Following a conversation in a previous post, some of us felt like a change is needed in Itch.io's Terms of Service. Specifically the section 3 (Acceptable Use) :

• "Prohibited actions include but are not limited to: posting content that promotes or participates in racial intolerance, sexism..." (among others).

Currently, the terms are expressed in a way that is open to multiple interpretations. This is an issue because if the rules were to be strictly enforced it could result in excessive censorship. On the other hand, not enforcing the rules is not the solution either, since that leads to a state of permissiveness in which anything is allowed. Plus, rules only have meaning if they are enforced, otherwise they are pointless.

So, I believe the question is not whether we strictly enforce the rules or we decide to overlook them. Rather, the rules should be stated in such a clear unambiguous way that they could be followed consistently withoud leading to extremes.

Therefore, the suggestion is to clarify the meaning of the rules that prohibit racial intolerance and sexism. We would like to allow games that depict racial intolerance,  sexual abuse or discrimination when the intention is educational. However, at the same time, we would like to prohibit games that glorify either racism or sexual abuse, games who side with the abuser instead of with the victim (regardless of the sex or gender of the abuser), whose intention is solely delighting on the abuse portrayed for the gratification of the viewers.

As the Terms of Service says, the aim is "to create a safe environment for users of the site and service. This requires a community that is built on goodwill and responsible behavior by its members".

I would like to encourage a constructive discussion in which everyone can participate to contribute in this effort to make Itch.io a place where users can feel both safe and free to express themselves.

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I would like to give credit to Mango Scribble and to Eldwood for developing some of the ideas expressed here.

I completely agree, that's an excellent suggestion. It should be clear what it's meant by sexism and racial intolerance. It's true that the phrase "content that promotes or participates" can be a bit vague or even subjective. So the solution would be being more specific in what is allowed and what is not tolerated. Clear and unambiguous, like you said.

When is this change / update going to be implemented?

This isn't good.

More effort must be made to clarify what must be considered "educational" and what should be considered "glorify".

If I correctly understood the intentions of the starter of this thread, the main goal of this thread is to "clarify the meaning" of the two above mentioned words, and that still didn't happen. We need here people who can do philosophy and lawyer-speak.

For example what about games, where the protagonist is the villain, but feels bad for the victims, and is actually forced to do evil in order to survive? And what about brainwashing, hypnotism, mind-control, multiple personality disorder and similar things, if they happen with the villain, and not with the victim? This is very complicated, as there are many games with very complicated stories.

Edit: Also, I must add that there are games, which doesn't have a story, or have a story that doesn't make any sense at all. What about those games? How could it be decided whether they can be considered educational???