If they can take your products and livelihood with little to no recourse, then this site isn't safe for anyone anymore. It's no longer a secure source of income for game development.
I think it would be more prudent to tell the credit card companies your opinion and threaten them with boycott. After all, it was them that listened to activist groups and now they are blackmailing platforms to obey.
Payment processors are supposed to be neutral. It is my money that I spend, not theirs. They have no say in this. And they should not listen to any bigot activist group.
True, but also—itch.io has failed to do even the smallest hint of protest over this. There is nothing to suggesting they aren't going along with this willingly.
They could have published their letter from VISA/MasterCard. They didn't. They could have put a big protest banner on the front page. They didn't. They could have spoken out about payment processors acting as de-facto global censorship. They didn't.
In fact, the wording in their https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content goes out of it way to downplay it, with corporate passive language like:
prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance.
also note that, when they talk about that they skim the site for games to remove, they talk about the removal by an extremely stealthy litotes:
We are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors.
Of course, this is so cleverly hidden that they have to later point out what they're actually saying:
Part of this review will see some pages being permanently removed from itch.io.
(but note the use passive voice, avoiding saying who will perform said removal, namely themselves)
I think this sites blatant compliance should be criticized, too.
Itch is indie itself. They act very unprofessional about a lot of things. I doubt they have a large legal department or any means to fight back. They are "weak". And there might be non disclosure agreements that they cannot breach. Pissing on their payment processors by leaking documents is not a smart move, if you want to keep your little indie game platform running.
From my perspective this is all so very unnecesary. Be it those bigot activists scaring facebook mums or the credit card companies being virtue signallers abusing their defacto monopoly. It is so pointless, because they stirr up this nonsense about fictional content. Especially the credit card companies should be ashamed, because they profit from actual real porn big time.
They are not fighting any evils or doing any good, making the world better or anything.
But bashing on indie adult video games is easy. The easy fight. It is a smallish subculture, unlikely to fight back effectively. Easy win for the activists, easy virtue signal for the credit card companies.
I like the way Wikipedia raised awareness of the attacks on them in Italy from Berlusconi. They put a giant banner on top of the site.
I wish Itch would have let people search for and access the pages of affected games, but instead of the usual page with screenshots, comments and a purchase button, an overlay should read “Due to demands from our payment processors [and list them], we have delisted this game.” And preferably give the specific terms of service it violates.
This link is a campaign to prevent platforms from continuing to be censored and protect indi developers. https://chng.it/CSxTPdBG4S
This is a targeted campaign made by certain groups that have ties with fundie groups. They lobbied with credit processors to push this kind of censorship.
But... regardless, the way storefronts are reacting to this is horrible - Itch more so. Even if my WIP and future games don't have explicit adult content, I will reconsider where to publish them. It's not safe.
Boycotting itch.io seems to be missing the point (yes, itch.io could have communicated better, but I would assume that the situation is also less than ideal for them and not conducive to making great choices).
Are we also going to boycott Visa or Mastercard or Paypal? If we ever use those again, how is it different from what itch.io is doing? How about artists who use Visa/Mastercard/Paypal, therefore supporting them, are they also the bad guys? Most of us will keep on using those payment processors because "we don't have a choice", at least in the short term. I don't see how itch.io would magically be in a different position, even if they do have more power than individual players, compared to those companies, they have basically no power.
No need to boycott actually, indie devs are now aware that, unless their content gets the Collective Shout seal of approval, they can't rely on Itch. I hope for Itch that the remaining content will be enough to keep the site working. Spoiler, it won't (no NSFW, no LGBT, no mild erotism, no violence, no "offensive" content with a pretty large range for what is considered "offensive") because if i have to go on a censored, sanitized and mainstream platform to buy games, i already have Steam, Gog and Epic ^^
Itch pretty much killed its business plan, like Tumblr.
The point is - in my opinion - What else can be done?
I'm honestly worried, on a personal level.
I may not be a "famous" influential person but, I'm questioning what I poured the efforts of a lifetime on, if events like this could just invalidate any sort of expression.
