First they came for steam, then they came for itch.io .
First they came for steam, then they came for itch.io .
194 comments
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist?wprov=sfla1
Collective Shout. Thanks to itch.io for naming them. TIL
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Reist reviewed the controversial Netflix film Cuties (2020) for both her ABC Religion & Ethics column[20] and for the Christian newspaper Eternity.[21] She described the film as "a social critique on what happens when we allow misogynistic, violent, exhibitionist internet culture to ravage girls – training them to wield their immature bodies as currency."[21] Reist related the film to the activism of Collective Shout: "In the past 10 years at Collective Shout, we have met many girls this age, who have felt the same pressures. Some have taken inappropriate pics and shared them, sexualising themselves either out of a sense of obligation, or because they have believed the lie that self-objectification is empowering or liberating."[21] However, regarding certain scenes in the film, she wrote that "the complexity here is that in trying to make a serious ethical point about girls and sexuality, the girls may have been used unwittingly — but still inappropriately — to a noble end. The scene could have been filmed differently[.]"[20]
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Yeah. As a society we seriously need to get on the same page about morality, but for my money it can't come from a religious group tinkering with the beating heart of commerce. They may have points to make but it's fruit of the poisoned tree.
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Damn, Rupert Murdoch and now this asshole. Australia has a monopoly on ruining media, lol.
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You can thank Advance Australia for that. Huge think tank that likely bank rolls all this nonsense and more.
Also, down with Collective Shout! As someone who suffered child abuse, I condemn these cookers crusading under the guise of child protection. FFS, they were patting themselves on the back for stopping sales of plastic heads on Temu.
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Transaction companies should not play police, in my opinion
In fact no company should play being police
This is why we have the digital market act
How are transaction offering companies not included there? Who gives them the right to choose what people consume?
Way do much centralised power
Basically a dictatorship
Fuck that
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I mean, they have no problems offering transaction services to obvious scams like “find sex in your region” and other scammy find relationship websites.
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This will never go away. Payment processors make life easy for most consumers, people like them. And as long as we have them, they hold all the power around how money can be used. And they will always be limited by governments and local laws.
If you don't like the situation, use cash. If that's too inconvenient Bitcoin is essentially your only other option.
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gamers, unironically, rise up. this isn't going to end on niche porn games
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It's already expanded. It started as going after "rape and incest" but now it's all adult games. But a bunch of lgbtq games have already gotten hit. I am beyond furious.
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Since this is caused by activist pressure on the payment processors, perhaps a grassroots activist campaign of our own could change their mind. Especially if we threaten to stop using their services in favor of any competitor that allows all legal purchases.
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I'm not sure that works, like on a purely game theory level. If gamers start to apply pressure, threaten to stop buying games, the stores need to make a choice:
A. Risk facing the wrath of the gamers, sales are likely to drop. Possibly by a lot, perhaps 15-20%. That could keep up for months before stabilizing.
B. Risk facing the wrath of the payment processors, credit card sales will stop immediately, only alternative payment types get through. Sales drop by 80% overnight, over time some users will seek alternative payment methods, possibly resulting in only 50% less revenue than expected...
While both of those options are bad, one of them is totally fatal to their business.
Those numbers are of course only speculation, but that's my best guess.
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How do I tell politely in a letter to MasterCard, that if I want to buy a horse dildo it's only MY fucking business?
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buy a horse dildo with bitcoin and flaunt how they didn't get any money from your transaction? idk man, i'm good at vague ideas, specifics are harder
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Neighbors being kidnapped: I sleep
Taking my fetish games: Real Shit
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most of the world isn't american. we can't do anything about your government
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This morality police crap being carried out by the most immoral bastards on the planet needs to stop.
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You realize that you're defending a game that was literally a rape and incest simulator that was already banned in multiple countries before the payment processor issue occurred, right?
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Yeah! Let's sell pornos out of candy shops too! Fuck morality policing!
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except nowhere on earth is your example happening.
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The issue at hand is that it's being made impossible to sell them at all.
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When did they say "fuck morality policing", or even "let's all stop policing morality"?
Either you piggy-backed off a comment to be a whole weirdo. Or you neee to up your reading comprehension.
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why not?
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Fuck religion.
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Don't you just love people that can't mind their own fucking business?
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Bro for real! Like I hate any porn game, as a game. Not as a societal flaw!
So you know what I do? Same exact thing I do about gay sex. I don't do it, I don't think about it very often unless there's a funny joke to be made in a tangential way, and I don't tell other people that they have to be exact like me.
