Hey everyone, it's Brick and unfortunately this won't be a super happy post.

You might notice that this is on my main profile and not on either of Team Silver Strides's games pages. That's because both Silverstone and Silverstone: The Morning After were hit by the shadow-ban Itch.io pulled last night. 17,000 games labeled NSFW were deindexed from the website as the people who run Itch.io bent their knee to Collective Shout, a conservative group masquerading as a feminist organization to take down any media that is pornographic, queer, or furry in nature. Both Silverstone and TMA are obviously gay and furry and were struck when the shadow-ban hit. Itch.io is currently making more strict policies on NSFW games and will be reindexing some over time, but several furry games have already been taken down COMPLETELY. This is a sad day for NSFW, queer, and furry creators.

So where do we go from here?

DO YOU THINK SILVERSTONE WILL BE REINDEXED?

Due to the NSFW nature of Silverstone being more about graphic descriptions of violence rather than sex (no nudity whatsoever), I'm optimistic and believe Silverstone will be put back up. However, that doesn't make the sting any less painful.

WHAT IF SILVERSTONE ISN'T REINDEXED/GETS AFFECTED BY ITCH.IO AGAIN?

You can find all furry visual novels on Akiba's database currently: https://fvn.li/ and we're going to fast-track making a website to host downloads for any current and future TSS games. We'll also add more information about the team and upcoming projects there. For now, I would advise anyone watching this profile to follow our Patreon for free. We'll be hosting downloads there as well for a bit.

IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP ANY DEVELOPERS?

Absolutely. You can sign this petition from ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy and you can call MasterCard and VISA. Just keep them on the line and explain your frustration with this decision. It took 1000 calls from Collective Shout to get them to cave, we have way more in this community.

IS THIS GOING TO AFFECT SILVERSTONE'S DEVELOPMENT?

I won't be writing for a bit since I find that my prose falters when I'm in a bad mood. I'm trying my best to keep my composure while writing this. However, I'll still be working with Luz on new sprites and Camazule on new music. Once my mood is better, I'll get to writing again. However, this means the release will likely be pushed to early Fall and not late Summer/early Fall (I mean, we're in July already, so that was already overly optimistic).

WHAT IF YOUR PAGE DISAPPEARS?

Follow us on Bluesky and Patreon and join the Discord. Sorry to be blunt, but that's the best way to follow. Our socials are on the Silverstone page: https://brickzed.itch.io/silverstone

We'll be making no drastic decisions as of now, but we are taking precautions. Hopefully everything will be alright and we'll be on the charts once again. We won't forget how Itch.io treated us though. We've had many new VNs this year, such as https://faintlyspotted.itch.io/underheaven and https://faorameridian.itch.io/void-dreaming that could all use your support right now. Leave a comment telling them how much you love their novels, follow their socials, do ANYTHING to support them. We've been through hell before and we can make it out again.

-Brick