all the games in the erotic and adult tags section gone all of a sudden what happened
Maybe, but there are also claims that you refuse to payout creators who have been affected by these bans!
https://bsky.app/profile/daff.space/post/3luolkqglj22c
If this is true, then you may be looking at a class action lawsuit on your hands!
I’m not aware of any account being refused payout that was affected by this content review.
Then please check with someone higher up to confirm is these allegations are true or not, otherwise please communicate this information better to the creators and the community; many people are in a mass panic due to fear of loosing their revenue and could be spreading misinformation due to lack of communication.
https://itch.io/takedowns/655516 At this link, you specifically say "If you plan to collect money for your content, then you must adhere to the acceptable use policy of all respective payment processors that your account utilizes."
Any opinions of the specific game "Max the Elf" are irrelevant; Payment processors are currently saying that ALL nsfw products are not allowed, not just those fitting the guidelines you stated in there.
Therefore, doesn't that mean that a creator of an NSFW product will not be able to collect money for their content?
Are you saying that you are not following this policy, or that you are picking and choosing who is affected? This requires clarification.
Isn't this from your own website? https://itch.io/docs/creators/faq#is-adult-content-allowed
https://itch.io/docs/creators/faq#is-adult-content-allowed
>
If you've collected money while in violation of terms, we may be forced to refund or freeze all pending transactions, as accounts that are in violation of our terms are not eligible for payouts.
That rule was there for a very long time. If someone joins the site, blatantly violates our terms to try to sell goods before they get banned, then we will ban them and refund their payments. We will not honor any transactions while they were trying to operate before getting caught. There are some types of content that we have always had a zero tolerance policy for.
What’s happening now is a very special circumstance, we no have interest in withholding anyone’s earnings. To ensure we can continue to pay people without issue we need to not lose our relationship with our financial partners, hence the extreme measures we are taking right now.
Hope that makes sense
That doesn't answer the question.
You can't weasel around and try to pretend that there hasn't been a change. In this case being what content constitutes a violation.
Will the creators whose content is taken down in relation to the changes to your policies get paid out what is owed? Yes or no?
Can you clarify the rules please? If I understand correctly from what's said in creator faq, only content with payments enabled is subject to payment processor rules, and payment processor rules don't apply to anything without payment option? Is that so?
From what I've heard you guys are withholding people's earnings are not telling the full truth are not informing buyers and sellers what is going on clearly And not making it clear that the deindexed is badly hurting games all you have shown is that Mastercard means more than being honest with your own developers you have lost trust which means itch is going to suffer all while updating your rules and then stating that you don't know the extent of the rules which is super bad I don't know if itch can survive this
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.
thats it: https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy anyone whos sick of this bow and bend bullshit give it a sign
Can i legally sign as a Canadian? im all for signing for it, but i dont wanna get into legal trouble
You can try this petition instead: https://www.change.org/p/tell-mastercard-visa-activist-groups-stop-controlling-w...
I don't trust the ACLU. They've sued in defense of nazis before, and people got murdered because of it. Like what'd they expect, the nazis in Charlottesville be like "we'll just stand there and state our opinions of how we hate the jews, but we won't actually kill anyone, because don't worry, we respect different opinions!!1!" and ACLU actually believed them?! Come on, this is the nazis we're talking about! They can and did know better.
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.
I've worked at companies with smaller userbases and had it take months to make a minor change to a website, suddenly having to pivot on something as significant as payments is a herculean task, so nothing is going to be ideal. Major props and love to the Itch team for having to weather this storm. If y'all want to be mad, be mad at the people who put us in this situation, not the ones who have to deal with the consequences.this is disgusting. Stop giving into these fking idiots. The Collective Shout needs to be targeted and dismanted
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.
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?
Since the games that are now in violation are deindexed, but not removed outright, we should be entitled to refunds considering we still have licenses to the games. Now we either have to buy the game on another platform with potentially insecure payment processors, or alternatively resort to piracy in order to receive updates on the games we already have a license to play.
