Itch is not the bad guy in this Situation. 

They are pressured by the payment providers who control any money coming into Itch or other sites. If Itch does not comply, ALL payments could be affected, not just for NSFW products.

The Payment Providers and the laws that enable this behaviour are to blame. If you live in the US, please call your representatives and demand change, sign petitions , anything. Just don't sit here and yell at Itch who have literally done nothing wrong and are just trying to keep the Site alive.

Really in the mood to firebomb a MasterCard office

https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy

Please sign this petition from the ACLU, they have more teeth than other organizations and usually follow this stuff up with legal action.

NTR the husbands and wives of Collective Shout.

They absolutely are the bad people. They are the ones who acquiesced to the fascists. Not anyone else.

No, fuck that. I recognize the threat is real, and that Itch can't afford to fight it. But also: the way that they've gone about this is horrible and absolutely deserves scorn and protest.

First, the fact that they just went ahead and did everything with no notice, and then didn't even tell anyone that they'd done it for hours until the opposition got loud enough to make a message. Developing situation? If you're going to throw a chunk of your userbase under the bus you had fucking well better get that message together before you do it.

Second, the fact that they used the tools that they'd designed for people to be better able to be part of their community to attack them. Every product that was listed 'adult', 'NSFW', 'erotica', or 'sensitive media' was delisted. Any product that didn't bother to list themselves as erotica is still up, untouched. Not only that, but the 'sensitive media' tag was one that Itch created and placed on products to make it easier for people to avoid them. They include a lot of products that aren't porn at all, but include themes of sexuality or queerness. The delisting goes an order of magnitude beyond what others have done to capitulate.

Even worse, the message says that they will be deleting items in the future, and that's a fucking lie because they started deleting things before anyone even knew there was a threat. 

And finally, creators of works that have been delisted or deleted are reporting that Itch has also supsended payouts to them, so they're also stealing money.

I do not blame Itch for pursuing a no-NSFW policy. However, no matter how harsh the pressure from the payment processor was, Itch should have given creators enough time to explain the upcoming changes and how those changes would affect their projects and their customers. Itch unilaterally removed games that buyers had purchased from their libraries without any prior notice, seriously violating their rights — and even shifted all the responsibility and cleanup onto the creators.  This action clearly deserves blame.

Even if Itch had provided at least a one-week “evacuation period” through prior notice, Collective Shout would not have destroyed Itch. Deleting content in the middle of the night without any warning — That is truly cowardly and unjust behavior.

What irks me is that they say it's about this game called "No Mercy." I can understand if the game itself violated the TAC on the site where it was posted, but even then, Itch and Steam could have just delisted THAT GAME. This is an extreme overreaction and has shown that outside companies and interest groups can bully them into dictating what consumers can legally and consentually consume with their own money. Yes, it is the payment systems and those who manage them that are at fault here. However, to give in to the pressure like this without warning makes it feel like they are just giving up without a fight. Most of the games that were delisted didn't violate the Terms; you need an account even to download NSFW games, which requires age verification; and we, as consumers, can either just not buy the game or, if it does violate something, report it. These creators have Freedom of Speech, and consumers, adult consumers at that,  have the right to make a legal and informed purchase. 

I can agree with that: Itch is a victim, maybe not a martyr... but still a victim.

My enemy is all what allows to payment providers to choke our rights.

Even if we abandon itch, the same can happen anywhere else, and in future not only to games.

So we don't have to fight among us, but rather against our real enemies

I disagree. Itch could have told Visa (or whoever else) to go pound sand and found a new payment processor. Paypal, Stripe, Venmo, Cashapp. Hell a crypto payment processor like CoinGate?

Taking down the game was a betrayal of their community. The whole purpose of Itch is to support indie devs. They let big brother stomp on one of their own.

They then went above and beyond that and basically shadowbanned their entire NSFW collection of games. That's not just bad, that's twirl-your-mustache villainous.

we should all make games that claim to be sexual but have absolutely 0 sexual .. or like pretend like food is sexual or something.

... like people say cars are sexy ....

Itch should have given a hint, with some time to be prepared, not just a sudden punch...

“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”

― Mark Twain

If itch.io was on our side, then they would give clear directions to everyone on the site how to fight this. I.e. which petitions to sign, who to contact, how to get our voices heard. Did we get that? No. We got a spineless response that they're "cleaning up shop" (i.e. throwing the baby out with the bathwater).

So is itch the good guys? Are they on our side? No. We got a single emoji announcement from them on discord. Well I've got one for you too, itch.

"Itch is not the bad guy in this Situation." ...they're just carrying out orders....

the Nazi soldier defense, classic.

this is why these sites should start integrating other payment options like upi, there's no way in hell any retarded lobyist group can pressure all upi service providers

No it is.

