptobros turned it into a pump and dump scheme.
If you want to buy something from seller X that is between you and X and no one else. No goverment, payment processor or other third party can get a cut or stop it for any reason.
Buying drugs and gooner games. That's the satoshi dream.
So do regular fiat payment processors that are beholden to citizens and not faceless shareholders. Wero and Pix for instance.
Democratic governments are supposed to safeguard your ability to exchange legal tender for legal goods and services. The fact that Visa/MC have a duopoly and a stranglehold on the entire online economy is a major governance failure that needs to be rectified ASAP.
Crypto goes a lot further and says no-one, not even the government, should be able to prevent a transaction from taking place. Not necessarily an invalid idea but it does come with some huge unanswered challenges, such as "what happens when someone makes 1B€ through fraud and refuses to hand over the coins" and "how do we even prevent large-scale fraud in the first place".
It's nice to see a more reasonable response in the comments on Fediverse. On the itch discussion board people are frothing at the mouth posting death threats and the like against itch staff.
The anger is completely misdirected. I wouldn't be surprised if they decide to just let itch drop dead after this abuse from two sides simultaneously. Mega corps and rights groups at one side, and their very own users on the other.
Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures. For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.
Itch is even willing to go for partial filtering, what more do you want. The only thing that will please these people is when itch waves their magic wand and keeps everything as is. Like folks here have said, accepting crypto payments might help, but who knows how soon that is going to get regulated.
Like folks here have said, accepting crypto payments might help, but who knows how soon that is going to get regulated.
It's kinda impossible to regulate technically. That's the whole point of crypto. Or do you mean that the company itself might be legally prohibited to accept crypto by their local law? That's possible I think. I guess we're slowly but steadily approaching the demand to have actual darknet fully-crypto gaming platform operated by anonymous team.
Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures. For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.
kind of a clever way to say “hey don’t give us grief, if you want to change this go complain to visa and mastercard.”
It's nice to see a more reasonable response in the comments on Fediverse. On the itch discussion board people are frothing at the mouth posting death threats and the like against itch staff.
Sounds like the bar is so low to be even comparing the two sites.
I'm wondering who gave these credit card companies the moral authority.
Finicial authority beats moral everytime.
The fact that they hold the keys to the kingdom. Online retailers and businesses rely on credit card processors to be able to do business, which is all the leverage they need to exert tremendous pressure on the businesses they service.
This is something that really should be getting legislated against, but good luck in the US under the current administration. Maybe the EU has a shot.
It’s not about morals. It’s purely about money. Porn sites are labeled as high risks because things like chargebacks, stolen credit cards etc happen more often at these adult websites. Not to mention the thin line between legal and illegal content. Therefore payment processors charge companies in the high risk category a higher fee since they need to audit these companies more frequently and deal with these chargebacks etc. more.
So either Itch.io goes into the high risk category and pay more for transactions or they remove porn. Maybe itch.io should just create a separate company to host these adult games.
Meanwhile, on my feed there's a post directly below this one about a compiler that will give you BSDM messages for good and bad coding and can even be hooked up to a remote butt plug to pleasure you when you compile a successful program.
The Rust community just knows what's up.
cargo mommy reference
Gives a new meaning to the term "code smell".
Those ladies are really unpopular at the moment.
Still, it further highlights just how much power over law payment processors have - a worrying thought that the morality of a company (influenced by problem life nuts) dictates international law.
Edit - autocorrect turned pro life into problem life. I am ok with this.
Controlling the money means controlling the world.
ACLU petition concerning the payment processors: https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy
Fucking signed.
Can we force law banning money transactions to the churches and christian organisations?
Fight fire with fire (not literally, at least not yet, even if they did that long time ago already).
Posted this elsewhere so just going to copy paste here but with regards to Collective Shout:
I think we need to get this group to weigh in on the content of certain holy books. Surely as a secular organisation they will have no problem demanding that the bible and qur'an be banned (I bet I know which one they actually would like banned).
