Some games are still up, but all I see are BL games, where's my straight shi at?
This does not "solve" anything though, it is just "kicking the can down the road". Same with people wanting an alternative to this marketplace. The "problem" is with existing processors that control the flow of money. So you use an ACH bank transfer to move your money into crypto... until the processors tell the bank not to allow that. Nothing is solved.
Hello all,
In my opinion, any standard petitions today are pointless.
Instead, we need to follow the example of campaigns like "Stop Killing Games," which effectively targeted developers. We need to approach Mastercard and Visa in the same way.
We need a citizens' initiative that covers a broad area, like the EU, and that has real legal force. We need to clearly and loudly demonstrate that corporations are already violating EU antitrust laws, and draw the attention of those in positions of authority to this. It's not a matter of potential threats—it's already happening.
Fines of up to 10% of global turnover are possible—a scale that can appeal to any corporation. This is a much stronger means of pressure than any "collective shout."
Feminists from Australia—they didn't attack content creators themselves, but targeted the money that flows from this content. It was an effective strategy. And we must do the same – hit the revenues of payment processing companies, because only then do we have a real chance to oppose what is currently happening.
way to devalue the term fascist, what next? you're gonna call em nazis? Itch can't help it if the people in charge of handling the money wants to swing that monopoly around. Visa and Mastercard are the ones swinging their power around to have a say in not just our lawful purchases but they're already doing it in worldwide, especially Japan. For Itch to do anything about it would make them unable to operate at all
I agree that it is mainly Visa and Mastercard who are at fault. Even more so the group of conservatives that convinced them to go this far. My issue is with itch immediately caving to them and not at least try to fight back. I understand that there is little they can do but straight up admitting defeat and cater to big money kind of shows where the priorities are.
I am not devaluing the term fascism at all. History has shown time and time again that fascism starts with the banning of art. Google "degenerate art" or read this interesting article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-propaganda-fascism-target-artists-zubizarreta...
Also I didn't call itch themself fascist. Banning certain types of art - and I would call video games art - is.
f95zone is a big community almost exclusively catering to NSFW games. Fare warning, it is a bit of a piracy site for paid NSFW games but supporting the devs is encouraged. plenty of devs upload and communicate with the community of their own will. I suggest Devs upload their games there while having a support line.
This happening at the same tame as US gov's are "investigating" Brazil's main payment method (Pix) says a lot....
those bills that are being discussed may be republicans project, but that is not guarantee that trump's administration don't have a hand in this...
other thing that may be involved is the Epestein files debacle
I don't think anyone posted the actual update in here;
The communication from itch https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content
Collective Shout, while obviously a bigoted biased nuisance, have no real power in themselves and there have always been groups like them as long as NSFW existed. They are just finding some success in pestering the payment processors. But something tells me they are lying to said payment processors regarding the content hosted at places and saying it's illegal stuff or something. After all, why is it that numerous other places known for hosting NSFW content for decades are not having their payment options threatened while places like Steam and Itch are? Another part of the problem is that there's not really a way around said payment processors: https://www.naka.com/blog/payments-duopoly-global-battle If there were, it would be easy for Itch or anyone else being threatened to simply set up another way for people to spend. So there are multiple deeper issues going on here that need to be solved. Hopefully sooner than later because undoubtedly this will not be the end of places being hassled over the content they host.
It seems like they do consider games as "real life", unlike how they perceive Video/Printed. "Video" meaning movies and television with "fictional" content. Visa and Mastercard are all too happy to receive payment fees for Game of Thrones.
As for the gaming side of things, they just don't seem to understand it is a "fictional" medium. It is also only a matter of time before it escalates beyond gaming into printed fiction. My wife straight-up admits many of the NSFW games here on Itch that I have played are tame in comparison to the supermarket-smut-novels they have near the registers! HAHA
She needs to go visit Melonbooks in Japan if she wants to see far less tame stuff.
I came across one with sadistic brutal themes and my mind went "I'm not surprised this exists. I AM surprised this exists in paperback." and I had to buy it just for the novelty of it.
Although at the end of the day it's a matter of how deep pocketbooks are. Buy Visa/Mastercard stock (Not sure of their ticker) and have a good share percentage, threaten that they can't do crap like this, and you'll find they reverse their decision REAL quick when the CEO's pocketbooks are impacted.
Taking your business elsewhere is just delaying it. Itch was just the next step on their warpath of censorship. There won't be anything to stop the processors from attacking your "next" platform, or the "next" platform, or the "next" platform, or the "next" platform...
They have already attacked (and won) against Epic, Steam, Patreon, OnlyFans, PornHub, etc... and the list will continue to grow if the cancerous reason for this trend is not removed. It is the processors dictating what can and cannot be purchased.
For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.
And what happens when the payment processors once again change what’s ‘allowable’ on a whim? Are there plans to implement support for creators to accept payments via less restrictive processors? Generally I feel like cryptocurrency - “stable” or otherwise - is a cancerous mess, but even that’s gotta be better than the rules changing whenever someone fires off a few strongly-worded emails.

