I'm no expert, but I think actionable feedback we can do is...
- E-Mail the payment processors at Visa/Mastercard your Feedback and voice your frustration at whatever e-mail you can find of them online
- Start using Cash payments wherever possible. Want to buy a Steam Game? Buy a Steam Gift card from your local convenience store with cash and get your game that way. I know, it's not as practical, but they need to understand that they will lose money with this decision.
- Raise awareness about this with people you trust - obviously, be careful about this one, because the topic at hand is very delicate, and most people in real life aren't going to share your passion for Adult Games.
Btw before all starts talking about VISA and Mastercard and Paypal having a monopoly. The only reason they have a monopoly is because of KYC and AML that the GOVERNMENT has mandated. So they would NOT have a monopoly if it was not for the government. This is all big governments fault. Please don't ask for more regulation, we need LESS and we would not have this problem.
I don't thing it will work, even stop killing games got fully founded but the companies will not gaf.
Apple gave a f over their phone batteries not being super glued and being made to use usb c for their chargers.
no they did NOT, they were FORCED after years of legal pressure. If not for that theyd keep making their phones terrible for their own monetary benefit. This is why we need to voice our opinions loudly or else they will continue to walk all over us.
its only been 16 hours and that first link takes me to a "page not found" in their website
at this point, the site, the payment processors, and the bigoted orgs need to all be sued at the minimum. as much as the ruling in favor of Citizens United way back has hurt us we may be able to leverage the decision made there to our advantage. that decision being that the act of spending one's money is an act of free speech.
Tortious interference claims are generally pretty hard claims to make, but since this would have to be a class action it might actually be something with teeth. Anybody reach out to Legal Eagle about this?
I can't understand what you mean, do you mean that they are right to harm consumers and publishers for their own gain?
It's tomorrow today. Penny Larcney Gig Economy Supervillian has no nudity or explict content but it has been shadow banned. It does have progressive story lines on things like trans rights. This is like the book bans in public libraries, it's about erasing anything they don't personally endorse from public spaces.
yup, they lost all trust and respect. i only just started buying games here. glad they told me not to. I'll find a better site that actually respects its customers.
I was honestly kind of hoping they'd be one of the last ones to give into this sort of thing. They've generally been very good to creators from what I've heard. And now they've just pulled the rug out from under them...
You're only as good as your last performance. They done stuck their dick in the light socket.
And nothing in the announcement they did release even hints that they're going to try fighting this. At least give people some hope, but I guess even that is too much. That plus the incredibly heavy handed approach they're taking really kills my confidence that this platform is being led by competent people.
It wouldn't be easy to resist, but nothing worth doing ever is. They should have fought them instead of bending the knee.
What options are even left? They seem to be going after anything selling adult content. At least on Steam some stuff is still available but hard to know what the payment processors will deem "illegal" next, seeing as they are making the laws now. >:(
I've heard some people are using crypto currencies to get around the payment processor companies.
Visa, Mastercard, Discovery, JCB and Paypal have been harassed by WASP Karens in Australia in to screwing over NSFW and LGBTQ+ content under the "tHiNk Of ThE cHiLdReN!1" moral panic.
Is it shitty that Itch has delisted NSFW games from search? Sure, but they're stuck in a no-win scenario of either keeping the NSFW games searchable (and *you* as the searcher have to jump through hoops to allow NSFW material to show, but Karens don't care) and get cut off from being able to take payments from credit cards and Paypal, or remove those search results and be "allowed" to accept payments from card and Paypal and pay content creators.
Are you going to be moving to another website? I notice that a lot of people have already been moving to F95. Personally this site is pretty much dead to me.
Too powerful my ass they just got sanctioned by japan pull your head out of the sand you damn coward it's time to FIGHT!!!
Yeah! Why didn’t Itch just sanction the payment processors like Japan did! It’s not like Japan is both a nation and a powerhouse economy and Itch is a website for hosting small indie projects for prices ranging from cheap to free!