After all we don't want kids exposed to books that contain incest, sex, violence, rape, etc. I'm sure there are some parts of Ezekiel they will want editted at the absolute minimum.
I imagine balkanisation would be one way to make them slightly less visible/insufferable, and you know they would love some factional infighting.
Every time they get brought up they should be forced to confront that the people pulling their strings are most likely engaging in all the things they want banned from culture (regardless of culture or intent). Once they are forced to start lobbying Visa and MasterCard to block transactions to religious bodies I will accept they genuinely believe in the drivel they leak. Until then its performative puritanism.
P.s. not a fan of religion of any stripe, but I would feel as violently opposed to censoring them as I am to censoring anything else, I will accept it if its the only responsible solution until then alternative can be found.
Well yea, but also no. I think a lot of their ability to operate is the veneer of legitimacy they have, my suggestion above, while funny, was mainly facetious, however if we could figure out a way of stripping that legitimacy away they might see more pushback from the next company they try to convince they represent a statistically large chunk of the population.
In this exact situation if Visa had just said to them: "We will take that under advisement." Then filed the whole thing with the crayon scrawl "letters" they get from a certain "BLEACH BLONDE BAD BUILT BUTCH BODY" about not letting the Jews buy any more space lasers. Then no one would be getting rights taken away from them.
Can't wait for an EU alternative to Visa/Mastercard. Heard Wero is supposed to be that. Europe can't decouple from US garbage fast enough.
we already had that: Eurocard. they needed to pay mastercard in order to be compatible with their terminals, and that relationship ended with mastercard just absorbing them.
they were started for the exact same reason that we are talking about, to get a european alternative. so obviously the answer is not free market-based.
I hope that as an American, I would have the option to use Wero for all of my purchases. I simply don't trust my government.
GNU Taller. I heard it was working in Switzerland
Sounds interesting!
Fuck these god-bothering pieces of shit. No, seriously. It sounds like they need it.
I suspect the reason why is that most of them are under pressure from the USA government, which is trying to recrete Gillead
I hate American Companies it will be a good time to start a new platform for NSFW games and payment platforms
Let the Digital Euro become a thing. It will wreck havoc on the current payment ecosystem.
And the Digital Euro is not a crypto. It will be a digital currency, backed by the ECB, at a one to one exchange rate with standard euro currency.
I mean the issue here is not with the money itself, it's the payment processors
The eEU is supposed to be one, itself. And even if it fails Wero and MBWay are growing, which are direct money transfer systems.
be careful. stablecoins are a step towards central bank digital currency. once CBDC is established, it’s all over for freedom to spend money.
You can still pay with gold and silver.
Time for Brazil's PIX to be exported around the world. That's likely to be hard, as here it is a direct, bank agnostic account-to-account transfer without middlemen and without any tax, so it'd need cooperation between the involved countries.
You're describing the same system behind Wero and MBWay. We can just use cellphone numbers to move money from account to account, regardless of the banks at each end of the transaction.
First, fuck Visa and Mastercard. Second, fuck Collective Shout. Third, I feel for the itch forum mods.
To be clear - "Collective Shout" both is and isn't responsible. It's the payment processors who actually enacted policies and are using them as the scapegoat for negative feedback.
How many times have people reported Twitter after Elon Musk took over for showing Nazi propaganda alongside their ads - with no response. An 'open letter' in July about a game already banned in April? DELIST EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY.
How the fuck did we get to the point where a company which literally only takes your money and gives it to someone else (and also gets paid for that) can decide what kind of content people consume?
So how do we go about suing these guys? They're erasing art. And no, I'm not just some gooner who wants more jackoff material, Itch apparently removed anything with nudity in it.
I am a guy who wants more jackoff material, and I am an adult, and I am allowed to have sources for that material that is not some piecemeal ad hoc storefront where I subscribe to individual developers who drip feed content as it gets developed.