Obviously, piracy is not a legal option.
Itch isn't the bad guy. The real blame goes to Collective Shout, a right wing Christian organization that pressured payment processors to ban all adult media.
Call Visa or Mastercard:
Mastercard (Aus): 1800-120-113
Mastercard (US): 1-800-307-7309
Mastercard (UK): 0800-96-4767
Mastercard (US): 1-800-627-8372
Mastercard (Int.): +1-636-722-7111
Visa (US + Can): 1 800 847 2911
Visa (AUS): 1 800 125 440
PayPal: +44-0203-901-7000
You are free to go to their own website or Wikipedia to see that they are Christian and not far left. They believe themselves to be feminists (or they use that as a mask) but they are anti abortion, anti sex worker, anti trans, pro Church. This is objective fact and not really up for debate.
As a catholic, I don't claim them. Taking away someone's ability to make money is a pretty big violation of "render unto Caesar".
They do not care about anyone's opinion or belief, but their own. They are bigots. Easily confusable, no matter if right or left, conservative or liberal. Facts do not count, only screaming louder and doing harm to the unbelievers.
They are righteous, so they cannot violate any reading of scripture, since they have the monopoly of knowing what's right.
I wish reason would be valued more, by all sides of the political and idiological discussions. Too many bigots around in positions of power or cowed by bigots.
noun
One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.
A hypocrite; esp., a superstitious hypocrite.
Similar: hypocrite
A person who regards his own faith and views in matters of religion as unquestionably right, and any belief or opinion opposed to or differing from them as unreasonable or wicked. In an extended sense, a person who is intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own, as in politics or morals; one obstinately and blindly devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion.
The reason a lot of people think Collective Shout are far left feminist, is because ironically they get a lot of support and are boosted by pro LGBTQIA+ far left feminist groups. Part of the reason Collective Shout got enough power in the first place is exactly these kind of far left spaces, such as reddit groups that brigade and attempt to cancel anything they deem misogynistic.
A far left feminist subreddit with over 14 million users in it, was even giving out detailed instructions on how to brigade for, and support Collective Shout. An example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/1jvjpsr/reporting_the_new_stea... This is also what eventually led to the Itch.io NSFW ban.
Which is ironic now that the pro LGBTQIA+ far left feminists, with their actions now led to banning of the majority of LGBTQIA+ games on Itch.io. What a surprise, when you try to give power to those cancelling and censoring things, it will backfire, and even things that you believe in will eventually be hit. There is more overlap between conservative puritanical feminists, and far left feminists, than you would initially think. And the far left feminists prop them up.
Also it is a perfect example, of why all censorship, brigading, and attempts to cancel are bad. Because it won't stop at things you agree with, it will eventually hit things you care about, such as thousands of LGBTQIA+ games now being banned here.
Your evidence that this is a far Left LGBTQIA+ feminist movement is linking a deeply conservative and anti-queer subreddit? People can claim to be anything, you have to look at what they actually support and do. Boosting their claim to be anything other than a hate group just helps them get away with crap like this.
You must be trolling.
That subreddit is now a a deeply conservative and anti-queer subreddit?
Their banner is literally the rainbow flag and their subreddit description is "We are a welcoming subreddit and support the rights of all genders." Their pinned community post is "Trans Women are Women." that warns that any transphobia or TERFs will be met with immediate ban.
Once again, you must be trolling, but in the chance someone took your ridiculous post seriously, I'll clarify that I didn't say Collective Shout is far left, I only explained why many people make that mistake, due to support from various far left feminist groups.
The most famous german feminist, Alice Schwarzer, also repeatedly tried to get sexwork outlawed. Anti Sexwork is a quite common position for feminists.
