Itch.io apologise for "frustration and confusion" after delisting thousands of NSFW projects
Itch.io apologise for "frustration and confusion" after delisting thousands of NSFW projects
We can blame the religious organisation as much as we want, but the fundamental problem here is payment processors. They should be common carriers. Content-neutral middlemen who facilitate payment to anything that isn't literally unlawful. This is no different to an ISP throttling access to Netflix because they operate their own streaming platform. If the storefront, the developer, and the buyer are all ok with a transaction, there's no good reason for a fourth party to stand in the way of that.
Yeah, payment processing is among the many many many industries that ought to be nationalized so they can be administered in a transparent and democratic manner (see also, healthcare education housing electricity internet etc.)
There's just too much opportunity to use it to manipulate markets and oppress minority viewpoints for it to remain in private hands imo
Putting the ridicoulous idea that governments are fair and transparent aside, payment processors need to be international. Otherwise, most countries will not be able to access services because their local payment processor is not supported by smaller websites.
However, the payment processors should be regulated with something similar to net neutrality so they can't discriminate payments. And EU could probably launch a government run competitor to dilute their duopoly.
To me it's insane that food also isn't on that list. Anything that isn't a luxury can't be trusted to be handled by capitalism.
Maybe the idea of BTC was fine. What wasn't fine is the idea of mining.
And maybe payments over the Internet or over PSTN are fundamentally different from messaging, conferencing, downloading files, all that stuff.
But what's important is the ability to pay for a service with something resembling cash IRL in the sense that an ATM machine from which you took that cash can't take it back because you are paying for an adult journal with it.
But at the same time how can there be so few payment processors that they can affect a platform's decision to do a kind of business?
That's where we should look. Why is it hard to be a payment processor.
Maybe the idea of BTC was fine. What wasn't fine is the idea of mining.
The mining is how BTC, etc are decentralised & secure (so the idea of btc and mining are the same idea in my head).
That’s where we should look. Why is it hard to be a payment processor.
Because you essentially need a global presence to at all be worth using. That is why it is a joke that NOBODY accepts American Express and only the shadiest of international ATMs accept Discover (saved my ass in Germany back in the 10s though)
You are literally saying that we need to look at why there aren't more global mega corporations.
Mining is fine when you have a predetermined and adjustable energy consumption that is halved every 4 years. Which Bitcoin does
No grasshopper, the blame falls squarely on the former. The latter was fine with things before
But we DO need to solve the payment processor issue as well, ever heard of GNU-Taler ??
The reason for a "fourth party" is because so many of these are fully international.
The dream of cryptocurrency as actual currency (rather than just reinventing stocks) was the idea that you could use your bitcoin wallet to pay for a pizza in Kansas, London, other London, Shanghai, or Timbuktu with no perceived difference. That IS what visa/mastercard provide.
Get rid of that "fourth party" and now every single online service needs to have office space in every single country so that they can accept and convert purchases on their own. And the end result will just be dropping the majority of the world.
They should've implemented crypto payments long time ago. Now they reap what they sow
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.
Of course it would be the bible thumpers. Gotta stick their nose into everyone's business.
They have a little power in politics now, "give them an inch and they take a mile" is never not true.
Yep. A fucking Australian group of Bible thumpers, specifically.
A loud minority.
This is on Visa/MasterCard. Nobody would've cared if they ignored them.
Basically I'm suggesting the credit corps are led by closet puritans anyways.
Payment processors and financial institutions sure do seem to hold disproportionate amounts of power.
And a single woman and her organization seems to hold a disproportionate amount of power over the payment processors.
I don't understand it. Payment processors could easily tell her to pound sand, but they don't.
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.
Welcome to capitalism. 1 person and their company can influence an entire country while being top 10 removed.
And they don't care when it's actual sex trafficking of minors (JP Morgan in relation to Epstein).
When governments allowed payment processors to dominate the market to the point of duopoly/oligopoly.
