Appears NSFW content is getting hit even harder for those in the UK.

Note this is not due to the payment processor issue, this is due to the Online Safety Act in the UK.

Yeah I got confused by this yesterday. The internet's going to be regulated out of existence

Other sites hosting NSFW content for the UK are implementing an "age check"; I don't know if itch.io plan to offer one, but the way they seem to have been taken by surprise suggests not.  The law actually stops sites from talking about ways around the issue, but you could probably find some discussions around that if you went looking. Meanwhile there's a petition to Parliament - which won't change anything, but if all we can do is make a gesture, then let's do that. 

It would have been insane to imagine this even a couple of years ago, but it really does feel like a *global* conspiracy.

In Australia the government is bringing in "protect the children from social media" nonsense laws  that - rather than make said social media more responsible in their algorithms or encourage better supervision of kids online - is  planning to make adults identify themselves to use many of these sites and services via id or worse facial scans/biometrics. Anyone with a brain can see this is nothing to do with protecting kids and all to do with removing internet anonymity for adults.

Coupled with the UK and EU using the same "protect minors" rubbish to bring in their blocks, and so many active attempts to get rid of NSFW content (which includes just existing as trans or gay,  for many folks) it all feels very suspicious.
 

There wouldn't be the same problem (strictly looking at the UK age verification) if the UK Government had implemented a robust, secure system that online companies could use to verify the age of UK users. It would then be the UK Government's responsibility to secure and curate their citizens online presence. That would have been a shambolic mess that would have cost ten times estimates and never been implemented, but it would have been the right approach. The bulk of the cost to verify as an adult would occur once and could, in fact, be automatic.

Instead they threw the problem to each and every individual website, likely numbering in the hundreds of thousands, to implement their own solution increasing the cost by an ever-growing magnitude as new websites appear and old ones go away. This is blatantly anti-competitive, because large websites can afford to do this, while new or smaller websites or companies can't. Worse, having so many different third party age verification processes involved is going to be a scammers' paradise.

And I know people will say they don't trust the Government with that kind of information, but the Govt already has your passport, driving licence, National Insurance etc. etc. information. And your ISP has everything else.