The indie game community isin uproarafter learning thatItch.iohas “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”,released a statementsaying it had come “under scrutiny from our payment processors regarding 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.Valveannounced last week that it would beginremoving games from the Steam storefrontthat “violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors 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 to exist on its own storefronts, 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 against payment processing megacorporations. Deindexing was done without informing creators beforehand because “the situation developed 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 creators 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 accounts “in violation of [Itch’s] terms not being eligible for payouts”. These terms, again, were set without informing creators beforehand, in some 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 likeOnlyFansandFanslyhave had to update their own guidelines to comply with payout providers, andPatreon rolled out tools to help creators adhere to MasterCard’s standards in 2021. It’s not just Visa and Mastercard – PayPal, too, hasstrict rules around “sexually oriented digital goods or content”and is at liberty to lock accounts.
Why Should Payment Processors Decide What’s Allowed On Other Platforms?
Steam specifically seemed to be removing games tagged with “rpe” and “incst”, though it’s unclear how many games were removed and why. What’s happening on Itch, however, 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.This Bluesky threadhas 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 titleConsume Mehas been deindexeddespite not being a NSFW game. There may be other examples like this - too many games 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 gamesgive 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 consider 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 consume and thus restrict the online ecosystem as a consequence.
Renowned developer Yoko Taro, best known as the creator ofNier, madea similar point last year, 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 new level… It implies that by controlling payment processing companies, you’re able to 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.Marvel Rivalsoffersskimpy swimsuit skins.Baldur’s Gate 3lets youhook 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 inmanybooks – say, in George RR Martin’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 “hundreds of rpe and incst 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 sellingDetroit: Become Humanfor depicting child abuse. There wasa weird amount of backlash to the gamefrom children’s campaigners, who said 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 what they’re actually lobbying against. Make no mistakes about this, it’s censorship, 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.