Ffs, let people do what they want if they aren't hurting anyone.
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We got GoonerGate before the release of the Epstein files
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All my homies hate Collective Shout
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I don't get it. Do payment processors want less money? Do they hate being entrenched and bringing in revenue just for existing? Do they want us to try and find alternatives to them?
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this bullshit is surely coming from the recently intensifying family friendlinessification of the internet, but why the fuck do payment processors care? i have no idea. are they taking a cut of advertising revenue? do all ceos just want to appear as massive prudes? do they see children as an untapped market to exploit? or maybe they're just fucking stupid? what is actually going on
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Capitalism is creating a level of censorship that exceeded what the US government was ever able to do after the Warren court. Parts of this have been there for a long time. You can drop f-bombs on cable TV all you like; the FCC can't do anything about it since it's not over public airwaves. They generally don't do that, because advertisers don't like it. Capitalism set the rule, not the government.
YouTube has put this idea into overdrive. You can't make a straightforward, monetized video about the Holocaust anymore, because the language you would have to use would violate YouTube's written and unwritten rules. Meanwhile, actual fucking Nazis have had little issue using YouTube to spread their bullshit.
Credit card companies have had issues with porn sites in terms of fraud reporting. Not necessarily because of actual fraud--if the site you use is under CCbill, it's fine--but because some guy's spouse sees the card transactions, asks what this particular line is for, and he lies and says it's probably fraud and he'll call it in. Get more than a few of those, and the processor will always be flagged for review.
They do outright stop some of the more fringe porn. Bree Mills (of Adulttime) has said that they get limited by the credit card industry far more than the government. All the faux-incest videos go out of their way to mention in dialog that everyone is a step family and over 18. You won't find scat on Kink.com, again because their payment processor won't allow it.
That's been the situation for a few decades, but it has gone beyond that in the last few years. They tried it on OnlyFans, and the company maneuvered things to show why that's an incredibly bad idea, and then the card companies backed down. But they're trying again elsewhere, and they're starting to be successful. I severely doubt they had any significant fraud issues on Steam or itch.io, NSFW items or otherwise.
Ultimately, this stuff is a tiny slice of their revenue. If they want to shut it all down on a moral crusade, they will barely notice the hit to their numbers.
On a side note, I'd like the advocate that you should pay for porn if it's within your means. You'll often find better quality stuff at sites that properly run their sets with consent. If you like queer porn or unconventional body types, there are a lot of sites for that which just don't show up on PornHub.
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I think someone once told me its about charge backs. People will pay up for hours and hours of content (more for addicts) and then issue a chargeback, or otherwise say their card was stolen (how dare you insinuate I'm into that fetish! Type shit) and because there is no physical product to seize, the company is left with repeatedly eating investigation costs into fraudulent porn addicts.
E: I'm not judging anyone's porn content, idgaf what you smack or flick to. Merely an observation of people not realizing how much they will charge their CC until statement time, and freak out and then chargeback, making the company susceptible to puritanical influence because "those damn porn users" keep costing the company money.
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They make money hand over first for doing practically nothing... They're perfectly happy with their current situation and the most important thing to them right now is not rocking the boat.
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I find it funny that a lot of the fediverse is anti-cryptocurrency, yet this is a perfect example of a problem cryptocurrency can solve. No one can stop you from transacting on a number of blockchains.
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Too bad cryptobros are more interested in using it as a speculative investment/scam machine than an actual currency.
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Yeah the wild swings in exchange value instantly preclude its use as a currency.
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Yes you are right, there are always grifters everywhere, unfortunately.
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In theory, crypto could be good for this, but crypto is used (and designed) more as an investment than a transaction tool.
Also, the issue here is not centralized currency under a government, it's centralized payment processing under monopolistic private companies. Crypto is not required to solve that, all that is needed is an alternative payment processor (in an ideal world, probably a public one run by that government, since in a modern world that seems like an essential service to me).
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In theory, crypto could be good for this, but crypto is used (and designed) more as an investment than a transaction tool.
I would argue that while crypto is as investment now, it was initially designed and intended to be used for transactions.
Out of curiosity though, why do you think this situation would be any different if it were government controlled? Especially considering that you sometimes have administrations like Trump's, which would do anything no matter how corrupt.
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If it was used as an actual currency instead of an investment vehicle for speculators, that would help.
It also has zero protection from scams and fraud.
