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GOG preservationists hit back at "censorship in gaming" by making a bunch of notable NSFW games free-to-own for a limited time: "If a game is legal and responsibly made, players should be able to enjoy it"
Distribution website GOG is fighting moralistic lobbyists and avaricious credit card companies demanding games deemed NSFW are removed from storefronts like Steam not with fire, but with free links to boobs, obviously.
With help from publishers, the preservation-friendly site GOG is hosting free downloads to notable NSFW titles like HuniePop and House Party on FreedomToBuy.games, which will make these and a handful of other games free-to-own for 48 hours.
"Some games vanish. Not because they broke the law, but because someone decided they shouldn't exist," GOG writes in a press release, referencing the recent blast of naughty game delistings that have organizations like the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) "seriously alarmed."
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"Reports suggest these actions have been taken with little to no communication and have disproportionately harmed developers producing legal, consensual, and ethically-developed content, including creators from marginalized communities," the IGDA said in a statement this week.
Now, GOG is aligning itself with that idea, and with other developers increasingly worried about both their creative freedom and freedom of identity by launching FreedomToBuy.games. Similarly, Itch has decided to re-index free adult content after previously scrubbing all of it from its storefront.
"As an archival platform dedicated to protecting gaming history," GOG says in its press release, "we believe that if a game is legal and responsibly made, players should be able to enjoy it today – and decades from now. With the launch of FreedomToBuy.games, we're taking a stand against the quiet erasure of creative works from digital shelves."
For its part, Mastercard issued a statement today claiming that it "has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations.
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"Our payment network follows standards based on the rule of law."
In any case, GOG declares that "When games are delisted today because of discomfort, reviving them tomorrow becomes exponentially harder."
But once you download a title from GOG, the site continues, "you're free to [...] safekeep them forever. Nobody can take them away from you."
Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.
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