They should change this info :D "itch.io is an open marketplace for independent game creators. We are completly dependent on our masterscard gods and will force any policy they ask us to. It's completely free to upload your content but we can always delete it without warning if visa gods ask us to. Read more about polices we are force to respect and remember they can change without any notice." something like that.
The easy solution? Move to Bitcoin. Let Mastercard know: "It’s not us, it’s your policy." Why should a payment processor act as judge, jury, and content censor? Gabe Newell and Valve, once champions of open digital creativity, now seem like digital overlords bowing to corporate pressure instead of standing with creators.
Let’s not kid ourselves — illegal content is a serious issue, and Newell has acknowledged that. But when platforms like Steam abdicate responsibility and let Mastercard dictate what stays or goes, they’re not solving the problem — they’re pushing it into the shadows. That’s not protection; it’s deflection.
Marketplaces must step up with strong, transparent frameworks to handle ethically grey content — not sanitize everything under fear. Creators deserve clarity, not a culture of knee-jerk bans to appease external interests.
Let’s be honest: every time Valve bends the knee, the ripple hits smaller platforms like itch.io, and guess who loves that? Politicians. Both sides of the aisle feast on easy headlines. They don’t get the culture, but they sure love to regulate it.
Regulation should come from the market itself — the developers, players, and communities that actually live in these spaces. If we keep the doors open to those who don’t get it, we’re inviting more rules that crush innovation and drive real creators out — while leaving room for actual bad actors to sneak in.
We need marketplaces built on innovation and trust, not fear and corporate appeasement.
أعتقد أنه لا يجب فعل أي شيء، فهناك شروط جديدة لظهور محتوى غير مناسب للعمل على الصفحة، شروط صارمة، ولا توجد شروط للمحتوى المنشور كما اعتدنا على itch.io، لأنه كان يُستخدم للنشر، ونحن معتادون على وجود قراصنة، ولم يُصدر أي تحذير أو حتى ملاحظة أو رأي. لذلك أقول إنه يجب أن يبقى itch.io كما هو، كما اعتدنا عليه، حتى لا يكون هناك أي محتوى غير لائق، لأن هناك العديد من المبدعين على هذه المنصة.
Major issue. Itch will suffer terribly from this, given its a pro-indie marketplace for creative, experimental works. This sudden intrusion, especially done so without warning and having bought games be pulled (afaik) and having creators' lifelines be denied like this is against that status and reliablity mentioned. I know there isn't much the workers of Itch can do, but them possibly being puppeteered (i think so) like this is rather painful. Itch is an important resort for games, especially regarding the current state of AAA games, enshittification, and corporate-mentality applied in gaming today. Not that this will help with the motive behind here, f95 and dlsite are more specified for adult games with the former being a sharing/piracy focused forum- F95 turning into a more reliant platform and an archive is rather tragicomic, but it makes sense under these conditions... If itch fails its artists, then what will the site do? This site is the collective of all users here, any adversarial act done against will be... rather crappy tbh
tl;dr: Itch is shooting themselves in the foot, most likely forced so
More accessible yet fragmented forums and sites invalidate the motives
Artists and customers are getting hurt, which itch not just depends on but IS, as an indie platform
This is against itch's philosophy and use case, which will scar the site
Anti-consumerism is shite- itch was the chosen one, they were meant to destroy it not join it
the power of horny is not to be underestimated
-Nanachi
Reasons why they censor erotic video games on itch.io, it's in Spanish but you can translate it into English from the blog itself
https://videojuegosenlineaasaco4.blogspot.com/2025/07/censuran-plataformas-de-alojo-de.html
Reasons why they censor erotic video games on itch.io, it's in Spanish but you can translate it into English from the blog itself
Here’s a short versions for those who just came by and have no idea what’s going on :
This sucks, but here are some things you can do.
I’m hoping this is just a temporary solution before some solution is founs, because a payment provider having a say on which content on a third party platform is sold is, I think, not the greatest of ideas at all. If you want something and can pay for it then you should be able to get it. If it’s illegal then it’s itch.io’s role to ban it (which they already did for the game looked at by Collective shout), not the payments provider to remove an entire section of a website with thousands of games and creators getting income from it.
A website to which I go to search for indie adult games has banned such games and refuses to payout creators if they simply dont want to... Sorry but nah, if whatever this thing is wont get reversed with a massive apology to everyone and financial compensation to affected creators, itch.io is as good as dead... To put it simply, the website name says it all... Like there are tons and tons of websites with SFW indie games and such... And hence that is why people went here cuz the name says it all, and yet again American laws strike back on people...
Whenever Cyberpunk came out I though that rioting on corporations is going to be very far in the future but it seems that I was wrong and we are already at that point where people just start storming and rioting onto some corp HQ's to just take revenge on them... Internet freedom does not exist anymore and you cant even make a model (doesnt matter that it has no private parts) and if you say that clothing is not included, you are banned for nudity and sexual content... And that applies to websites that in the past had loads and loads of adult related content, got popular and then they did a mass content nuke to get rid of it...
