Itch, Steam and payment processors

Hey folks, some bad news I'm afraid. You might already be aware of what's going on but for those of us who aren't as plugged in to the erotic world's news cycle, I'll summarize:

Several days ago an Australia-based interests group called CollectiveShout escalated their pressure on Mastercard, VISA and other payment processors. As a result Steam has taken down many games deemed "objectionable" by the group; more recently, itch.io has de-indexed ALL their NSFW material from their search engine. They've recently introduced a list of objectionable themes that will disallow NSFW content from being shown by their store. You can read more about it here.

My opinion is probably predictable to you: I think censorship is a final resort and media, in almost all cases, should be left to stand on its own merits. I think discussing what should be allowed and what shouldn't is a valuable conversation to have, but I don't think these are people who are interested in a conversation: I think like so many times before, these are just people with an agenda hiding behind children's advocacy to ban things they find distasteful. Consider that one of the tags they've banned is "urination," a completely harmless kink that for most is merely gross. Banning things that are "icky" is asinine.

More troublingly, these rules on what can and can't be shown often disallow media that's intentionally provocative or is made to help victims. I know of one game delisted from itch that describes itself as a therapeutic game for those suffering from eating disorders. As always, these rules will be unevenly applied in ways that hurt the disenfranchised and the vulnerable.

This payment processor stuff is bad, and until people fight back it's just going to get worse: the same group went after OnlyFans a while ago and it wouldn't surprise me if they're related to Patreon's shrinking NSFW allowances too. The thought that payment processors like Mastercard and VISA should have a say in what you can buy and what you can't is a very, very, very bad idea. I probably don't have to tell you why.

As for what this means for me, for us--all of my work is now delisted on itch, of course, and things could get worse from here. There's no guarantee Patreon won't follow suit, and if things get worse before they get better then that could mean searching for alternatives like SubscribeStar or Discord. Hopefully things won't come to that, but I'll let you know the instant anything about how we handle things changes.

Some positivity, after this downer of a news story: people don't take lightly to having their games and media suppressed, so these big steps should result in blowback. Hopefully it not only gets CollectiveShout knocked off their high horse but also leads to some reins put on payment processors.