In a way, collective shout now managed to become the first feminist organization which is equally hated by woke and by anti woke people. ROFL
you look at a lobbyist astroterf group and you're like YEAH THESE GUYS LEGIT DUHHHHH
If you think a 'far left feminist' group would be anti-abortion, Christian fundamentalist TERFs, then I wanna know what drugs you're on cause that's some powerful crap.
The reason lots of people make this mistake is because their goals have a lot of overlap with with far left feminist groups. To the extent that they are propped up, and supported by these far left feminist groups that claim to be pro LGBTQIA+, but will fully support Collective Shout and give detailed instructions how to support them, and brigade for them.
Here is an example: a far left feminist subreddit with over 14 million users in it, was giving out detailed instructions on how to brigade for, and support Collective Shout. Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/1jvjpsr/reporting_the_new_stea... This is also what eventually led to the Itch.io NSFW ban.
Ironically leading to the banning of thousands of LGBTQIA+ games here. I'm sure Collective Shout is beyond happy on all fronts, but they couldn't have done with without the support and boost from massive, much larger far left feminist groups, such as the one I linked above.
Someone should write in that group: I'm a trans video game director, but itch.io deleted all adult games, help me undo it...
:D
meant to say anti-abortion, was typing late at night. Collective shout is definitely NOT pro-choice.
Far Left Feminist. They are not Right Wing I tell you that. But yeah they are the ones to blame.
They aren't
They pretend to be feminist. Member of this organization is writing for christian magazine Eternity and they are anti-choice
Melinda Tankard Reist, founder of Collective Shout, is a self described pro-life "feminist" who has a lengthy history of writing journals for the The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly and while doing speeches at Christian churches in places like the Belconnen Baptist Church.
The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly is handed by National Catholic Bioethics Center, which is a conservative think tank. Therefore she is right-wing and Christian.
It doesn't matter which political board she is, it's a f*** karens that want to ruin everyone's hobbies, screw them.
Margaret Atwood already pointed out that there is sometimes a surprising overlap between certain feminists and puritans. (It might still be a good question wether todays western feminism can be called far left because most prominent feminists who actually wield power do not want a communist revolution but are supporters of some kind of social liberalism in practice.)
No they are the far right christian feminist that thinks all porn, and lgbtq is evil
Literally quit either lying or falling for propaganda, this is a far right christian hate group
Their pinned post of the subreddit is: "Trans Women are Women." and that any transphobia or TERFs will be met with immediate ban from the subreddit.
They literally pinned that post, to make it as easy as possible for people to do their due dilligence and not spread misinformation.
If you don't want to take their word for it, or mine, do actually look up other sources that would indicate anything about them being TERFs. And then please do share, I will take back my words. But to me it seems, like you are the one who failed to do the absolute bare minimum, you judged a book by its cover, and are now spreading blatant misinformation.
Can't see anything on that page thanks to a login wall, but that subreddit is literally called TwoXChromosomes. I call wolf in sheep's clothing. Oh, and there's no such thing as "far left", unless you mean tankies. I stand by my decision.
Reddit shouldn't have a login wall. And if it does for you, it is incredibily easy to get around it. It appears you don't want to do the most basic fact checking, and instead you just doubled down on judging a book by its cover. Even after I provided clear support for the opposite being true.
If you actually have a login wall, just put into wayback machine or a million other ways to bypass it. Here, I did the work for you, here is the pinned post in the subreddit:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250224051954/https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromoso...
And I am still waiting for you to actually back up what you are saying with at least a single piece of supporting evidence. It is the biggest feminist subreddit on Reddit, with over 14 million users, if there was even a whiff of it allowing any TERF content, you could easily find at least some source to support your (what is currently still a completely baseless) claim.
Okay, that seems to support your claim. Now please stop posting those links all over the forum. People can be wrong on the internet.
Far Right Feminist. You can look these people up and see what their beliefs are, you know. You don't have to just shoot nonsense into the void without checking first.
Collective Shout is a group firmly known for its conservative and anti-pornography stance. While it attempts to present itself as a non-partisan organization, it is predominantly associated with conservative values and ideologies.