I am all for supporting artists and have subscribed to a few Patreons when my wallet allows, but I like having a place where I can play some demos or games that an artist puts up for free because why not? I am so sick of storefronts being targeted like this. All of the porn on Steam is behind an age gate, and sure, Itch could use such a gate, but it doesn't need to delist an entire form of art.
Removed by Moderator — Modlog
Collective Shout is an Australian group, not an American one.
Funded by Americans
The only dogshit I see here is your over the top aggressive name calling.
A) Honest mistake. I appreciated people pointing out the country of origin.
B) While the specifics of my comment were off the mark, even with this group being Australian, this group affects world commerce, and American politics has strong influence on that world in turn. Just like how president of the USA would have a big effect on the levels of violence and cruelty in Gaza. Visa is an American corporation, and they're clearly quite on board with this censorship influence.
Why not just call visa and matercard just like that stupid lobbying company. Obviously it is harder to change company's minds, but maybe might accomplish something.
I hear shout has 1000 people on staff calling businesses, regular people could easily quadruple that.
Those people (Mastercard et al) do not listen to people, they listen to money.
Show them guillotines and molotovs so they understand they might not live to use their money, and they'll pay (regardless of if you pardon my pun) attention.
To quote the good folks over at the TWG Discord
See also here for more numbers to call
as you may or may not be aware, indie video game and ttrpg marketplace itch.io has recently been pressured by payment processors like Visa Mastercard to remove and delist "explicit content" from their site. this has resulted in, effectively, the mass erasure of works published by lgbtqia+ artists. this is the stated end goal of targeted action against payment processors by the group Collective Shout which angles itself to be "protecting children" by erasing adult content from existence.
obviously that's bullshit. but there's some stuff we can do as a community to try and fix this!
payment processors do not give a single shit about the content their products are being used to buy. they only care about liability and shareholders. Collective Shout was able to get Visa Mastercard to act with barely over 1,000 calls that's less than half of the people in this discord. i know it's a lot to ask every single person to make a call to their card holder, but if you have the energy i highly highly recommend doing so at either of these numbers
Visa Headquarters: (650) 432-3200 Mastercard Headquarters: (914) 249-2000
here's a little script to follow if you'd like!
“Hello, my name is _____, and I would like to file a complaint. I find it troubling that Mastercard is blocking content on (the platforms you use) and making it difficult for me to make legal purchases. I am going to stop using Mastercard if this isn’t rescinded and fixed."
if you don't have a call in you, you can send an email to the addresses below and add your signature to this petition from the ACLU
Visa Support: askvisa@visa.com Mastercard Support: b2b.mastercard.com/contact-us/
this quote has been rattling around my head all morning: "They’re not worth your fear, but they are worthy targets for your rage." - Chase Carter, Rascal.news
together we will win.
I'm completely fine with certain content being delisted because it is considered essentially on par with hate speech or something like that.
However, I really do not like that it is payment processors making that call. If someone makes that call, it should be the store in question (itch.io, Steam, whatever) or it should be the government.
Oh wow. Itch is also involved even though I would assume they have less than 1% of Steam's gross revenues.
The amount of money Valve rakes in with Steam is insane. If itch had even 0.1% of that it would be a much bigger website. Itch had to limit dynamic filtering (like searching for Arcade + Fantasy) to just a few preset tags because of the server load. I wouldn't be surprised if the number compared to Steam is less than 0.01%. People who want DRM free games generally go to GOG. Hell a lot of DRM free indie/AAA/retro games don't even get listed on itch, so they get only the tiniest portion of the pie.
Itch had to limit dynamic filtering (like searching for Arcade + Fantasy) to just a few preset tags because of the server load.
That sounds rough. I follow a few devs/projects on Itch, but I don't really use their discovery features.
That's why they're first going after such cases. In Hungary we named this tactic the "goose liver method". Goose liver is often created by overfeeding geese, which is abuse. A lot of smaller political party, instead of regulating farming, decided to campaign on banning goose liver entirely, while bashing the food item as a "luxury only the rich can afford".
