Recently, both Steam and Itch.io caved to pressure from payment processors and removed NSFW and "adult" games, or made them harder for players to access. Itch appeared to go even further than Steam in its response with a broad list of "prohibited themes" and got a lot of pushback; now the indie storefront says it will be looking for new payment partners.
Itch added an update to its earlier statement regarding these payment changes, spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun: "We are actively reaching out to other payment processors that are more willing to work with this kind of content. We have suspended the ability to pay with Stripe for 18+ content for the foreseeable future."
Payment processors have put pressure on Steam and Itch following an apparent campaign by anti-porn group Collective Shout that involved people contacting the processors directly, lobbying to get games containing materials it disagrees with taken down.
Developers are worried about this, with Weston Mitchell of The Outer Worlds developer Obsidian saying, "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."
There was public pushback to how broad and vague Itch's rules seem to be. The company says, "We understand the problems that come with a list like this, as it's easy to argue the semantics. We decided it was better to give you more information to work with instead of less, even if many of the items on the list can be argued either way. We intend to refine this part of the site with more care, but since there are still unknowns, this is the information we can provide for now."
It was previously assumed that indie horror game Mouthwashing was hidden from search results because of these new rules, but Itch has said that isn't the case – the game hasn't been indexed for nearly a year.
Itch has also explained that its moderation only appears to have gone further than Steam's because of the fact that people can upload directly to Itch without it being approved first. Therefore, "We could not rely on user-provided tagging to be accurate enough for a targeted approach, so a broader review was necessary to be thorough."
The indie marketplace does reiterate that even if a game has been removed from search results, you can still access it if you already own it – Itch isn't deleting games from your library at the moment.
For now, check out our list of the best PC games – play them before they get delisted.