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I mean you can use it as currency, and I do sometimes. I have bought plenty of steam games with Bitcoin. I've also bought a bunch of stuff on Newegg, and other places online.
It has exactly as much protection from scams and fraud as cash does, that's essentially what it is.
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Crypto is so heavily regulated now, I don't even know how to procure any cause all the sites I have used years ago are just dead now.
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In KYC systems it is really easy to acquire—companies are willing to sell it to you with no problems.
If you want to get it anonymously, the easiest would probably be to buy via cash. In Switzerland, you can buy via some atms
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If you are in the UK, here is one.
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Monero
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Couldn't you just masturbate the normal way?
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It’s more fun when it’s freaky
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Collective shout finacials year: 2024 revenue: 458043 employee_expenses: 107000 other_expenses: 215488 net_surplus: 135555 employees: total_fte: 2 full_time: 0 part_time: 1 casual: 4 volunteers: 15 donations_and_bequests: 389800 government_grants: 0 commercial_income: 0 expense_to_revenue_ratio: "70.4%" average_expense_per_employee: 39400 Leadership - name: Melinda Tankard Reist role: Founder, Movement Director public_socials: - Twitter: @MelTankardReist - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed - name: Caitlin Roper role: Campaigns Manager public_socials: - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed - name: Renee Chopping role: Campaigns Strategy public_socials: - LinkedIn public_email_address: r******@collectiveshout.org salary: Not publicly listed - name: Lyn Swanson Kennedy role: Campaigns Strategy public_socials: - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed - name: Coralie Alison role: Movement Operations Manager public_socials: - Twitter: @CoralieAlison - Instagram: @collective.shout public_email_address: Not publicly listed salary: Not publicly listed-
This is exactly like the pearl-clutching we had back in the 1980's around D&D and music lyrics. At least we moved the goalpost from satanic panic and thinly-veiled racism, over to "art that features sexual expression I don't understand."
If history is any indicator, their actions are only going to increase awareness of this kind of stuff.
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Holy fuck why did Collective Shout go full nuclear and go behind the platforms’ back and straight to the payment processors. Like they could have at least talk to the Itch.io people.
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If they wanted any games banned all they had to do was talk to the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) in Australia, where they're based. Any of the games listed would have likely been added to the 'Refused Classification' list and thereby banned from sale and import in Australia. If they wanted them pulled from Steam or Itch entirely they could have talked to those platforms.
But they didn't want to raise objections through appropriate preexisting channels, they wanted to push their Christian-based ideology on the whole world by going Karen on the social media of all the payment processors.
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lol they're Australian? Jfc
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How do platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans circumvent this? I know OF had issues with payment processors in the past but I'm not sure what changes they implemented to stay compliant. There must be some way for itch.io to keep these things on their platform while not pissing off the payment processors (who can go fuck themselves btw, this is completely unnecessary)
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Porn sites are categorized as high risk at these payment processors. So probably itch has to fall into the high risk category and incur higher fees or remove all porn content. If you fall into the high risk category the payment platform will probably audit you more often and thus charge higher fees.
OF probably had these same issues because they didn’t start as a porn site.
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I don't think OnlyFans had to do much of anything in the end. There was just enough media stink about it to make it go away.
Credit card companies don't have to make a consistently applied set of rules the way a government of laws does. They can make it all up for each individual site if they wish. Capitalism can create a censorship regime that's stronger than nominally democratic governments are willing to do.
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This is what killed tumblr.
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Hmmm. Could porn once again because the medium catalyst for bitcoin to take off.
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I get not liking a game about SA and incest, but how about just not play that game?
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Reminder they do nohing about all thise fujoshi comics which has rape & incest. They like cuties too. So the goal was destroying men"s outlet for sexual pleasure.
Notice they didn't go after onlyfans
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Internet's memory sure is short. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/aug/19/onlyfans-to-ban-adult-material-after-pressure-from-payment-processors
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Can we crowdfund a big lawsuit against those responsible for this?
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Against banks? I love the enthusiasm but this is not the way. Banks as a whole have many of the best lawyers in the game on retainer (possession is 9/10ths of the law, and this industry banks on that and make bank.) The best crowdfunding campaign in history* is 800 million. The banks would be willing to spend at least that in their own defence.
*not including investments (nor blockchain)
Plus, a progressive lawsuit in this environment? Might backfire spectacularly - right now banks are cautiously picking on 'safe' targets. But with a green light from the supreme court the banks could go full Nazi. Yeah - there's nothing good I can reasonably expect here.