This organization is often justifiably labeled as puritanical due to its strong opposition to pornography and its claims of advocating for the protection of young people from its harmful influence. Numerous sources highlight Collective Shout's connections to conservative groups and its active participation in campaigns against adult content, reinforcing its alignment with right-wing principles.
In summary, Collective Shout is a determined organization that actively opposes pornography while asserting its mission to protect young people—though that assertion faces considerable skepticism. Its primary links to conservative ideologies and robust anti-pornography campaigns clearly define its agenda.
blame the collective shout and them harassing both steam and itch for it many nsfw games are being deindexed and removed and deleted from profiles
but it still wont show me all the games . what the hell could have happend someone should explain why this happend or what the hell happend??
No, don't share this link. It is completely useless unless the game you're looking for happens to be near the top of the list. You can't search within it.
That's NSFW, but not erotic/adult. Either set alone still has some stragglers, but as far as I can tell anything that has either the erotic or adult tag and is flagged NSFW is hidden - you can find 'em with google or a direct link elsewhere, but they won't show up on itch. Sketchy behavior.
okay turns out after a tiny bit of research some activist groups are against +18 games on itch.io (going after steam too sadly) which they had to conform with because of money i'd assume (any creators have been shadowbanned or full on had games deleted without warning)
using this quote will help explain "itch.io is the latest storefront to curb the sale of adult and “NSFW” content on its platform due to pressure from payment processors like Visa and Mastercard. As of Thursday, the indie-focused platform has de-indexed adult content such that it is no longer visible or searchable on the site."
OH MY GOD! im 25 god damn years old if im old enough to kill and die for my country old enough to smoke cancer sticks and vape old enough to drink i should be allowed to consume 18+ content im getting sick of people telling me what i can and cant do shits ridiculous
another thing what about the games that people paid money for they best be giving that money back and i mean itch not the creators
THE GAMES ARENT DELETED HOLD UR HORSES, they a shadow banned if u know the games name you can still find it
nope, certain games in my library are being "Suspended from posting files" and removing / hiding their page overall ( not just the search page and the art is gone from the library page)
https://x.com/letsmaybeLP92/status/1948544883410829370
When you try clicking on the download button near the top of the page under "You Own This Page", what happens? You should reach either a 404 page or a page that SHOULD have download links. A game with removed files (mind you this was a creator who removed content themselves) would look like this:
so ive gotta try to remember the name of multiple games now to find em instead of having an easy filter and why they shadowbanned what are they doing if they cleaning up a bit and getting rid of games that arent finnished and arent being worked on i got no issues with that but the awakenings files arent there for example and thats a $5 game i belive so if that games getting removed itch best be paying me back
well ok now I see that is infact happening, I hope u get the refund if u paid for it, tho its interesting that other games by that creator are still up. In any case most of them are shadow banned not deleted
im not really shouting it like its good only that it isnt a full deletion wipe of all adult games
Tell that to the developers whose game listings they can't access and who can't cash out because their games are currently blocked.
they might only be shadowbanned but lets be real here you would need an extremely dedicated person to not simply be discouraged by this happening and more than likely just end up giving up on finishing it.
It's the same fucking group that targeted Steam the past week. (by harassing Visa I guess)
this is actually a lot worse than Steam. Steam delisted like a hundred titles at most and the majority of them were shovelware. And you can still download them from your library if you bought them.
