they removed or shadow banned. what a disgusting action
Your puritanical policy change to cater to a payment processor (not a regulatory body!!) has destroyed the livelihood of one of my best friends. He stands to lose his home as he's disabled and only develops indie games to cater to a very niche audience that contain optional NSFW content. I will never be purchasing another game bundle from your website, not even for charity. You have lost my trust and my patronage forever.
Everyone, PLEASE keep in mind that Itch is CURRENTLY looking for other options and Payment Processors who are more comfortable with Adult Content! They are not and HAVE not abandoned their creators! Like Steam, Itch was bullied and thrust into a position where higher powers forced these policies ON them under threat of total shutdown via Payment pullout. Itch IS looking for other avenues to support it's creators! In the meantime, keep calling your Gov Representatives and DO not let up! We CAN'T let people decide what we the people can and cannot purchase or enjoy!
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!
With the way itchio has handled this and even before it, I would recommend that gamers find an alternative to this damn place. Games are still getting de-indexed, taken down, not restored, etc.
I recommend game devs to make use of the Fediverse, there are numerous Free and Open-Source alternatives out there that are made in mind to give you security, privacy and the means to fight censorship. As for donation platforms, there are others out there, such as Subscribe Star which should be used instead of Patreon.
link below for examples:
I just checked my analytics today. I can see that itchio is censoring me from their platform. My games are all shadowbanned now. A new platform is needed to get rid of itchio and the rest of the greedy and spineless gaming sites. Apart from the Fediverse, myself and other devs have used other adult sites such as Azkosel's Corner to promote our games.
I'm just a hobby dev who created games free, I don't make money or get donations.
I don't recommended F95Zone at all, it is a toxic cesspool. The admin and the community there is shit. Not only has it soured relationships with plenty of game devs there, the place is full of antis. My games and others are banned from here. Pretty ironic for a pirate site for adult video games to be censorship happy shits that bans games there.
I recommend LewdCorner over F95Zone. LewdCorner's creation was due to the owner being sick and tired of F95Zone's shit.
There is a reason why F95Zone is known as CuckZone