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Or use cryptocurrency more
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Does it have to be a lawsuit? Can it be a big guillotine instead?
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My biggest issue with this situation is: if they can get away with getting games they don't like being delisted, where does it end? Delisting books with themes or authors they don't like? Banning the sale of alcohol and cigarettes?
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Honestly haven't thought so far. But Media lacks that, as almost everything is clickbait.
And you got a point. There is questionable stuff. But killing off a whole area is like a bit shot on a small bird
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What's stopping them from doing what DLsite did in Japan by using credits purchased off site? Seems like an alternative business opportunity there.
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you mean gift cards bought at convenience stores? or do they buy them using a credit card and then the credits show up in your account?
regardless, Visa and MasterCard have hegemonic monopolies on the market. anybody not using them will see huge losses in sales.
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They're gift cards that you can buy from a different online store that's from a different company. Then you redeem them on DLsite.
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lil pachinko plates from the guy across the hallway
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Are we still doing phrasing also thank god they’re not coming for the ultra violence and graphic scenes of bodily dismemberment
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We should go back to sending the cash per physical mail…
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Imagine mail-order catalogs of hentai games on CD-ROM, or even cheap flash drives, in 2025.
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I worked a little bit for a company that worked with payment processor networks. This is my understanding (and don't view this as a defense of them, I don't necessarily think they're good). There are a ton of banks. Every bank having their own POS machines would be difficult. Imagine going to one that doesn't support your bank. So payment processors sort of provide that bridge so devices only need to know how to talk to one (or a handful) of networks and the same for the banks.
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Payment processors: "I deal with the god damn customers so the
engineersbanks don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"
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Because the laws are bs and intentionally make it harder while not being difficult to scale.
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What games were taken down? Are they preserved somewhere? Anybody know?
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For the sake of data preservation of NSFW works: check out F95zone
Pages may contain free links to the data, but they should all contain social media links to the developers and creators as well so that you can actually purchase or contact.
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From what itch.io have posted, I don't think they've been removed as such - they just don't appear if you browse or search for them.
Direct links should currently still work if people have them.
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I mean, crypto is still not the answer so long as it is functionally a speculative asset even after all the proof efficiency improvements... Also it still has centralized points which keyholders could easily leverage.
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So can I call the payment providers of the companies I don't like and complain about them?
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Miserable fuckers, the whole lot of puritans...
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It seemed like every search on Itchio was 70% NSFW results before this move
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One of the great mysteries of the 21st century is how a tiny number of US companies control most of the world's payment processing, when it's not a technically difficult problem.
You could implement an entire end-to-end payment processing system in a year with a team of a few dozen competent engineers. The only difficulty is getting banks and retailers to sign up to it, but when the big players charge so much and create so much trouble this doesn't seem like it should be a tough sell. In most cases literally all you'd need to do is charge 2.4% instead of their 3%.
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Could someone just make, like, Raunchy Mastercard and just process payments from everyone including all the porn and weird shit that the other mainstream companies don't want? It seems like the payment processors being puritanical dipshits is a weakness that could be exploited by an enterprising competitor.
But then again, we're talking about a natural monopoly that has been in place for decades at this point. I wouldn't expect them to exactly play fair.
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The comment section of my favorite adult Visual novel is already getting panicked.
Eternum is really really good I swear it's not just porn
Apparently there is some petition? Taking a look now.
Edit: Yup. Go sign it
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Makes me wonder if Echo Project will have to worry about any of their games. Echo itself doesn't have explicit sexual content, but it does have violence involving minors, kidnapping, torture, and suggestions of rape.
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Time to bring back crypto!
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This is literally 9/11 for so many itch io games 😂
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Yall will hate me for it, but porn games should have never been on the main launcher. That's just asking for trouble. Steam should have a secondary launcher that is just for the adult games, and keep the two seperate. This shit wouldn't be happening if these games hadn't been so accessible to people not looking for that in the first place.
Also lets be honest, some of the shit is over the line. There shouldn't be multiple "Sex with Hitler" games, because as ridiculous as that sounds, normalizing Nazis and Hitler is a fucking virus that does so much fucking harm when spread. Its not just a "silly joke".
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Adult content is opt-in and age verified on steam.
Making an "adult content" launcher would just give more targeted scrutiny. It's like saying, "here's the target for you Puritans to attack the whole company over!"
