Hey there!
Recently many of developers and customers on itch.io have been hit by sudden and unfair change of policies forced by payment processors. While many of us could have experienced differently we all can agree that this should not be in their power, especially when a lot of products we got to own didn't break any law.
That's why I am writing this post to bring you all to attention to something pretty important. Recently EU has put Digital Fairness Act into open discussion, when EU citizens and EU-adjacent citizen (that's sadly not UK, sorry British folks) could give feedback and suggest changes to the initiative. It mostly focuses on unfair business practices that manipulate consumer in decision making but we have a spot that we could use to bring into attention the our issue - payment processors and card companies being able to abuse their power and force businesses to essentially cater to their whims, with the threat of cutting them off completely.
One of the points DFA tries to tackle is problems with digital contracts, lack of digital fairness for consumers and also mentions that existing rules do not provide sufficient legal certainty for businesses or authorities. With those points, we could make our case and suggest that recent display of power brings uncertainty and hurts businesses all around the EU and suggest that DFA should incorporate some protections for them against abuse of power from payment processor or credit card companies. It doesn't of course guarantee that they will add that element to the initiative but this could be our chance to make our voices be heard.
So all fancy and dandy but where can you give feedback? Here is the site which allows you to do so.
Now, here are the sources that tell more about the DFA:
On the same site, downloadable PDF - "Call for evidence for an impact assessment" (here are the points I described which we could use to make our case and argue that this would work in scope of the initiative).
https://www.digital-fairness-act.com/ - site of the act that tells about updates and gives the 5 main points (our job should be to influence it to give it a 6th one with feedback)
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/rules-feedback-and-suggestions_e... - rules of writing feedback, pretty helpful for those who are able to send it
If you want to make a feedback and help the cause, please refrain from derogatory language - I know we are all emotional but we need to stay calm, yet persistent, in order to show that we don't agree with how we were all forced to either lose a service that was dear to us or lose a product that we were selling and that was helping with our finances. So if you are living in EU and want to have our voices be heard, please give it a go.
To end this post - good luck to US folks out there who try to do their part. This is of course one of the chances we could change the landscape, so if any new opportunities arise (or someone decides to make EU Initiative themselves), please share it around! The more they know we don't want this, the more power we have.