Online game store Itch.io plunged a swathe of devs into uncertainty last week when, in the wake of pressure from its payment processors, it frantically deindexed all adult content on its platform from its search and browse pages.
In effect, devs woke up without warning to a world where they suddenly couldn't make money from the adult games they'd poured their time into making, and all seemingly at the behest of a campaign waged against payment processors by an Australian anti-porn group.
Itch.io's reaction to processor pressure was so kneejerk that it wasn't even clear to devs which types of content were the problem. Was all adult content simply nuked from the store? Or just games that feature certain kinds of content?
Well, Itch.io has now updated its rules to indicate the particular kinds of content its payment processors find objectionable (via Game Developer). The good news is that the clarification means adult devs have a pathway back to the platform. The bad news is that the boundaries of what's now acceptable are almost impossibly narrow.
"We are unable to support the sale of any works containing these topics," says Itch.io, listing the following as a non-exhaustive list of prohibited content it can no longer support:
- Non-consensual content (real or implied)
- Underage or "barely legal" themes
- Incest or pseudo-incest content
- Bestiality or animal-related
- Rape, coercion, or force-related
- Sex trafficking implications
- Revenge porn / voyeur / hidden cam
- Fetish involving bodily waste or extreme harm (eg, "scat," "vomit")
What's troubling here is that some of this content is just 'kind of icky' rather than 'straight-up illegal.' I doubt anyone has any issue with platforms banning underage NSFW content off their stores (indeed, you'd assume they were doing it already, or you'd hope, anyway), but "Fetish involving bodily waste"? It's not my cup of tea, but who am I—and who are payment processor companies—to tell grown-ups what kinks they are and aren't allowed to indulge with their own money?
That's before you get into the even more worrying prognostications about where this is all going. When our Harvey Randall spoke to developers Robert Yang and Jenny Jiao Hsia, they were sceptical that it would stop here. "This is the same song and dance performed by every anti-porn, anti-sex-work, and anti-LGBTQ+ organization going back decades," said Jiao Hsia (and their colleague AP Thompson).
"Collective Shout is acting in a typical conservative anti-LGBTQ tradition with a familiar pattern: culture war morality campaigns to brand everything they dislike as pornography and obscenity," said Yang.
With this clampdown targeting not just depictions of illegal activities (and even there, it's important to note that neither Steam nor Itch.io ever allowed content featuring real human beings on their services; it's always only been drawn and animated depictions), it's easy to see it spilling over to target all manner of transgressive art.
It's no wonder that plenty of devs and gamers alike have been waging their own counter-campaign to get payment processors to mind their own business, flooding institutions like Visa and Mastercard with calls and emails complaining about the threats to free speech these kinds of crackdowns pose.
It’s time for our own collective shout. Who are you calling? Remember: Stress you’re a repeat caller on this issue and that you heard about this controversy on the news. With Visa, ask for a supervisor once you hit a dead end. Calls should always last longer than 30 seconds yellat.money
— @acvalens.net (@acvalens.net.bsky.social) 2025-07-29T11:32:35.960Z
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