Since this is action is a proxy attack on human rights of LGBT+ community - compliance with it makes you a bad guy. 

Itch IS the bad guy.

They could have gone crypto or something else. But that would give them less profit I guess.
But at the very least they could have people keep games they paid for.

zero resitance, borderline obeying in advance

stop defending the poor poor assholes that readily chose to do this the moment it was demanded

What's fascinating is the fact that Itch and its defenders actually think that censorship will stop here.

Hope you're ready for Itch being an off-brand Steam ^^

I wonder how many month before Itch become the Tumblr of video games.

Let's start mass reporting bible games, considering that Holy Bible features rape and incest themes in it. 2 can play this game, you zealots

CALL THEM. Do not e-mail them. They'll just scrape it for keywords and let an AI give a canned answer.

I think we've lost sight of how we can fight back. Here are the links to the petitions. PLEASE SIGN!

Tell MasterCard, Visa & Activist Groups: Stop Controlling What We Can Watch, Read, or Play https://chng.it/b2pMbsLvdg

Mastercard: Sex work is work. End your unjust policy https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy

UK: The scope of the Online Safety act is far broader & restrictive than is necessary in a free society. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903

Call Payment processors and take as much time as possible (This is the solution).

The reason phone call complaints are effective with these payment processor companies is because it takes up valuable time that the company could be otherwise dealing with other issues.  Phone support is expensive and slow, which makes it an ideal pressure point  A large public outcry is what causes companies to pay attention and consider backtracking.

Make a script about why this is bad (payment processor companies shouldn't be censoring legal material because they personally think it's immoral and it's an attack on free speech - you can ask AI to create a script for you if you don't have to time to write a long message) then call VISA/MasterCard/STRIPE/Paypal, you'll be on hold for a while because everyone is calling, and say you'd like to lodge a complaint.  Then when they ask what this is in regards to, just start reading your script.  The longer the better since that's the point.  We essentially have to keep this up for the next few weeks if we want something to happen.  We don’t need to be aggressive - just persistent. Keep the pressure on and call every few days, or every day if you care about this issue.

The following link has all the contact information you need to call them:

https://10kphonecalls.com/

Service reps will now try to quickly escort you to "e-mailing" instead once they realize you're complaining about itch and Steam's recent censorship - try to just keep them on the line.  In one call when they attempted to do this, I simply asked, "Are phone call complaints reported to your company or not?" and they just kept repeating "You must e-mail _________" - I was like, "You're not answering my questions, do you report them or not?" and eventually they transferred me to a supervisor who was really awesome to talk to and spent a long time talking to me..  Asking them about why companies are attempting to ban legal content is also a good question that they can't answer but will keep them on the line for a while.

Itch is mostly to blame. They bent the knee. There's are multiple ways around things. It takes time, yes. However, they could have easily said that they were looking into alternatives and would not delist games. Now, not only are they losing game developers and customers but people won't trust them again. Even if people find it annoying to host on another site, they will do it. Itch isn't like Steam. There are plenty of other sites people can host their games. The payment processors will back track eventually. It has nothing to do with the type of games. It's the censorship. If people think they are going to stop at NSFW games, they are wrong. It's already going past that.  Visa and Steam has already been bombarded by calls and emails so much that their support staff is overwhelmed. When things do get backtracked, it won't matter for Itch. The damage is done. Steam will be fine. Itch won't recover.  Hope it was worth it.

Itch is bad and evil. Fuck you itch

Don't blame this on "Payment provider"/"Payment Facilitator, simply get a new PF if the current PF creates problems. Mastercard and Visa are bad but as far as I know are only trying to enforce USA style "child porn" laws on foreign countries (yes they are that bad). MC and Visa have not banned adult contents, this is an issue with the current PF, see GBPP (Global Bran Protection Program or such), BRAM (Brand Recognition ...)  programs by Visa/MV to see what MC and Visa officially currently accepts. What MC/Visa accepts if more or less -> local law - CP unless CP ban breaks local law (probably). 

Finding a new PF should fix the issue, and there should be many PFs out there that do adult contents, especially contents not featuring actual real people like drawn images. I can try to see if I can find a PF to give ITCH a call but this situation is the fault of ITCH not finding an alternative PF, and mostly not the fault of MC/Visa.

That being said there is a lot of unofficial rules implemented by PFs  but those should be possible to navigate by ITCH.

Love seeing all of this after it got revealed that itch in fact could have switched payment processors at any time and chose not to until now.

If Itch is reading this, what about creating a separate company and website with the same code as itch.io where only cripto is accepted as a payment method? Then everybody that hates Visa and Mastercard (both customers and creators) could just move there.