Itch has removed over 20 000 NSFW games and killed downloads.
it feels extremely directed attack too, theyre doing this when most of the userbase would be asleep or not available, and wiping specific tags while leaving plenty of other unfavorable media untouched, but no the lesbian dating sim gets wiped from the site. yea, seen this before
There's at least 2 in my library that have been removed; Max the Elf and Debauchery in Caelia Kingdoms. Here's the takedown notice for Max the Elf https://itch.io/takedowns/655516
I think max the elf is because they viewed the elf mc as being too young/a minor while for debauchery I can't say
if that was true it would've been removed a long time ago, not 2 hours ago like the rest of them
Sorry, I haven't used itch io that much before, but even if the games are removed from the site, can you still download (older) versions from your library? I assume you won't be able to receive any updates either way, but I am wondering if they were nuked entirely or just taken from the itch io "storefront"
did you check your purchases page and click on those two games from there? https://itch.io/my-purchases If so, did you get a 404 page or something like this (after clicking on download under "You Own This Game"
All of mine are stil there, most are pretty popular, some are very recent so dont think its that.
i lowkey forgot about this mastercard and visa telling people they cant spend their money oml i remember being told about oversea scams when trying to purchase harem hotel and i belive the creator of that is from ireland
I've been particularly mad about payment processors doing this shit for ages now and nobody really listened until it finally happened.
A while back, Toffer Team did a crowdfunding campaing for their Lip Lewd Idol visual novel series. They racked up 23k and PayPal froze the account and stole all their crowdfunding money.
I said even back then that this kind of behavior was an attempt to normalize censorship and now its happening. I'm just as furious about whats happening as you are, if not more so.
Visa and Mastercard are a duopoly that actively collude with eachother and I can't for the life of me understand why they havent been forcefully broken up by the government.
I'm not american, but if you are, contact your representatives. Theres a bill in the US right now being worked on specifically to make it illegal for Visa and Mastercard to decide what you do with your money.
The bills ErrorStack is referring to (actually two bills, H.R.987 and S.401) were introduced by two Republicans, the party you may notice control the government at the moment. So I would say it is potentially the right fuckin government, actually!
Payment processors overstepping their bounds is a bipartisan issue! Conservatives have been the target of it before! Making them politically neutral utilities is something we can all get behind, and you should contact your representatives in support of the "Fair Access to Banking Act" if you are a US citizen.
there was also an earlier bill in 2023 that was introduced and never went anywhere.
You're right about the issue being bipartisan
The issue is non-partisan. Doesn't matter about political parties. This is an attach on the people.
These bills are intended to protect gun dealers and crypto laundering from bank oversight, but protecting free speech would be a great collateral benefit.
if you are a US citizen.
What that means for you personally is that your unproductive doomerism isn't even based on facts. Next time you make a post, ask yourself if it's indistinguishable from what a propagandist would say if they were trying to demoralize people into doing nothing. And if it is, don't say it.
while i understand the sentiment, this was happening before him as well. DLsite and OnlyFans both got hit with this sort of thing in 2021. the issues systemic in that credit card companies and payment processors shouldn't be able to tell grown adults what they can and can't do with their money.
That's simple. The government has always wanted to ban shit they don't control and doing so through the government is hard because of free speech laws. Furthermore, seeing how the government is likely involved with human trafficking and sex slavery, anything that has sex in it is likely an important target for them.
This might seem farfetched but in my experience sexual predators engage in projection to hide their guilt and seeing how the "feminist group" is completely fine with "Cuties" then I have my suspicions that they are just a manufactured excuse for credit card companies to ban shit.
Indeed; the feminist group follows many reactionary conservatives on their Twitter account, such as Liz Wheeler, Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk's political party, all people that have been incredibly misogynistic by the past. The only feminists they follow are people like JK Rowling, who are only feminists by a very charitable and liberal definition of the term. They are a feminist group in name only. They are reactionary conservative censorship advocates, presumably Christian.
Got it, so everyone just needs to quit using their service and go to a different card provider. It'd be nice if that happened, but i doubt it ever will.
yeah its not that simple might be using cashapp or similar for this stuff now riddiculous aboslutley ludicrous
I'm normally not a crypto shill, but it might be worth investing into a small amount of relatively stable crypto specifically to have some way to do transactions when Visa and Mastercard are doing this shit.
Theres not a hugr amount of card providers out there. Most of them use Visa or Mastercard infrastructure.
