talk to anyone that works in the porn industry. Mastercard and Visa have ALWAYS been like this ever since the late 90s/early 00s. they set the rules for what the adult entertainment industry can produce and sell and only now are people discovering because of video games that they’ve been this way for decades.
Collective Shout describe themselves as a “grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls”, but are associated with outspokenly homophobic and anti-abortion Christian conservative groups, according to a now-deleted Vice article. They recently claimed credit for the campaign that saw payment providers pressuring the online storefronts to remove content the group deemed unacceptable.
It’s not hard to empathise with the folks behind Itch for being placed in an impossible position, but their lack of forewarning has left creators blindsided and in some cases, seemingly without income. “I wish we had gotten some warning from Steam and Itch,” wrote game developer Robert Yang on Bluesky, “but we already know it’s Collective Shout + payment processors waging culture war against LGBTQ people and sexual expression. I guess there’s nothing else for Steam and Itch to say”.
Personally speaking, I’d be willing to extend that good faith to Itch.io themselves, but they aren’t the one holding the gun to their own heads here. That’d be financial companies, pressured by Collective Shout, who themselves have ties to an organisation whose CEO once described gay marriage as an “unspeakable offence to God”. It’s not difficult to imagine what kind of expression these groups might decide to deem as unacceptable next.
I think it’s time for a game platform divorced from Visa/Mastercard to rise to the occasion and step in for these platforms. Websites without these processors already exist, so the model is proven to work well enough (it’s less convenient for sure).
I wouldn’t think the US would be a good country for this hypothetical store though. I think it’s only a matter of time until they attack the publishers and studios directly. I’m not counting on the 1st amendment to help anyone.
Guys hi, just looking for some support share, a Fantasy Adventure Story, for all ages and just some entertain with some storyes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mVIvQ1wsgg - maybe you are curious
It’s the same religious organization that went after them NSFW games on Steam. Like the games or not, it’s always a slippery slope with this kind of censorship.
Even on Lemmy, if you go check out the initial threads on the Steam censorship you’ll see lots of “It is just incest and furry shit. Of course that should be banned” style comments. Less so here, but plenty of other boards and influencers immediately then chimed in that porn addiction is the real problem and you should watch a stream of a nice bigoted white man rather than give in to it and blah blah blah.
And it didn’t even start there. It ALSO isn’t the start, but the attack on Pornhub a few years back was a big watershed moment where this exact same attack was used (pressure the credit card companies to not do business with a morally dubious site). On the surface? Pornhub is full of revenge porn and child porn so it needs to be destroyed. No rational person would disagree with that… and everyone quietly ignored all the data showing that (and this was early 2020s…) facebook and twitter and instagram and so forth had MUCH more of both of those. But hey, Pornhub Corp complied and actually instituted some REALLY good policies that more or less equates to signed consent forms for every single performer. And… they were still on the shitlist. But everyone had stopped caring.
There all places. The problem is where to find adult games that are not pornographic, or morbid, but targeted to adults? Like games where the story conveys depression/suicide/death/griefing, or other difficult topics?
You might enjoy Martha is Dead game on Steam. That is my personally favourite game, which really stirred emotions. My wife tried to play it and got physically sick. Check it out.
While it is true that getting your first credit card isn’t exactly a 10 second ordeal, people at least have their credit card. How are people going to acquire their first Monero?
I thought it was strange on steam that it was so hard to get across when I was sure when I played it on Xbox that I basically did it first try no sweat.
I played through recently and I beat it but I distinctly remember thinking that I didn’t remember it being that hard. It took me several tries and very precise timing, I think I even ended up coming back to it the next day.
Glad they are fixing it, though it makes it hard not to speculate more about an upcoming sequel. I think they will call it HL2 Episode 3 just to fuck with everyone.
Everone talks about porn and loser males. Its more than that. Its way more. The banned all adult targeted games, even the ones which are not porn or gore. Many-many gamers are affected, way more than sexually fustrated nerds. They now start to see, that they poked the bear, and it came with the wolf and tiger to take justice.
My biggest problem is, they banned with this method, all the games that are targeted for adults but not porn, or gore. Like they hate spicy food and banned all things that are not white rice and unseasoned chicken breast.
It was really hard to find deep philosophical games which are good and are not containing porn or gore, but targeted to adults. Now its imposaible. They have literraly no platform. Unlike the porn games, they have many aside from steam and itch.
Good as a supplement, but the RPS article gives context itch.io is too much of a cowardly little bitch to include like: “Collective Shout describe themselves as a “grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls”, but are associated with outspokenly homophobic and anti-abortion Christian conservative groups, according to a now-deleted Vice article.”
Wow, holy shit. How fucking far Vice has fallen. There was a time they would go the extra mile to cover wild shit that no one else was doing. Greed and the wealthy’s critical need to have control over the media ruins everything.
rockpapershotgun.com
Aktywne