As the other poster mentioned, you do region-block queer content as a part of the "adult" content.
It would be helpful to know which tags are affected and to have an official announcement covering it, though I understand that the issue with the payment processors takes priority now and Itch.io does not have enough resources to oppose them openly. Therefore, it is on us as creators and customers to do so and same goes for the OSA for those of us who are in the UK.
Instead of deindexing and/or delisting games outright, I really wish Itch would put an overlay on affected games that describes the reasons for that specific game to be deindexed/delisted. I understand that would require quite a lot of work to implement, but I think it would dispel suspicions of nefarious blocking of LGTBQ+ content.
Given that many people talk about all aspects of LGTBQ+ life as inherently pornographic and harmful to children (e.g. two men kissing eachother), it’s easy for people (including me) to strongly suspect this has and will disproportionately affected LGTBQ+ projects and creators.
In our post here we talk about the criteria used, how developers can check their page’s status, and how they can appeal if they think a restriction has been unfairly applied to their page: https://itch.io/t/5133739/our-update-on-the-uk-online-safety-act
Thank you. This is helpful, especially the tags affected, the Geo-Restrictions tab, and the link to the petition.
I would add that the OSA bans not only porn but also "content that encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for either: self-harm, eating disorders or suicide". How one differentiates between "mentions" and "promotes" is not obvious. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-safety-act-explainer/online-safety-act-explainer#types-of-content-the-act-tackles .
While I do hope that this act will be repealed, I believe the users should be ready to work around it in the meantime.
