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With indie game specialist storefront Itch.io following Steam in caving to pressure from credit card companies weaponized by a puritan anti-porn group called Collective Shout, players, artists, and game developers are speaking out and sharing resources hoping to bring change. A recurring theme among these responses is a concern that this takedown sets precedent for future, broader censorship.
"As a maker of exceptionally sexless art, I just wanna say publicly that any attempt at censorship of the arts is to be resisted," argued Mike Bithell of Bithell Games, known for the likes of Thomas Was Alone and Subsurface Circular. "NSFW art is always an easy target, but it’s also always only the first step in a chain, not to mention the artistic value of this stuff in its own right."
Weston Mitchell of The Outer Worlds developer Obsidian, who's also working on a slick little throwback platformer called GearGrit, said: "It might be porn games now, but they won't stop there. As long as your product is not illegal, they shouldn't be allowed to decide what you can and can't buy."
Daggerheart's Mike Underwood shared a message he sent to Visa, expressing that "I need to know that my financial partners will not throw me to the wolves because of pressure from hate groups."
Lilith Walter, creator of Nightmare Kart (formerly Bloodborne Kart, pre-Sony DMCA), said "we're going to win this," later adding: "It can be in a week, months, or a decade or two when this entire system finally falls. but it will fall. it always does. and saying it won't denies the mountains of evidence that is our human history. And we'll be there to pick up the pieces and build a better tomorrow together."
This whole mess leads back to an "open letter" from Collective Shout that was directed to payment processors, and which took aim at a controversial and transparently gross game called No Mercy, which openly delights in sexual violence.
Adult content has been dinged in similar ways before, with some previous allegations fairly targeting scams or content featuring minors, but the resulting storm of game takedowns here has hit seemingly anything deemed or tagged NSFW, with no clear rhyme or reason to the deindexing at Itch or even the more concentrated bans on Steam. Loss of payment methods would be like blocking an artery for these stores, and the folks at the wheel seem to have gone a bit scorched earth in response to these complaints.
"We have 'deindexed' all adult NSFW content from our browse and search pages," Itch head Leafo confirmed. "We understand this action is sudden and disruptive, and we are truly sorry for the frustration and confusion caused by this change."
Responding to reports on Bluesky, Itch claims it has "not denied any payouts to creators as part of yesterday's review. If there are any creators in which we are unable to process a payout for then we'll contact them directly."
The official Itch Bluesky account also shared and hastily deleted a call to action posted in the Itch Reddit community, which encourages people to contact payment processors like Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal, and advises US users to express their support for bills which could affect "fair access to banking."
"It's a very critical time for Itch right now," the deleted Bluesky post read. "We understand your frustration and if you are seeking an outlet then we recommend this post." It's unclear why the post was deleted; it's perhaps related to the source Reddit post's suggestion to use AI like Microsoft Copilot to create a letter to send to payment processors, as generative AI remains a controversial subject in the arts.
As Itch navigates the fallout at this "time critical moment," conducting a "comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors," the folks affected, or simply dismayed, by this credit card company-mandated censorship have been sharing the contact info for those companies, pushing to outdo the messaging from Collective Shout.
"IF you decide to contact these companies, be it phone, email, or whatever, be polite and friendly," user Iantos notes. "The customer service people are not responsible for their business' policies, and they deal with enough shit as is."
