itch.io

Wow, you're literally lying huh.

Have fun licking fascist boots, I guess. 

Very disappointed. Itch might just be dying. The only thing that will be left is the tiny amount of sfw indie gems.

This is a lie, and affected people are already directly contacting Paypal , Visa, and Mastercard to refund them for the products they paid for but no longer own, and this will continue.

Are you guys considering alternate payment methods going forward or maybe a system where devs can choose which payment processors are allowed?

If the issue is that mastercard and visa don't like doing transactions for certain kinds of content, wouldn't giving devs the ability to disallow those specfic payment processors satisfy their new rules?

Is there any way to take legal action against Collective Shout for launching this campaign and damaging the livelihoods of indie devs? This seems like exact kind of situation we'd want a class action suit for.

Appreciate you actually going around and posting information about what's going on. A lot of people are rightfully pissed off at payment processors and activists deciding what we can and cant spend money on.

We ask for your patience and understanding as we navigate this challenging period. I’m sorry we can not share more at this time as we are still getting a full understanding of the situation ourselves. We will post a follow up on our blog if the situation changes.

This is key. Itch is right now fighting to make sure it can continue to operate as an entity as close to the version of it that existed before this mess. It's best for them to be cautious and avoid any legal trouble, and unfortunately that means we'll be kept in the dark on a lot of things while the dust settles. None of what's happening now is by choice, or permanent, and Itch is the reason why a bunch of these games and communities exist in the first place. What would be permanent is not addressing this and losing the platform as a whole.

this is disgusting. Stop giving into these fking idiots. The Collective Shout needs to be targeted and dismanted

Spineless cunts.

"one bad apple spoils the bunch"

The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently to protect the platform’s core payment infrastructure. Unfortunately, this meant it was not realistic to provide creators with advance notice before making this change. We know this is not ideal, and we apologize for the abruptness of this change.

I think this is what bugs me the most here. Yes, things escalated quickly, but not as quickly as implied here. The letter, calling out Itch and Steam specifically, was posted July 10th or 11th. Steam acted to remove certain offending content by the 15th. By that point it would’ve been prudent to assume that if even Steam wasn’t immune to these sort of pressure campaigns, Itch certainly wouldn’t be. And yet, no public action was taken here for a full week after that.

You had to have known days before taking action that the action would be necessary. Even a simple 24-hour warning that NSFW content would be temporarily delisted and reviewed and that there was no need for immediate panic - even if, indeed, there was reason to panic - would’ve gone a long way towards cooling off the sparks before they erupted into a wildfire. Instead, no public statement was issued until hours after the fact.

Obviously, yes, the payment processors taking this excuse to apply pressure are the root cause of the issue, one that puts you in a difficult position for the future of the site no matter what direction you choose. But it’s unrealistic to say that this shitshow was completely unavoidable.

EDIT: To be clear, I’m basing my assumption that the deindexing is temporary on the phrasing from the update post:

Pages will remain deindexed as we complete our review.

The unwritten implication is that the remaining pages would be re-indexed after the review is complete. If this is not the plan, that’s something you’re going to need to clarify sooner rather than later.

wow i love censorshipi will own nothign and be happy...... lets go aheda and remove all gamse including women who have lives outside of rainbow and sparkles. we cannopt allow sucj thigns

Man you guys collective shout and steam are getting dragged on tictok and YouTube rn.

Any idea how long this audit is approximately going to take? Are we talking about days, weeks or months? Many creators are struggling as itch.io was their way to distribute their games. I understand that itch.io is in a difficult spot and we all hope this situation can get resolved as soon as possible.

The fascists are at home in the mirror.

God, you are so pathetic for caving to this. You could have used a fraction of nuance. Instead, you chose the easy way out, the scorched earth method. Thanks sooo much for saving us from indie games with complex themes, you mediocre bootlicker. 

Do you have any idea when games will start getting indexed again or how long the review will take?