Some final thoughts on the NSFW ban.

This will be the last post I make on this topic until something changes or something big happens. Please view the website linked above; it'll tell you how you can contact various payment processors and link to various petitions to sign. Congress is also going to vote soon on the Kids Online Safety Act which is part of the Project 2025 anti-porn nonsense the Republicans are high on these days. This act is a clear violation of the first amendment, not that anyone in the government seems to care about the Constitution anymore, but still.

And if you think this is going to be limited to porn, you've been had. How long do you think it will take before politically controversial speech is being cracked down on? Violence? LGBTQ+ romances games? Erotic content is the easiest target in the world to start with, but it is not the end goal of these authoritarians. Make no mistake, this is just the beginning. But even if it weren't, I have a constitutionally protected right to make these games, and my rights, along with the rights of thousands of others, are being violated in backroom deals by freaks, terfs, and lunatics with no accountability.

You don't have to defend anything, so don't fall into the trap!

The first thing I want to tell you guys, is focus on the actual problem going on here. If you're inclined to take a public stand, when you're arguing with terfs, Christian fascists, and authoritarians of all stripes, they will constantly try to make the argument about the content they want to ban and how "gross" it is to them. They'll say you're defending rape or incest as though the fictional content that offends them is real. Don't fall for the trap, it's just a distraction. Go back to the main point and reset the conversation: this was legal content, and payment processors should not have the right to tell adults that they can or can't buy legal content. That's what's happening here. If you want to ban legal content, the onus is on the one trying to ban it to go and write a law.

Of course, KOSA is proof they're trying to do that too, and KOSA is a flagrant violation of the first amendment, but that's a different fight. Right now, we need to focus on the payment processors, and how these companies with no public accountability shouldn't be the moral arbiters of what adults are allowed to spend their money on, and how they shouldn't be allowed to arbitrarily "debank" legal and legitimate businesses no matter how offensive they find the content. If we let the banks decide what we can buy, where does that stop. Christians, isn't the Bible sometimes a little controversial??? Terfs, don't you bristle and grouse at Harry Potter boycotts? Imagine if the banks themselves bow to pressure from the people opposing you. Is that a precedent you really want to set?

And remember, these billionaires and politicians are the ones engaged in covering up the Epstein files, so if we really want to protect the poor children of the world from degenerates, let's start there.

Erotic content is too vulnerable to arbitrary, illegal censorship due to a lack of media coverage and public conversation.

The fact is, even the biggest and most popular adult games (and other types of adult content and art) don't get much mainstream coverage. People don't post about them or talk about them that much, either. There's a pervading sense of public shame for being into even non-pornographic "gooner" stuff. This time, public figures like Cr1tikal, did come to bat for free speech, and that's awesome, but I think we need to cultivate our own media for this space. There are reviewers and some content creators, but they're few and far between, and they obviously struggle to make money in this anti-porn world, too.

If adult games had more content creators and reviewers and media outlets, it would help make our community more resilient, better informed, and more easily able to organize responses to problems like these. Several sites that tried to focus on this space like LewdGamer and LewdPixels ultimately failed, but I think trying to create something like this is way more realistic that trying to make our own Itch or Steam, or certainly than creating our own Mastercard or PayPal.

How can players help?

Right now, the only thing you can do is what you're already probably doing. Make a big stink, call the payment processors to complain, sign the petitions, and try to support your favorite devs in whatever way you can.

If you want to do more than that, maybe try becoming an adult game reviewer, or content creator. If you've played a lot of adult games and have your favorites, maybe try making a blog. I don't know. On one hand, I think it's gonna be hard to make content about adult games given the teetering position this entire community is in right now, but on the other hand, people have never paid this much attention to adult gaming, and right now thanks to the bans, a lot of actual adult content creators can't capitalize on it. So there's demand and low supply...just saying...

As for me...

For me, I feel like all I can do is get back to work. At the end of the day, my job right now is find a way to survive and thrive no matter what, and the best thing I can do is release high-quality content and hopefully push through the darkness to the other side.

I really appreciate the support, and I've seen a lot of players moving from Itch to follow me here, on Newgrounds, or on Bluesky, so that's really heartening! Being able to keep in contact with my players is the biggest thing I'm worried about right now since I've built a huge portion of my audience on Itch, and my content could be removed from there at any time.

Thanks so much for your support and concern, it really means a lot. I will survive this, Hex will survive, SS will survive, I promise we'll make it, so please keep believing in me and this project. Thanks, guys.