So this american standard where you need a fat female with massive chest to be considered "adult" then this americanized standard is just crazy... Go to Asia or northern EU or even Russia and you will see females that are short, tall, flat, small and are most likely also older than you and more mature than your immature fat american massive booba females... And keep in mind that I have nothing against the way females look and I couldnt care less about it, all I am stating are facts of what is a standard in america and what is a standard in the rest of the world...
So, if American corps want full censorship, keep in mind that your citizens are armed, have access to weapons and ammo and to some degree also explosives, you have private entities that own tanks and tank ammunition that is hot and ready to be loaded and alot of people that WILL use this to get rid of coprs that try to rule the whole world... Not so much EU and other countries but if Japan continues to do what they do, VPN companies will start making loads of money, PayPal and other portals that are not real banks will hop on the train and also make a bank and what is essentially going to happen is that your whole nation is going to hate you, you will become more hated than North Korean government and you know the rest... Modern civil war basically...
Corps really need to wake up... Whenever you see a female with flat chest, if you are one of those people that think there is something else behind it then sorry but a real person sees a female, if you see something else that tilts towards being illegal, then you need a therapy and you are the one with a problem...
So to make my point. This is the end of a long peaceful era and people will go and riot... Amazon ruining anime games such as Blue Protocol was the start of this and now other american corps continue doing the same stuff... So Good luck and I hope you corpos are going to wake up really soon from this stuck up censorship of other peoples work otherwise people will riot... I couldnt really care less since I get most of my stuff on dlsite but corpos really need to be shown that they are just a company with no power... And internet needs to be freed from their greed and rules again...
ps: to the guy above me with the visa/mastercard comment... its all false since I use my visa on dlsite which is japanese and I have no issues buying indie adult games what so ever...
Tell MasterCard, Visa & Activist Groups: Stop Controlling What We Can Watch, Read, or Play https://chng.it/b2pMbsLvdg
Mastercard: Sex work is work. End your unjust policy https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy
UK: The scope of the Online Safety act is far broader & restrictive than is necessary in a free society. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
Also for USA citizens it is important to contact Congress.
Your puritanical policy change to cater to a payment processor (not a regulatory body!!) has destroyed the livelihood of one of my best friends. He stands to lose his home as he's disabled and only develops indie games to cater to a very niche audience that contain optional NSFW content. I will never be purchasing another game bundle from your website, not even for charity. You have lost my trust and my patronage forever.
Everyone, PLEASE keep in mind that Itch is CURRENTLY looking for other options and Payment Processors who are more comfortable with Adult Content! They are not and HAVE not abandoned their creators! Like Steam, Itch was bullied and thrust into a position where higher powers forced these policies ON them under threat of total shutdown via Payment pullout. Itch IS looking for other avenues to support it's creators! In the meantime, keep calling your Gov Representatives and DO not let up! We CAN'T let people decide what we the people can and cannot purchase or enjoy!
At the moment, no, not yet. BUT a decent chunk of NSFW games have been flooding back into the site! The adult tag just regained 5000+ Games, so that is a VERY big sign that Itch is doing what they can to restore order while navigating the threats from Payment companies.
As it currently stands, there MAY new new payment processors coming up to take Visa and Mastercards place, OR, they're folding and allowing Itch to restore their catalog of Games because of all the pressure we've been putting Visa/Mastercard over. So while I can't say what kind of payment options may be coming, it's a VERY good sign that we're seeing thousands of games come back, and a strong reminder that Itch is fighting FOR us, and not against us!
With the way itchio has handled this and even before it, I would recommend that gamers find an alternative to this damn place. Games are still getting de-indexed, taken down, not restored, etc.
I recommend game devs to make use of the Fediverse, there are numerous Free and Open-Source alternatives out there that are made in mind to give you security, privacy and the means to fight censorship. As for donation platforms, there are others out there, such as Subscribe Star which should be used instead of Patreon.
link below for examples:
I just checked my analytics today. I can see that itchio is censoring me from their platform. My games are all shadowbanned now. A new platform is needed to get rid of itchio and the rest of the greedy and spineless gaming sites. Apart from the Fediverse, myself and other devs have used other adult sites such as Azkosel's Corner to promote our games.
I'm just a hobby dev who created games free, I don't make money or get donations.
I don't recommended F95Zone at all, it is a toxic cesspool. The admin and the community there is shit. Not only has it soured relationships with plenty of game devs there, the place is full of antis. My games and others are banned from here. Pretty ironic for a pirate site for adult video games to be censorship happy shits that bans games there.
I recommend LewdCorner over F95Zone. LewdCorner's creation was due to the owner being sick and tired of F95Zone's shit.
There is a reason why F95Zone is known as CuckZone