Itch.io is the most recent market to crack down on grownup video games

Indie online game market Itch.io introduced this week that it has “deindexed” adult and not-safe-for-work games, eradicating them from its browse and search pages.

The transfer, the corporate mentioned, was in response to a marketing campaign by Collective Shout (an advocacy group that has previously criticized video video games, rap music, and lingerie commercials) focusing on each Itch.io and Steam for promoting “No Mercy,” a recreation that depicts rape and incest.

In an open letter addressed to executives at PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, and different fee processors, Collective Shout mentioned that video games “endorsing men’s sexualised abuse and torture of women and girls fly in the face of efforts to address violence against women.”

“We do not see how facilitating payment transactions and deriving financial benefit from these violent and unethical games, is consistent with your corporate values and mission statements,” the group added.

The marketing campaign seems to have labored, with Steam saying earlier this month that it will ban games that “may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers.”

Similarly, itch.io mentioned, “To ensure that we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers, we must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance.”

It additionally mentioned that “No Mercy” had been “temporarily available on itch.io before being banned back in April,” and that “the situation developed rapidly,” forcing the corporate to “act urgently to protect the platform’s core payment infrastructure,” with out offering superior discover to creators.

The firm mentioned it’s now conducting a “comprehensive audit” to make sure that video games obtainable on {the marketplace} meet “the requirements of our payment processors,” with grownup content material remaining deindexed till the audit is full. After the audit, itch.io mentioned NSFW recreation creators might be required to substantiate that their content material is allowed beneath the insurance policies of their fee processors linked to their account.

On social media, customers criticizing itch.io’s choice famous that its current terms declare that grownup content material violations are “permanent with no chance of appeal” and that any funds in an offending account “will not be eligible for payout” — or as one developer put it, “If you violate the rules, we take all your money. Not just the money from that work, ALL your money from EVERYTHING you’ve ever made.”

This is way from the primary time that fee corporations seem to have pressured on-line platforms over grownup content material — for instance, final 12 months Gumroad pointed to restrictions from fee processors when it carried out stricter guidelines round NSFW artwork, and OnlyFans additionally blamed “banking partners and payment providers” when it banned express content material (a choice that it subsequently reversed).

A Change.org petition with greater than 137,000 verified signatures criticizes Mastercard and Visa for his or her position in some of these selections. Among different issues, the petition calls for that the fee corporations “stop censoring legal fictional content that complies with the law and platform standards” and “reject influence from activist groups that promote moral panic or misrepresent fiction as harm.”