Collective shout finacials
year: 2024
revenue: 458043
employee_expenses: 107000
other_expenses: 215488
net_surplus: 135555
employees:
total_fte: 2
full_time: 0
part_time: 1
casual: 4
volunteers: 15
donations_and_bequests: 389800
government_grants: 0
commercial_income: 0
expense_to_revenue_ratio: "70.4%"
average_expense_per_employee: 39400
Leadership
- name: Melinda Tankard Reist
role: Founder, Movement Director
public_socials:
- Twitter: @MelTankardReist
- Instagram: @collective.shout
public_email_address: Not publicly listed
salary: Not publicly listed
- name: Caitlin Roper
role: Campaigns Manager
public_socials:
- Instagram: @collective.shout
public_email_address: Not publicly listed
salary: Not publicly listed
- name: Renee Chopping
role: Campaigns Strategy
public_socials:
- LinkedIn
public_email_address: r******@collectiveshout.org
salary: Not publicly listed
- name: Lyn Swanson Kennedy
role: Campaigns Strategy
public_socials:
- Instagram: @collective.shout
public_email_address: Not publicly listed
salary: Not publicly listed
- name: Coralie Alison
role: Movement Operations Manager
public_socials:
- Twitter: @CoralieAlison
- Instagram: @collective.shout
public_email_address: Not publicly listed
salary: Not publicly listed
Annoy them, call their bullshit, but don't harass or threaten them, those are likely to backfire spectacularly
This is how crypto payments go mainstream
Naa onlyfans would have done it already.
Crypto payments are too unstable, there’s a huge & rightful stigma on crypto scams. Enjoy your bitcoin once it becomes too expensive to trade.
The bitcoin boom turned any crypto currency into just a volatile means of investment. None of them are seen as currencies to buy things anymore, and I don't think that's changing.
Not to mention the many other issues with crypto currency as a concept. But those don't really matter in the face of, well, not being viewed as a currency anymore.
And that's a great thing
But people like to hate on crypto because surely a centralized and privacy unfriendly payment system is better
They believe crypto = ERC20 + NFTs = scam, when the real goal of crypto is P2P uncensored transactions, and getting away of this centralized system
Some of the actual reasons people hate crypto are:
What else do people use itch.io for?
game jams and indie games. there's no fee for publishing your game there, so it's the go-to place for indiedevs
Safe and clean games like my own Diarrhea 4.
Absolutely fucked up.
I know this is more of a serious thing, but I was thinking that I kinda hope these payment processors try to ban some big European company over some puritanical bullshit and then Europe responds with threatening a complete ban on them to put them in line. Ain't no way any payment processor would ever risk being banned in one of the largest markets in the world.
There are a few smaller EU payment processors. I'd love to see them move into the space Visa/Mc leave behind here but I'm not sure they are "big" enough for it.
Is there an alternative to those payment processors? I feel like using those are just not good if they go down that road.
not really. Russia made their own payment processor because of being kicked out from SWIFT but using their system would be immoral.
it would be interesting if the EU makes their own payment processor.
some people were peddling crypto as a way to regain autonomy but most consumers don't have the skills to buy it using cash and sideline Visa/MasterCard. it's also not as accessible to people without technical skills.
There should be laws forcing payment processors to be neutral. They should have to accept any transaction that would be legal if made using cash.
Considering how long payment processing as a business has been a thing, I'm amazed its not more regulated in terms of being forced to be neutral or being unable to decline processing payments that are related to completely legal transactions.
They should do Twitter next. Twitter has nsfw AI role play now and it should be banned by payment processors.
Edit: I say this because I want to bring up the hypocrisy of the advocacy. Why they get to choose what companies can do porn which cannot?
Payment processors should not get to police what kind of legal transactions people use their services for. No matter how much you dislike the particular product. And especially since they have an effective monopoly. If we let them go through with this, it would open the gateway for them to enact the kind of control over our consumption that should be exclusive to elected officials.