The only way I can think that kind of obfuscation could work would be to have the adult content launcher run through a secondary company under license to use steam software. But then, there's still the pay processing issue, and that license could violate the processor ToS anyways.
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I don't think adult content should be stigmatized and quarantined. Why is a game about cutting terrified victims open with a handsaw cool, but a game about licking a clit needs to be isolated?
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You might have a point on problematic content for the same reason that satire is difficult to pull off, but the entire category of "porn" is WAY too broad of a line to draw, and neither should be otsracized completely simply for existing.
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Can people please stop using the genocide poem to talk about businesses indpendently choosing to moderate porn games on their platforms? The first time that poem was used, over six million people died. Whereas you just can't goon on itch anymore.
I get why people are unhappy, but no one will die from this. There is no government mandate. This is tone-deaf and offensive for anyone who has or is currently experiencing genocide. People in my country are being rounded up and disappeared. This is in no way comparable and that poem should not be invoked.
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Yeah they can just start banning media made by and about queer people. Totally fine and won't hurt anyone or lead to anything worse. That's certainly not one of the first things the Nazis did...
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That's irrelevant in this case, since the outcry came from payment processing companies and a sex-negative feminist interest group from Australia (not America), with some ties to TERF organizations. Yes, not great. Special-interest groups from other countries should not be able to have this much influence just because they tattled to a payment processing company. But just to be clear: This Australian radfem group is also not affiliated with the people in power in fascist governments, and the poem should not have been used. Yet people are acting like the federal government has struck down itch.io itself, and saying that this is an example of the mounting Halocaust. Fascism is rising in the U.S., but due to other, much more alarming factors and not this one.
I will be much more concerned when elected Republicans start going after a designated porn site, like Pornhub or something, to scrub out the queer content or to shutter it altogether. itch.io was never a designated pornography site to begin with and elected Republicans never set their sights on it.
So when you invoke the genocide poem, you really need to be asking, "Who is the they in this situation?" If it's not a fascist government, I'm sorry, but it doesn't apply and it's offensive to the POCs, disabled, and trans people facing real problems in the U.S. right now.
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Censorship is always the first step. Genocide is the last step. People getting mad when the first step toward fascism is crossed is a very good thing to fight fascism and try to prevent a future genocide. This is exactly what the poem is about : react on the first step, because it will be too late when the genocide starts.
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In our administration, censorship wasn't the first step though. I'm not sure why you think this set of events is the first step. The Trump Administration dismantled the Constitution and Administrative State earlier than this, and ICE disappearing people and Trump making anti-trans EOs predates this as well.
And it really seems like people on the internet care way more about the censorship than the much worse things happening right now.
Also, there are other places to find porn, so is censorship really happening in this case? You could sooner point to Paramount, 60 Minutes, NPR and The Late Show as examples of censorship, which also came after more extreme regime actions.
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Finally someone mentions it. It's just straight up gross to compare. But I will say people getting this mad isn't as absurd when you have the backstory.
In the context of US; Gay, lesbian, or trans characters existing is enough to label a media under "porn" and states like Florida regularly ban lgbtq+ books using this loophole.
So a lot of people instinctively go on defensive when anyone bans porn.
Also full story wasn't the business independently chosing to moderate. Another company told them to and game company had to comply.
People are mad an unrelated company out there is trying to regulate what you can't buy with your money. It just feels weird.
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Straight up wholly accurate and applicable. If you don't understand that basic fact, maybe you need to hear it referenced a few more times...
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Shame. I'm sure plenty of people will miss great titles like "Cousin Fucker Alabama: Step-sis anal edition" or "I'm a woodman but this ain't a tree"
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there are many non-pornohraphic games that have been targeted and delisted, but even if there werent, are you happy with 1000 religious weirdos having control over what millions upon millions of other people can and cannot purchase?
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Have you read the title? I doubt they'll stop at porn games, no matter the quality. They could go against Chun-Li cheeks next, or Dead Island blood&gore. Don't forget that such groups of people led to burning comics, or DnD manuals or Harry Potter books.
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This probably has a lot to do with Texas' new ID requirement law. These companies don't want to have to collect IDs and be responsible for maintaining that database of PII.
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not really. Collective Shout is a powerful collective that targets violence, adult content and i think also gaming in general even in contexts that make sense,
out of their sense what is right and wrong (which I and a lot of others dont agree with)Edit: better readability
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Payment offering companies don’t have to this, this would be the job of itch.io to comply
But this is not necessary, as VPNs exist.
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