YES. They absolutely do have the resources to fight back: they are a company, which means they have their own legal team and they do make a considerable amount of profit based on everyone who purchases games and game creating resources from this site. They can easily fight back, launch suits, switch payment processors-- there are many outlets that a company such as this one can take. Especially considering how many game developers who have suddenly basically been defamed and seriously harmed by having their games shadowbanned.
Yes, itch.io is a company, but does that automatically give them a huge amount of leverage against a megacorporation, especially when said megacorporations are payment processors, no, not really. I'm shocked at the amount of people on here who are underestimating just how much power payment processors have of not only over itch.io but our lives as well. Think about it, if even STEAM, with as much money, resources, and backing that THEY have, are bending the knee, what possible chance did Itch.io have? When payment processors refuse to work, that throws a monkey wrench in everything, and they have no way to make money at all. And even if Itch.io did launch a lawsuit, unlikely they would win against the endless resources of legal teams that these payment processors have, which the payment processors don't even have to win, they can just drag it out and out until Itch.io runs out of money and has to declare bankruptcy. Switching payment processors ain't that simple either. Shout targeted all of the most widely used and most secured ones. What's Itch.io going to use? Crypto? A payment that fluctuates more in a day than the standard 3.5% CC processing fee. Imagine selling something for 100$ and only getting 80$ by the end of the day, hard to run a business like that. And finally, call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but I can't help but think Itch.io was threatened behind the scenes to act fast and now or get cut permanently by the payment processors. Because there is no possible way itch.io benefits from this, it only hurts them. Don't you think that if they could have given a heads-up, they would have? What possible benefit is there to abruptly shadow-banning your most profitable genre on your platform abruptly without warning, knowing it would piss off the entire community? None, unless there is the payment processor mafia breathing down their necks to act now.
The thing about Steam is: they're huge. It doesn't really hurt them if they decide to yeet even a few hundred titles into the void. Corporations are like hydras: they can sever one of their heads and still survive, despite the backlash they get for what they've done.
There are well over fifty payment processors out there, including Dwolla, that Itch could use, rather than going through PayPal, PaySafe and Stripe. (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX and Discover are different entities.) Many payment processors like them utilize direct bank-to-bank transfers. There are payment processors out there that accept adult content-- and they are not shifty, nor are they cryptocurrency (which is an extremely bad idea to use in the first place.)
Nope, I do not think they would have given anyone a heads' up, if they could have. Many companies have pulled fast-and-dirty changes in the past and they will continue to do so in the future (Companies as a whole will continue to make fast-and-dirty changes with little to no notification. It's what they seem to do more often than not.)
Other people have made it known that this has been going on since at least April. Two months is more than enough time to let everyone know that shit was about to roll downhill.'
They could have easily posted ways that developers and game purchasers could take action. They could have made their own petitions. They could have posted advance warnings. There are many things they should have (and could have) done.
Until and unless Itch makes a statement that they have been fighting back, have been attempting to fight back, or are trying to mount a defense against what's going on, I am firmly of the belief that they are no more innocent of wrongdoing than their overlords and the pile of shit censorship group.