I wish it was that easy, but look at your bank card, it's almost always either visa or MasterCard, and your bank decides that, not you.
Censorship is getting out of control.
There is an option, but it is a pretty big step backwards, so I doubt people would go with it. Rather than using credit cards for everyday shopping, we can withdraw money directly in bank to pay in cash, and for online payments, devs could have bank account number disclosed, so we can make a direct bank transfers instead. Basicly cutting off the use of payment processors altogether, so they either backpedal on bans or go bankrupt and new, more lenient ones get created.
Visa and Mastercard's huge monopoly frustrates me so much. They just have the ability to screw over anybody they don't like, how is that fair? It's not just with gaming either, it's also been with websites like OnlyFans and Tumblr. This is a repeated thing spanning across more than a decade with zero major repercussion. God.
https://www.change.org/p/tell-mastercard-visa-activist-groups-stop-controlling-what-we-can-watch-read-or-play
Pass it around and don't forget to tell your representative
Thats a wholly separate subject altogether, so you didn't figure this out, just kinda unrelated
It's not completely unrelated. I can bet you that it's due to the pressure that's being put on by payment processors like Visa and Mastercard, they've been going after any and all forms of "controversial" nsfw material because they're not capable of differentiating between drawings and real life problems. Incest falls into that category so therefore it's related to this problem.
Petitions won't affect their bottom line. That's the only way to change a company's mind.
Thanks for adding to the list. I honestly just clicked a link from a news outlet for the Change.org page. Going to add myself to yours as well
I've been watching the amount of signature numbers on this one for some time now since the Steam wipe and the amount of signatures has shot up by thousands since I last saw it! It's up to 80,000 now!
Btw if you live in the UK sign this petition and contact your MP!
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
it seems extraordinarily disrespectful and plain dodgy for the creator of the site to do that
It should be noted that this bill is sponsored by Kevin Cramer, a Republican that wholly supports Trump. This bill may not be the saving grace it first seems to be. Those are just my thoughts however.
Doesn't really matter if its repub or dem, if it passes. It will be unintentionally protected because they didn't specifically exclude it in the bill.
I hope that is the outcome but you never know in the end. I'm saying to give this some caution given the source.
If the "caution" prevents people from supporting a bill that helps everyone just because an icky righty introduced it, it's counterproductive.
I'm saying that if it does good then that's great but one should not blindly push a bill without first looking at the bill itself as well as the source and the cosponsors that support it.
Yeah the wording of the bill is *just* open-ended enough to be potentially helpful, but also the governing party has made clear how they want to make being/acknowledging the existence of people who are queer illegal, so that's a big shadow over all this.
It doesn't really matter what secret dark motivations may exist in the writer's head, because the actual words of the law will be interpreted by the courts and not the people who wrote it. The writers of the 14th Amendment of the USA Constitution probably weren't thinking about gay sex at the time, but that didn't prevent the outcome of Lawrence v. Texas.
The Republican Party is criminalizing queer people and nonconformists in general. It absolutely does matter who they will and will not consider to be allowed protection under the law, or whose very existence will be made illegal.
Not to mention that changes to a bill can happen down the line as it's being voted on. Bills being voted on aren't written in stone and given the people cosponsoring the bill I would say that, if not watched closely, they may just add whatever exceptions they want into it. Just because a bill says something now doesn't mean it will stay that way. It can drastically change during the process of putting them out if it even gets out.
I don't really know what to tell you. At this point you're just ignoring basic facts about how the US government works.
Not necessarily. There are two approaches courts take to interpretation: following “the letter of the law” and following the intent of the law.
When a law’s meaning is ambiguous, US judges tend to favor their understanding of what it should be. That means either the the judge’s opinion or a statement of legislators’ intent— like that expressed in the GOP’s horrendous Project 2025— is used for the ruling.
We can see examples of this in recent Supreme Court statements.