OK, I get it that "theoretically" this is not entirely over yet. Stress on YET.
YET - it does set a precedent. When you frame this event in the worldwide scenario, it is grim - to my eyes.
Sure, we could still "go NINTENDO" and family friendly but - at what cost?
It took relatively little pressure for such a worldwide limitation to settle in.
I'm scared. Those activists are not going to stop.
And the worst part is - what could VISA/Mastercard possibly say at this point? They're in Public Relation checkmate. Silence is their best option.
This does not hit only the gaming industry - books, any sort of content is now regulated. It happened. Some devs are suddenly seeing their incomes die overnight.
This is scary.
itch has effectively defacto forced me to boycott. i used this as my adult content store.
now that the content i was interested in is not longer searchable, i'll no longer find new things to spend money on.
it's not even like this is even a decision on my part, if they are not making what i want to buy findable, i'll not find it. if i dont find it, i will not spend money.
Yet, though the avalanche came down on 24 July, it didn't happen overnight.
Months ago some tags disappeared from the "Select a tag..." drop-down search menu. Check the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/20240401000000*/itch.io), and you'll see that for example ero* tags, just to say, were still there in January '24, but no more in May '24.
That could mean that actually the guys at itch.io had already been targeted in early 2024, and they likely tried to manage it in a soft and quiet way... before this bubble came out. Yet, the question "Why not starting to prepare soon developers to big changes?" remains. Whether bona fide inexperience or attempt to play it, it will be up to them to explain when they'll be in the condition to do it. Of course, if they ever want to.
That said, this doesn't mean we are changing our views on the situation. We won't, as this goes beyond niche video games. We've seen it a lot of times in history, and please apologize for the expression: it always starts targeting the weirdo and fringe of the village (as nobody cares of him/her/them, being such a minority), but then it's someone else's turn, and someone else's... Remember rev. Niemöller's saying ("First they came...")?
What if, for instance, tomorrow a self-proclaimed "healthy food" supporter group call those payments people and say, "Sirs, explain how feeding people with beer and hamburgers comply with your business strategies"?
Months ago some tags disappeared from the "Select a tag..." drop-down search menu.
That was an unrelated change. The adult tags only dissapeared from the sfw drop-down search menu. The adult tags ignore your nsfw settings. A bad design choice. But to show nsfw tags in the sfw drop-down search was an even worse design choice.
By the way, I initially missed the point of this post.
Personally I don't believe boycotting would work - I'm quite confident NSFW content provided the platform plenty of visibility and profit.
I'd rather chase them up to check what's cooking (if something is cooking at all) to restore the platform to a decent state.
And, VISA and Mastercard should publicly state WHAT is considered legit and what does not incur into "pressure".
I doubt they're going to take any action at all as they have little to gain and all to lose - so I believe the petition is our best bet so far.
(unless it gets shot in the foot like the Stop Killing Games one, by personally attacking Ross >_<)
Listing Itch.io alternatives, if allowed by Itch.io TOS, could be a good starting point tho.
VISA and Mastercard should publicly state WHAT is considered legit
The only entities that should have some say in what is legit and what not, is the ... well ... how do we call the law makers in a country? Those people. Has something to do with separation of powers. That separation is screwed up anyway in some English speaking countries, but that is another discussion.
So, corps should not have a say in this at all. Not even a tiny bit. They are infrastructure. Vital infrastructure. Arbitrarily denying services is abuse of monopoly and should be illegal.
Itch is very liberal, in case you have not noticed ;-) You can link to any other game platform and social here, on your profile, on your game's pages. But they kindly ask to not just make a game page that links to other stores. And they threaten to delist the page.
As for those credit card companies. I do not know exactly why they do this. If they fear legal consequences, those should be dealt with. If they support the agenda behind this, there is little hope. If they were bullied into this by thinking the facebook mums and Karens would cost them money, telling them in no uncertain terms that alienating adult consumers will lose them more money, might work. That change petition has 180k signers already, which is impressive for such a fringe nieche as adult indie games.