As we can see, they already have that kind of control, and what's worse is that it's not limited to just one country.
Maybe the OP has a point, and it'll take them fucking with something else than "just" hobbies to get regulated.
This has been happening forever in the adult video space. Certain kinks are verboten and disallowed by payment processors, which leads to a kind of underground gray market where you have to use certain euphemisms to avoid getting flagged.
While i agree the notion its not that black and white.
Payment processors are companies. Where you would draw the line when company can and cant decite how they want to manage their product? In the end its their decition.
Assuming we're being facetious here, 100% agree.
Hell, if extwitter gets banned, it'd be hilarious because then there would probably be laws changed to ensure only the government can select what gets banned. Though, not so hilarious in the current state of the world.
Tbf it should be banned for being ridiculous but not from a morality standpoint from the payment processors, just bc it's cringe and has nothing to do with that social media format. That being said, Twitter is getting worse and worse
They list this as one of their main goals, right on their website.
I wonder who major porn sites use as payment processors? (I don't know the answer, I'm just saying...)
Most of the large ones only take bank transfers and cryptocurrency now.
Goddamn cookers the lot of them. Perhaps I'll make an abortion game on Itch in protest.
"Cookers"?
Local slang word that derives from "their brains are fried/not working" which also implies stupidity and fanatical adherence to things like religion, anti abortion, anti vax, and the like.
This organization is nuts.
This is from their FAQ:
Why don’t you include men in your mission statement? It’s not right to objectify men either.
A:
While both men and women can be sexualised, it is primarily women who are being objectified, and women who are far more likely to be negatively impacted by it as demonstrated earlier.
When men are sexualised in media and advertising, they are not typically demeaned, portrayed as decorative objects or posed as vulnerable and submissive in the ways that women are. Men are also rarely dismembered and presented as a collection of sexualised or individual body parts. Instead, men are depicted as hyper-masculine and strong. The sexualising and objectifying treatment of men may serve to enhance their power and status rather than to reduce it.
Having said that, we do not support ‘equal opportunity’ objectification. We encourage individuals to speak out against objectification including when men and boys are subjected to it.
I kept wondering why their focus was only on “girls, girls, girls” all over the place and everything was pink.
So media involving the dehumanization of men is totally cool with them. A game about raping men would be totally fine and no issues there because it’s not “typical”. Just don’t do anything to the girlys.
https://www.collectiveshout.org/faq
As if the sexualization of men doesn’t have a negative impact on men as a whole…telling men that the only way to be sexy is to be masculine and strong isn’t at all damaging to them? How does that make any bit of fucking sense? Not all men can live up to those unrealistic depictions with a 6 pack and big muscles nor should all men aspire to be that.
The fuck is wrong with these people…
The thing is, I actually appreciate the idea of "de-objectifying" people in terms of fictional design; but I want that to be encouraged as part of the creative expression. A sexy female character with an identity and story behind her is a lot more fun to me than one just created to have big boobs. Heck, those same design principles can help design sexy men that appeal to female/gay groups.
But needless to say, forcing those views as part of these acts isn't helping anyone. It's just exerting forceful control, and we know how well that works for art.
This is one of the big use cases I could see for a crypto like Monero. If someone made a Patreon-style site that used XMR, I'd be all over it.
It's one of those network effect catch-22s though. There's probably not enough people using Monero to justify creating a site like that - but we'll never hit a "critical mass" of Monero users if there aren't ecosystems that encourage its use.
I have the impression that the American government is doing all it can to delegitimize the American Dollar. Between that and the cultural impetus of sexuality, there is going to be a huge opening for Monero and friends to establish themselves as genuine currency.
This is becoming the norm. Don't think there can be some new payment processor based off traditional finance and banking that can get around this. Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Square, SEPA, FedNow, etc will all rather block transactions to companies that deal in NSFW or whatever is considered dangerous content than try and be some neutral payment rail.