With what has happened to the judicial and executive branches of the federal governmemt and various parts of state governments, any Republican-led bill should not be accepted at face value.
The party’s motives matter for federal legislation.
And have you looked at the bill, or are you just spreading fear blindly? Which part of the bill bothers you? Quote it to us.
There is nothing wrong with giving an air of caution when it comes to bills especially ones propped up by those that are anti-LGBT and are known for adding things later into bills as they are being passed down and voted on. Lest we forget when complete banning of all trans people transitioning was put into and then taken out of the BB Bill. A lot of the people sponsoring the bill are the same people that looked for that to happen.
I am asking to watch closely and not blindly follow. They may just add that adult content can be an exception or anything else down the line. They are politicians and they are certainly not fighting for us.
So that's a no, then.
Obviously if the bill changes then our support for it can change. But you said to look at the bill, and I looked, and there's nothing bad in it. So there's no call for all this FUD.
I said to be cautious and watch the bill. I'm not sure where you keep thinking I'm saying absolute no to this. Politics are tricky as we have seen many times before where bills in their infancy start out as one thing and get absolutely changed at the end either for better or worse.
Some people do not know or understand the workings of how bills are passed and changed and thus I am speaking out to say this to those who may not understand.
I will say again that the BB Bill did not originally have the banning of all trans adults transitioning, then it was added, and then it was taken out after backlash when people noticed it. You should watch, be cautious, and not blindly go into bills with all this given.
You will never receive anything good from a Right-Wing political party. The language is ambiguous enough for it to serve their purposes while not necessarily serving yours.
{Purpose:} ensure that persons involved in politically unpopular businesses but that are lawful under Federal law receive fair access to financial services under the law;
A person is defined in the bill as “any natural person; or any partnership, corporation, or other business or legal entity; and includes a customer.”
S. 401’s co-signers are all registered as Republicans. This is not a bipartisan bill. That’s apparently because it’s meant as protection for unpopular political funds and for politicians’ businesses, including The Trump Organization banned in New York (the country’s economic headquarters) because of felony fraud convinctions.
The plan is that payments to adult content creators not associated with these businesses or to everyone else targeted in by the GOP won’t be protected by this bill when made federally illegal as “pornographic” and “obscene”.
We need bipartisan legislation that specifically protects the banking services for creators.
if theh stand their ground, they would permanently lose their payment processing. Most people arent gonna switch to crypto, so standing their ground would be financial suicide. This is why Mastercard and Visa are so effective at censoring thing. They control the flow of almost all money.
the thing is..... they need the pay methods to work, and this initiative is treatening ALL itch's and Steam trasactions, so they must comply or they would be immidiatly shut down....
that's the mess up thing... it's a private congregation creating censorship unfunded by any laws (that I know of) and since they are basically a monopoly they can do this and no one can say "nah fuck it... I'm i'm ok not being payd anymore"
what they're promoting? More Piracy....... Ironic
that being said I do belive that some regulations need to be made in NSFW and Erotic games.... but this is not regulation...
as the oficial post on itch.io they're saing that they are adjusting the terms and will re-index the adult/erotic once this new terms are out
Collective Shout is anti everything xD Before this, they tried to cancel Detroit Become Human for "violence against women." I wouldn't be surprised if they took an easier target with games with incest and rape to slowly cover more games until they censored everything that isn't ponies and rainbows.
you're not wrong, but until Crypto bros stop scamming people literally everyday, and new shit coins can't just be endlessly shitted out, it's not gonna see adoption mass enough where it can be regularly used as an alternate currency.