This is just a distraction
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
Fuck.
These.
Fucking.
Shitsucking
Subhuman
Leeches
Lot of college-educated white women in these nonprofits lol
Direct link to their statement rather than reading an article talking about it: https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content
rather than reading an article talking about it
Good as a supplement, but the RPS article gives context itch.io is too much of a cowardly little removed 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."
Edit: and yes, the Vice article was removed because Vice's ownership removeded out over covering Collective Shout.
Edit: and yes, the Vice article was removed because Vice's ownership removeded out over covering Collective Shout.
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.
I would understand forcibly banning/removing something, if it poses a real existential threat to the majority of people.
But religion fueled bigotry, in a place where you can CHOOSE to buy and play something, or completely ignore and hide if you’d like? Come on. Adults can decide if they want to have access to this content on their own, without a completely unrelated third party constantly trying to fucking inject themselves in between
But think of the children!
Wonder how long it will take for them to start going after LGBT+ stuff. Hope I'm wrong.
They did, day 0.
It's not difficult to imagine what kind of expression these groups might decide to deem as unacceptable next.
Literally the bottom line. They have found something that works, and they are going to use and abuse it.
It has been my experience that when either side says that they are against cancel culture it's not about being against the ability to ruin or deprive their enemies of something. They're against their enemies having the ability to do the same thing to them.
Puritans are going to destroy the world.
They're trying their best to
Wow, I might actually have to stop using itch.io, is nowhere safe from the craziest anymore? I dont even make NSFW games, but bending the knee to dickheads over some overtly religious bullshit isnt gonna work for me.
It wasn’t Itch.io’s fault, but the fact that payment processing has been globally monopolized and can force it’s own arbitrary will on anyone without recourse.
Blame Visa and MasterCard and the christofascist scum from Collective Shout, who is responsible for pressuring the processors into harming the stores and artists.
Why anybody takes a "think of the children" organization seriously when their logo is a butthole is beyond me.
It just proves satire is dead and we live in a world full of idiots.
Agreed. Game and movie ratings already exist, who the fuck are they to say what we can/can't access with MY credit card.
I don't play those games nor use itch.io, but fuck this nonsense.
I don't think they had much option, they forced by the payment providers...
And thats beyod me, why they have the power to enforce anything like this???
And what is absolutely beyond me, why a group of alt-right femminist from the other side of the globe has power to enforce the payment providers?
Damn guess we'll need to move to the alternative- ah wait- no- itch was the alternative.
I wonder if a federated game platform would work as an idea or if that's just an inherently bad idea due to the nature of trusting strangers with your money.
Still wouldn't address the root problem here: payment processing companies have the power to just deny payment from even happening.
Unless you're referring to making a federated platform that instead allows devs to connect with buyers and make transactions off channel.
Would limit widespread issues like this but now you're opening a whole new can of worms with trust
the problem is the payment processors, not itch
unless you’re fine with crypto, sending cheques by mail or having everything be free, your new platform is gonna get the same problems once it’s big enough to be noticed
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.
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.
Well that is at least something Bitcoin could have fixed
And probably would have if it wasn't being manipulated by speculators.
At this point I would only try something untraceable like Monero. I don't want the moral police to come knocking to my house saying that I bought something against the glory of the Lord.
This is like shitting your pants to ward off bears.
If shitting your pants is cool, then I'm Miles Davis.
Where the hell is left to legally buy my porn games?
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?
I'm just learning about this and I wonder what has Steam done in this case to protect my rights as their client.
Uh ... Steam actually did this same thing before Itch did.
That is exactly why I'm asking.
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.
Ah fuck their board head is Australian. FFS
You know by now you might have to use crypto for yer sinful games.
When monero based game store?
The user experience of Monero is poor.
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?
It's not that difficult
If people have to, they will find a way😇
Delist thousands of games, or deslist a handful of payment middle-men?