Any in terms of cryptocurrency, any stablecoin will end up subject to the same problems where the issued stablecoin is backed by a governments currency or bonds or even like corporate bonds which are regulated by countries and those are all clear ways to regulate what is appropriate for spending money on. Stablecoins have freeze and clawback mechanisms, at least the ones that are legally compliant. Really to me the only solution is for non-stablecoin/gold/etc backed cryptocurrencies to become popular for payments
Problem is the same as it has always been though.
Sex sells.
It's gonna be a hard push for a lot of these companies to stop accepting transactions for NSFW stuff unless they can prove it's harmful or they get legal repercussions because it's a big part of business. In an economy where "year over year growth" is such a big deal, neutering transactions that account for (guessing generously) 7% of your revenue is a hard pill to swallow without serious force.
We already have the example of now itch and steam getting hit by payment processor restricted on content. YouTube and advertisers wanting to not be shown on categories of content and demonetized channels. I remember headlines about Pixiv and payment processors some time ago
Lose access to the major payment processors and they'll lose far more than 7%. Until there's a means of payment thats popular enough to replace centralized authority payment processing, it's an easy choice for businesses to sacrifice their sex related sales to not sacrifice the larger portion of their sales that they'd lose without support of major payment processors.
The way things are going, there's going to be the need for popular NSFW specific stores that don't use Visa/Mastercard, private bank transfers, or national bank transfers. There's a split in internet video where porn sites are separate from stuff like YouTube. This payment processor content moderation is in the same vein as advertisers on YouTube and other social media networks
I bet a lot is money that these companies would take money from Trump and never child fuckers.
and I was just reading this resetera thread yesterday, that collective with false claims sounds almost like it works for orange head’s faith office:
Noooooooooooooooo
(Litteraly downloaded only two games front there)
Quick! Everybody grab copies of the furry titles and the Rick and Morty incest game!
Mostly Joking, I hope these games figure out how to run on Newgrounds where I expect them to be very well recieved.
So we get them jailed, they're pedos & fascists. Start with petitions etc...
Since our launch in 2010, we have achieved many wins: billboards objectifying women pulled down, sexualised childrens clothing withdrawn from sale, sexually violent games banned, Andrew Tate’s pimping courses removed from Spotify, and an age verification trial underway to help protect kids from exposure to porn. Last year saw a record 34 wins.
On one hand, they help tighten the grip of economic fascism, on the other hand they also piss off Tate... #confusedboner
How's this confusing? They're a Puritanical group. They do Puritanical things. They want people to live a Puritanical life. Literally nothing deep about it.
They are a dangerous cult fueled by a ton of repressed feelings. But so is Tate! If they wanted to fight each other for a while that would be pretty sweet.
Then let them fuck through a hole in a sheet and never allow a woman to climax. Leave the rest of us alone.
These are the sort of people who actually ban Christmas. And that's what scares me. They can't tell the difference between cheeky yet harmless fun, basic human variation, and evil, and they will make that your problem it they get enough power
Removed by Moderator — Modlog
I'd be okey with that if they pressured itch.io to delist Atmospheric, First-Person, Horror, Psychological \hj
【ｌｉｍｉｎａｌ】
Touche!
RIP Itch.io
Choosing short term profits over long term userbase, it's all downhill from here.
Short term profits? How are they supposed to make any profits if payment processors refuse to process payments to them? They can't just spin up their own fucking payment processor.
Beyond that, how does limiting the sale of any products make them money?
I swear, were none of you people paying attention when this happened to the right wing ghouls in the lead up to the 2016 election? Nothing of value was lost (or would have been), but Visa, Mastercard, etc have already shown they aren't above using their position in the transfer of money to enforce their will.
Edit: Can't believe I forgot about the payment processors playing games with Wikileaks. For shame. Would have been a much better example.
Itch players and devs turning against the itch staff instead of the payment processors is like the friggin ouroboros of activism.
Except an ouroboros can keep going round and round. What these people want would just implode the site in a day.