OH WOW STRAW MAN ARGUMENTS WITH NO REAL WEIGHT SHUT UP! WE CAN DO THE SAME DANAGE WITH A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AND THERE ARE OTHER SITES THEY COULD HAVE STOOD WITH TO DO THE SAME SHUT UP YOU CORPRATE SHILL!!!
I was publishing my game on this platform because I knew there were quite a few people here who no longer visit other sites to look for such games.
As for Itch.io itself — it annoyed me for just one single reason, but oh god, how much it annoyed me.
I'm talking about the Most Recent game category that works in some completely incomprehensible way.
For your game to appear there after an update, a planetary alignment practically needs to happen.
Specifically: the update has to be massive and it has to be reviewed by a moderator — a process that takes around a month (I waited two).
But now… I don’t know. If they don’t reverse this decision, Itch.io is in for hard times financially, and game developers might end up facing increased fees as Itch.io tries to cover its financial black hole.
I hope they’ll limit themselves to a set of rules for such content — which, technically, already exists, but Itch.io just didn’t give a damn about it until now.
If that’s the case, the platform will just get cleaned up.
But if they force creators to remove nudity altogether, then that’s straight-up f*cked.
Steam is also proving to cave to pressure as well. Plus Steam bans some games from being published that were uploaded to itch.io in the first place.
Mine has disappeared from searches a week after I launched the page(in january), and has not returned.
The problem with F95 is that you have to consent to alternative versions if you're making a commercial game.
This is what is bugging me about going forward with it.
What sort of AI girlfriended loser asks ChatGPT anything and trusts it's output?
It's a probability machine. It picks the most likely next word based on the (stolen) training data, not what's actually true.
This is disinformation. Collective Shout is an Australian group which is that nation's equivalent of the USA's Moms for Liberty: a bigoted anti-LGBT group that relies on asymmetric attacks and propaganda to get its way. There is NOTHING left-wing about Collective Shout.
Please avoid MAGA talking points like 'DEI' and 'Woke'. Besides that, the far right often pretend to be leftists. We see that with Nazis (National Socialists) TERFs (Trans-exclusive-radical-feminist), leftist-sounding slogans like "All life matters", and Zionists weaponizing antisemitism as a shield for a genocide. ChatGPT might fail at recognize such subtleties.
Also, "Far Left" is an absolute positive thing! Leftism is rooted in egalitarian principles, the idea that all human have worth through our humanity, and thus we should all be treated as equal. Basic humanity is not something which can go to far. That said, leftists can absolutely be assholes, become racist, transfobes, authoritarians, puritists, etc, but that's not far left—that is failing at being leftist, abandoning the core.
Yeah, tomorrow they will tell you have to be a christian to use visa.. the real power I must say. And that how everything started..
Well that would hardly be compatible with digital stores, the industry would make more than 1 step backwards. We should have better solutions than that
I hope you've realized now that California was in the right in forcing Valve to acknowledge that you don't own your games on these platforms. ;-)
no boycotting will work. You absolutely should. In fact, everybody here should pull their games right now.
Let's be a little realistic, please. KYC and AML are not going away. Regulations and laws in general are here to stay.
What might be possible is to force payment processors to be neutral, so USA citizens should contact Congress.
Can't tell if it's a troll, but just to be clear : this wave of censorship, like a lot of those, is pushed by a right-wing conservatives association, Collective Shout. Anti feminism, anti LGBTQ+ things, this type of group.
Censorship IS the point of those "anti woke" group, always have been ^^"
Since Collective Shout wants NSFW, LGBT and pretty much everything they can label as "offensive" gone, i can tell you that SFW queer games will be targeted, sooner or later. That's the way of censorship.
Unfortunately, for people and groups like CS, queer is in and of itself NSFW. They see no difference between a wholesome story about a trans person going through transition, and hardcore pornography on Pornhub.
