The indie game community is after learning that has “deindexed” all “adult NSFW content” from its search engines, as well as hiding them from general browsing. Itch, which calls itself “an open marketplace for independent digital creators with a focus on independent video games”, saying it had come “under scrutiny from our payment processors regard🍷ing the nature of some content” hosted on the platform.

Itch And Steam Have Both Been Censored By Payment Processors

In short, Itch has been subject to the same censorship from payment processors that Steam was a few days ago. announced last week that it would begin 168澳洲幸运ꩲ5开奖网:removing games from the Steam storef💛ront that “violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processo𝓀r𝄹s and their related card networks and banks”.

The statement seems to imply that these payment processors would revoke their services from Steam if these games were allowed to be sold, directly impacting business. This means it’s not the platforms deciding what gets t🐼o exist on its own storefron🐎ts, but banking conglomerates.

Itch is facing a similar problem, though its reaction was far more extreme, likely because it’s a smaller business with fewer resources to fight back agai🉐nst payment processing megacorporations. Deindexing was done without informing creators beforehand because “the situation ಞdeveloped rapidly”, requiring Itch to “act urgently”, and it was “not realistic to provide creators with advance notice before making this change”.

Pages will remain deindexed as Itch conducts “a comprehensive audit of content to ensure [it] can meet the requirements of [its] payment processors”. New compliance measures will be introduced that will require creator🐈s to “༒confirm their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account”. Some pages will be “permanently removed”.

One creator alleged that they are being denied payouts affected by the takedowns due to the ac꧙counts “in violation of [Itch’s] terms not being eligible for payouts”. These terms, again, were set without informing creators beforehand, in so꧂me cases impacting games that had been sold for years without issue.

This is not the first time these payment processors have put pressure on services to adhere to their internal guidelines. Platforms like and have had to update their own guidelines to comply with payout providers, and . It’s not just Visa and Mastercard – PayPal, too, has and is at lib💃erty to lock accounts.

Why Should Payment Processors Decide What’s Allowed On Other Platforms?

Steam specifically seemed to be removing games tagged with “r*pe” and “inc*st”, though it’s unclear how many games were removed and why. What’s happening on Itch, howe✱ver, is far more extreme. Not only have countless games been deindexed without warning, but Itch hosts other media types like novels and TTRPGs, which have also been affected. has some creators saying that their work, specifically those tagged as “erotic”, has become unsearchable.

For some reason, it also appears that Jenny Jiao Hsia’s award-winning indie title has been deindexed 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:despite not being a NSFW game. The💫re may be other examples like this - too many game𝔍s were deindexed to know for certain at present.

I’ve gone on the record as saying that I think media that expressly sexualises female characters is kind of weird. I don’t love that mainstream games g♊ive you Achievements for upskirting female characters, rewarding you for violating them. I don’t think that media should 🐬encourage or normalise abuse.

However, I do not coꦦnsider myself to be the moral arbitrator of kink or sexuality, who decides what gets to exist and what the masses are allowed to consume. I definitely do not think that credit card companies should be the moral arbitrators of kink or sexuality either, which is the role they seem to be taking. By deciding what can pass꧃ through them, and by nature of being the biggest payment processors in the world, they in turn get to impose censorship on platforms external to them.

It is up to us, as consumers, to challenge media we find questionable. I would prefer not to outsource that work to a corporation, who can unilaterally decide what I’m allowed to con🔯sume and thus restrict the online ecosystem as a consequence.

Renowned developer Yoko Taro, best known as the creator of Nier, made , when Visa clamped down on doujinshi and manga archives in Japan. At the time, he said, “The fact that a payment processor, which is involved in the entire infrastructure of content distribution, can do such things at its own discretion seems to me to be dangerous on a whole 𒆙new level… It𓂃 implies that by controlling payment processing companies, you can even censor another country’s free speech.”

This Is Only The Start Of Gaming Censorship

What happened with Steam indicated this was going to be just the tip of the iceberg. Steam’s new guidelines are vague, only saying that “certain types of adult-only content” are being affected. This, in effect, could mean anything. Adult content is an expansive label – it can include anything from queer relationships to depictions of mental health issues, or even sex education. It could, as the vast majority of popular games feature, include violence. Plenty of games feature some sort of adult content. Shooters often depict realistic gore. offers 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:skimpy swimsuit skins. lets you 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:hook up with a bear.

Itch hasn’t yet offered guidelines for what it will be removing, but it’s incredibly disturbing to hear that it’s not just games depicting abuse potentially being targeted, but all kinds of media. It’s very easy to argue that games straightforwardly depicting abuse are bad for society, but far harder to argue that novels and TTRPGs that discuss these topics deserve to be removed entirely. You can find depictions of r*pe in many bo🃏oks – say, in George RR Ma⛄rtin’s A Game of Thrones.

Collective Shout, a self-proclaimed anti-pornography feminist group headed by an anti-abortion founder, takes credit for pressuring Steam to remove “hu♚ndreds of r*pe and inc*st games”, and was named in Itch’s statement as having campaigned for this outcome. Collective Shout has previously tried to get Australian stores to stop selling 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Detroit: Become Human for depicting child abuse. There was from children’s campaigners, who sai༺d that it trivialises domestic violence, despite the fact that it’s very clearly 🐎a negative portrayal and that one player character fights the abuser to defend the child. This is the kind of media literacy we’re dealing with.

What’s clear is that decent causes are often misused by lobbying groups who, wilfully or otherwise, misinterpret the content of w🌟hat they’re actually lobbying against. Make no mistakes about this, it’s cens💜orship, perpetrated by massive corporations that have the power to control what people are allowed to buy. Without many widely available alternative payment processors in the market, consumers are forced to let corporations choose what art we consume. Steam was the beginning – and Itch is just the next step.