The short term profits of going SFW only to appease payment processors vs. keeping everything but making it crypto only, which in the short term would be disastrous for income, but in the long term it would recover and they'd have independence from censorship.
Instead they chose to keep bigger profits and start deleting accounts.
Visa/MC make up most of their income. They were given the ultimatum of either banning a small group of games, or losing the ability to process payments almost entirely. Itch is not the problem here.
Woke liberals ruining America, nothing new
Conservative fundamentalists and blaming liberals for their own actions
Name a better duo
First they came for the incest/rape games, which most people somewhat agree with (although the principle is still wrong) Next up is all nsfw games. After that, it'll be mainstream and indie games altogether. This never stops with just one "victory" for these groups.
It’s going to come down to anything with even a whisper of LGBTQ+/minority/disability/etc representation, just like with books.
They start with the “egregious” content (not that it’s necessarily right to remove that either), then narrow it down until it shapes up into hegemonic conformity and systemic oppression via media (there’s a term for it, kind of like stochastic violence but not quite that I can’t remember atm).
BDSM games have been targeted as well for "sexual violence". Only straight, vanilla PiV missionary for the express purposes of having children within the confines of marriage where nobody is enjoying it porn will be left.
There are specific games in steam's case I'm very ok with getting removed, but at the same time its very fucked up that we're in a situation where the world is beholden to payment processors. Ideally this would be a case where they go directly to Valve and say "hey we think you should take a look at your content policy and at these specific games" and Valve makes the call from there on where they want to draw the line.
What kills me is in most cases you have to pay for the game, then you have to download the game, then install it and finally play it. It's not.like the game is going to one day pop into your computer and then force you to play it.
Bottom line. If the game bothers ornoffends you just move on.
Once they get rid of the sex they'll come for the violence.
Steam is gonna look mighty empty if every game with violence is removed tho.
They're not going to ban 90% of video games, not everything is a slippery slope
So what do I, a common shlub, do to resist this? Boycott Steam and itch.io until they reinstate the games?
Steam and Itch are both victims in this matter, their hands are tied. If the payment processors simply refuse to process any payments unless they comply, there's no point in trying to put pressure on them. I'm pretty sure they were happy to take people's money for these games and still would be, if they could so while saving face.
Isnt itch.io only indie games?
Yes, but.
Everyone should read the open letter that's linked in the itch statement, to have a fully informed opinion.
There definitely is a line. Everyone can choose were they draw it. You don't have to draw it in a way where you end up defending things that are kinda messed up.
There is definitely a hill worth fighting on in that area. I don't think it's this exact one.
My line is these payment processors being judge, jury and executioner about what material they deem valid. So I am fundamentally opposed.
I feel like there is nuance that is really getting lost on some people and that is the way that people engage with these games. Let me try to explain: I like playing NSFW games - even with tags like Rape, Corruption or the occasional Incest. Without trying to go into too much detail, it's simply erotic to me in the correct context.
Now, do I know that these topics are incredibly taboo and/or offensive in real life? Yes, of course. I keep these things private and never put them out in real life. I would rather noone knows about what I do privately in my own time at my own PC. The way I see it, I simply paid an artist to draw something erotic and write a good story and/or program some gameplay attached to it. And once I stop engaging with the videogame, I also do not have any desire to recreate anything in real life. The same way that I don't go around killing people after playing GTA, I also don't go around assaulting women because I played a videogame where these things happen.
And that's exactly what worries me - the people pushing this narrative, genuinely think I would want to start reenacting something I've seen in a videogame happen. That is complete nonsense.
My line is: any kind of fictional content is ok. If nobodies hurt, then there is no crime. And in practice being maniac in games doesn't translate to being maniac irl. There might be some exceptions of crazy people being inspired by games to do crimes, but they should be dealt with on case-by-case basis using just regular law and law enforcement.
Moral judgement or suppression of fiction/artistic expression is deeply and profoundly unethical. How you or I or anyone else feels about something that isn’t “real” is inconsequential. If you allow any line to be crossed in this, then every line can and will be crossed.