Post by Mt. Penguin Monster in itch.io's censorship of adult and erotic media is unacceptable.

Viewing post in itch.io's censorship of adult and erotic media is unacceptable.

While the delisting of adult games doesn’t directly affect any of my current itch.io projects, it sets a disastrous and worrying precedent. If games can be removed from itch.io without warning because a far-right puritan group and a couple of payment processors applied pressure, then every game is in potential danger. This is censorship of art and is an attack on the livelihoods of itch.io’s creators. And there’s no reason to think that the far-right group would stop here. Games with LGBT themes, or swear words, or political satire, could easily be the next targets.

I urge itch.io to relist the games and to not cave to the pressure of far-right groups and payment processors. Payment processors should not be in the business of censorship; their purpose is to process payments.

If you have the time, contact the payment processors and let them know your opinion on their censorship. If you’re in America, contact Mastercard with this link and contact Visa with this link.

– Mt. Penguin Monster

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Fluffy Otter122 days ago (1 edit) (+4)

In these cases, it is not the main credit card companies that are causing these issue, instead, it is mainly the back end payment processors who will facilitate a credit card transaction. For example, Stripe has a history of dropping many people, including numerous content creators, artists, and various donationware companies, e.g., electronics companies like Apple, pressuring a payment processor to ban a developer who is using them to accept donations for a board view applications tailored to 3rd party repair of products made by those companies. Since nothing they are doing is illegal, they can't get the software banned, thus they go after income sources instead.

Anyway what collective shout did is just the beginning, and given how fast steam and itch gave in, they will now double down. Bit by bit they will chip away at what content in allowed, until itch will ban everything more violent than Mario Cart.

Keep in mind that collective shout tried to use a different method to get the game Detroit: Become Human banned, though that was before they utilized the payment processor route.
The censorship groups of the past that tried to ban things like Dungeons And Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and many other things,never fully disappeared, and the success of collective shout, will effectively give them all a roadmap to exploit.

If there is no resistance to this, then eventually every prude will effectively have veto authority on all content on itch, steam, and many other platforms.

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