Censorship By Payment Processor: Steam, itch.io Removing Adult Games En Masse

In an emerging story over the past week, games distribution platforms appear to be receiving increasing pressure from payment processors to remove adult games from their platforms.

Last week, Steam quietly made a change to their Steamworks onboarding documentation, inserting a new clause into the What You Shouldn't Publish On Steam section

15. Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.

At the same time, it was observed that a large number of adult-oriented games were removed from the platform. In statements issued to a number of publications, Valve stated that they "were recently notified that certain games on Steam may violate [scheme] rules" of their payment processor, and were required to remove them. The assumption I've made from the claim that customers would be unable to purchase other titles if Valve did not comply seems to imply that Valve was threatened with debanking if they did not pull the games from sale. The delisted games appeared, at least initially, to be mostly related to incest themes.

itch.io Begins Delisting Process For Thousands of Adult-oriented Games

On Thursday, itch.io de-indexed all adult-oriented games. Screenshots posted to Mastodon show that search results for games tagged as Adult had reduced from over 17,000 to less than 50.

itch.io issued a lengthy statement stating that they had made a decision to de-index all adult games while they conducted an audit of all content to make sure it met the requirements of their payment processor. Once again, the unspoken part of the statement implies that they were threatened with debanking if they did not immediately comply with the demand.

There have also been reports from some devs that itch.io was declining to provide them payouts on delisted games as "accounts that are in violation of our terms are not eligible for payouts". Other end users have reported that they are no longer able to download delisted games they lawfully purchased from itch.io.

Why is All of This a Problem?

Speaking personally, I've never purchased adult games, and I probably never will. It's not something that appeals to me. And I believe that games where a player personally engages in sexual violence, or child abuse, or anything of the sort, shouldn't be available for purchase or download.

However, there's a real risk that these sort of campaigns might go further, especially in light of the political right's efforts in the USA to erase LGBTQ+ people from history, remove support resources and push back on decades of hard-earned rights. If this sort of wolf-whistling is not called out and combated, it might push even further toward banning games purely for featuring a queer individual.

Where Did All of This Come From?

The changes and delistings made by Valve and itch.io appear to originate from an open letter issued by Collective Shout to the major payment processors stating they had found "hundreds of [...] games featuring rape, incest and child sexual abuse on both Steam and Itch.io".

Collective Shout is an Australian-based registered charity which claims to be "against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls". Their top core value states that they are "a voice that values women and girls". However, the various campaigns they have been responsible for over the years paint them as a conservative organisation which seeks to restrict sexual expression.

One of their longest running campaigns has been against Australian sex-positive lingerie and adult shop Honey Birdette, claiming them to be a "serial sexploitation offender" that uses "porn-style ads in family shopping centres". They have also campaigned for sites such as Porn Hub and OnlyFans to be shut down due to them "facilitating prostitution and sexual exploitation".

The group also previously tried to have Detroit: Become Human banned due to it "depicting child abuse and violence against women".

Collective Shout's cofounder Melinda Tankard Reist was also one of the founders of Women's Forum Australia, a conservative group that is anti-abortion, anti-trans rights, and has previously peddled conspiracy theories around the dangers of Wi-Fi.

Uncertain Future for Developers

Many developers have expressed concerns around the future of their games and projects that aren't even considered adult games. If a conservative group has been successful in their campaign thus far to have adult games removed from the internet, they might be emboldened to push further toward and seek to target games featuring LGBTQ+ characters, or just any other ideology or thing they decide is bad for society this week.

Are you developer who has been affected by this campaign, or are you worried you'll be affected in the future? Please reach out!