What next? First, all adult content is removed. Some pornographic categories can be quite extreme, sure, but everything? What's next? What if some activist group is anti-LGBTQIA+? Are you going to remove all content that doesn't represent heterosexual ideals if under the same threat? What about disabilities? Mental health? Race? How much will you remove if threatened?

Another issue with this is now, if people do want to indulge in adult content, they can't go to this safe and trusted platform. So where will they turn? You're enabling more people to be scammed through untrustworthy websites and transactions.

Yes this is extreme, but it's entirely possible given what's happened. If you continue down this path, other services will be inclined to follow. How much will these activist groups censor?

Welcome to the slippery slope, it won’t stop.

The group that are responsible are anti-LGBTQIA+ so...honesty would not be suprised anymore if they actually ban that too.  A few games that are mainly just romance are banned too just because they have nsfw in the Tags, have  one scene like that or were planing on it later done the line. Like it's romance? The adult stuff is barely there in those games and they got shadowbanned? Why?

A lot of the content that is now shadowbanned is LGBTQIA+. 

Not that it should matter, as this a massive overreach either way. Cultish censorship groups should not be dictating what type of completely legal things can consenting adults purchase for themselves. Be it violent content, taboo content, or LGBTQIA+ content, or anything else, as long as it is legal.

Of course, the most power here lies with the payment processors, Visa and Mastercard, who have a duopoly and can pretty much ban and destroy whatever they want for whatever reason they want. The consquences of this in the future are terrifying and reach far beyond just entertainment. They can pretty much bankrupt any company they want that doesn't do what they want, they can destroy any political capaign or party they want to, their power is completely unreasonable.

Currently, it is an awful look for Visa and Mastercard, who are abusing their duopoly position. It is also an awful look for Itch.io. Unfortunately, Visa and Mastercard are too large to fail, and will survive this abuse of power, but Itch.io will now slowly die due to this. This similar to what happened to Tumblr.

Edit: I saw a geat comment (by Marcus_Hallevy) in another thread that should have more attention:

"Those in the US. Contact your local representatives and tell them that in exchange for your vote that they should support Bill 401 and 987."

This is on point, and might be the only way we can really fight against the abuse of power by the payment processors. Petitions such as: https://www.change.org/p/tell-mastercard-visa-activist-groups-stop-controlling-w... are great at raising awareness to an issue, but ultimately they won't change anything by themselves, and can be safely ignored by large enough entities like the payment processors.

The only real way you can stop their abuse of power, is through legislative changes. And those bills such as ware mentoned in that comment are directly targeting this problem.

I know it's not really itch.io but their payment processors that forced this, but it's still unacceptable and the result will be the same either way. Anyone that can't see the slippery slope we are on, is at best, wilfully ignorant.