This entire clusterfuck where a large percentage of games are shadow-banned to appease some unscrutable demands from the payment processors—the itch.io admins grant us obscure tenets like "await final determinations from our current payment processors" and "There are still unknowns that prevent us from providing a fixed timeline" like if the dealings with a credit card company is some sort of grand esoteric mystery far beyond what can be expressed with mere language—this entire clusterfuck reminds me of how the same admins dealt with AI.
As you might recall, AI checkmarks were added to the game pages and it was demanded that all developers went through their games and marked whether they had AI content. If the didn't, they risked being delisted. This move was NOT to make it easier for users to avoid AI content. There are still no ways for users to see which games have the AI metadata tags. I asked for transparency on this back in January, but it still isn't implemented.
So the reason everyone had to disclose AI use in their games was NOT because the admins took a stand against AI or something like that. According to the guidelines it was "due to legal ambiguity around rights associated with Generative AI content".
True, if copyright turns out to exist for AI training data, then this would influence itch.io. It would also influence Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, pretty much all the big tech players. It would turn society as we know it completely around.
This is such an unrealistic scenario. So when the itch.io admins choose to focus on this (rather than, say, giving us an option to search our bought games) I got the feeling that they were a bunch of anxious worrywarts. And I can't help but being reminded of this when I see the same pattern in their dealing with the credit card situation.
The itch.io admins have failed to show even the mildest of disapproval of the credit card companies Orwellian censorship. Their only attempt to speak truth to power was an emoji which could be interpreted as slightly sarcastic.
They say the mass delisting was to "ensure that we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers". Which is a noble goal, except that in order to do so, they no longer provide a marketplace for all developers. You can't invest in your values by selling out.
Here it should be mentioned that the delistening is temporary, of course. Still, when a site removes something temporarily, but without giving any timeframe for its return, a slight hint of concern is warranted. Another gaming site, gog.com decided to remove one of its main features, the user-created GOGMixes. The removal was said to be temporary, but that was over a decade ago; they still haven't returned. Hopefully itch.io moves faster than that. Still, in my AI post, an admin said that "Visible labeling is coming", but couldn't tell when. That was six months ago.
itch.io is one of the few websites I genuinely care about. I hope it will stay in existence. But not at the cost of the pervy segment of its user base. A slight to one is a slight to all.