This does not "solve" anything though, it is just "kicking the can down the road". Same with people wanting an alternative to this marketplace. The "problem" is with existing processors that control the flow of money. So you use an ACH bank transfer to move your money into crypto... until the processors tell the bank not to allow that. Nothing is solved.
way to devalue the term fascist, what next? you're gonna call em nazis? Itch can't help it if the people in charge of handling the money wants to swing that monopoly around. Visa and Mastercard are the ones swinging their power around to have a say in not just our lawful purchases but they're already doing it in worldwide, especially Japan. For Itch to do anything about it would make them unable to operate at all
I agree that it is mainly Visa and Mastercard who are at fault. Even more so the group of conservatives that convinced them to go this far. My issue is with itch immediately caving to them and not at least try to fight back. I understand that there is little they can do but straight up admitting defeat and cater to big money kind of shows where the priorities are.
I am not devaluing the term fascism at all. History has shown time and time again that fascism starts with the banning of art. Google "degenerate art" or read this interesting article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-propaganda-fascism-target-artists-zubizarreta...
Also I didn't call itch themself fascist. Banning certain types of art - and I would call video games art - is.
f95zone is a big community almost exclusively catering to NSFW games. Fare warning, it is a bit of a piracy site for paid NSFW games but supporting the devs is encouraged. plenty of devs upload and communicate with the community of their own will. I suggest Devs upload their games there while having a support line.
Crazy thing is No Mercy isn't even unique. As far as NSFW games goes it's Russian low effort slop.
It seems like they do consider games as "real life", unlike how they perceive Video/Printed. "Video" meaning movies and television with "fictional" content. Visa and Mastercard are all too happy to receive payment fees for Game of Thrones.
As for the gaming side of things, they just don't seem to understand it is a "fictional" medium. It is also only a matter of time before it escalates beyond gaming into printed fiction. My wife straight-up admits many of the NSFW games here on Itch that I have played are tame in comparison to the supermarket-smut-novels they have near the registers! HAHA
She needs to go visit Melonbooks in Japan if she wants to see far less tame stuff.
I came across one with sadistic brutal themes and my mind went "I'm not surprised this exists. I AM surprised this exists in paperback." and I had to buy it just for the novelty of it.
Although at the end of the day it's a matter of how deep pocketbooks are. Buy Visa/Mastercard stock (Not sure of their ticker) and have a good share percentage, threaten that they can't do crap like this, and you'll find they reverse their decision REAL quick when the CEO's pocketbooks are impacted.
Taking your business elsewhere is just delaying it. Itch was just the next step on their warpath of censorship. There won't be anything to stop the processors from attacking your "next" platform, or the "next" platform, or the "next" platform, or the "next" platform...
They have already attacked (and won) against Epic, Steam, Patreon, OnlyFans, PornHub, etc... and the list will continue to grow if the cancerous reason for this trend is not removed. It is the processors dictating what can and cannot be purchased.
To add to that, Collective Shout, the Aussie Puritanical Cult behind this current pogrom, looks to have violated the Charity and Non-Profit laws here with this action. The authorities are getting a LOT of notifications today.
They should change this info :D "itch.io is an open marketplace for independent game creators. We are completly dependent on our masterscard gods and will force any policy they ask us to. It's completely free to upload your content but we can always delete it without warning if visa gods ask us to. Read more about polices we are force to respect and remember they can change without any notice." something like that.
"tl;dr: Itch is shooting themselves in the foot, most likely forced so "
To put it a little more explicitly, the payment processors were holding a gun to their head and ordering them to shoot themselves in the foot if they want to continue living.
itch would have died in one shot possibly if they didn't "bend the knee". They can't fight off Visa and Mastercard in court, and need the support of those payment processors to maintain servers.
At the moment, no, not yet. BUT a decent chunk of NSFW games have been flooding back into the site! The adult tag just regained 5000+ Games, so that is a VERY big sign that Itch is doing what they can to restore order while navigating the threats from Payment companies.
As it currently stands, there MAY new new payment processors coming up to take Visa and Mastercards place, OR, they're folding and allowing Itch to restore their catalog of Games because of all the pressure we've been putting Visa/Mastercard over. So while I can't say what kind of payment options may be coming, it's a VERY good sign that we're seeing thousands of games come back, and a strong reminder that Itch is fighting FOR us, and not against us!