To be honest it is not Itch. io fault , if ya want to blame someone blame to payment processors like visa or mastercard .... they strongarmed itch. io into shadowbanning the nsfw and others ...
You're right that the situation itself isn't the fault of itch however their utterly pathetic handling of it absolutely is and all the anger and frustration being dumped on them is entirely warranted right now. I personally wont accept anything less than a clear and direct stance against censorship from the company before I even consider ever spending another cent here.
Unfortunately they have little choice, a gamer boycott is meaningless vs losing their payment processor. Even if a boycott results in 99% loss of revenue, losing a payment processor is 100% lost revenue. They could fight but lose their revenue and be fighting for nothing, people should be against the MasterCard/visa duopoly controlling everything. They received an ultimatum to lose payment processing which would result in ALL games not being able to profit.
I'm aware of that. It's that they aren't even trying to argue it or anything. They just rolled over and showed their yellow belly like spineless cowards. For a platform based on independence for creatives I find that entirely unacceptable. If they can't even be assed to at least speak out about being forced to make this decision then how could I possibly still want to support them?
Steam backs down to payment processors, government agencies would even back down to payment processors. It is really unfortunate but they have nothing to argue about they would just be screaming in the air and likely cause their entire platform to be demonetized impacting so many more people. Payment processors just have an absolute grip on people, only MAJOR change to laws or breaking up the duopoly would help and those things will take years even if on the right track. Being mad at itchio is almost like blaming the victim, I know they caused other victims but if they hadn't agreed and argued there would be so many more victims.
"They would just be screaming in the air,' What a joke. Regardless of them having no real choice but to comply they could still stand with affected creators in solidarity and make a public stance denouncing censorship. That would at least show that they care about any of this. But they couldn't even be bothered to do that much. At the end of the day itch is a corporate entity, they don't get to play the woeful victim card. They are responsible for how they've handled this situation and they are going to continue to get dragged for it for a damn long time. Regardless of how preciously you wish to defend them it does not change that.
I don't care about sentiment, that's one step from virtue signaling. If they did that people would just be mad that they are saying they denounce censorship but then do things that censor content. Screaming into the air absolutely, only actions matter my point was to take action against the perpetrator and not be focused on itch specially or steam specifically. If you think I'm defending itch you seriously misunderstand, I'm hoping to direct the blame were it actually belongs Visa and MasterCard. They don't even need to pit users vs storefronts, the users are getting mad while Visa and MasterCard use their monopoly to dictate what content a platform is allowed to show. I'm against misplacing blame, whether it's steam, itch, epic. The same think happened with people blaming epic for fortnite removal were the real problem was the ridiculous fees and monopoly of play store and app store.
Support initiatives like the change campaign posted
Instead of boycotting a storefront that has their control over content taken over by payment processors.
Nice strawman totally ignoring the reality of the situation. Look at the situation from the hub, WikiLeaks, mangalibraryz, steam, dl-site (who tried and failed to fight payment processors,) Surugaya, patreon, only fans (who hilariously thought they could remove adult content to solve the problem) and so many other sites that have been pushed around by payment processors. I know you won't since you'd rather just get mad at something on face value, ignore the facts, and try to strawman. Though you'll likely say tldr or WOW so must effort based on your attitude but if anyone else sees these examples, understand itchio is just another example of payment processors deciding what we can buy.
If we don't stop this, who's to say that they wouldn't extend the removal to other mature games and many others and try to make Steam and itch.io sell only Christian games, plus it's a pot calling the kettle black, stating that they are doing it for children's safety even though they have defended Netflix's abomination of mankind cuties.