Where to find obscure indie shit?
Itch.io just banned lgbt content at the reauest of payment providers. It is now, short of finding them and handing them food, impossible to pay the last group of artists i was giving money to, because the mechanisms of payment have decided they cannot be paid.
But I still want the stuff they've made, their back catalogues, etc.
Itch.io just banned lgbt content at the reauest of payment providers
Do you have a source on this? Everything I have read from them so far about the news today makes this sound like a temporary problem that was out of their control.
This is a time critical moment for itch.io. The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently to protect the platform’s core payment infrastructure. Unfortunately, this meant it was not realistic to provide creators with advance notice before making this change. We know this is not ideal, and we apologize for the abruptness of this change.
We are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors. Pages will remain deindexed as we complete our review. Once this review is complete, we will introduce new compliance measures. For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account.
https://itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw-content
I'm pretty confident they will get this sorted out. It doesn't seem like they have any intention of banning nsfw content.
Edit: I'm responding here about NSFW content because I was confused. I don't think Itch actually ever banned queer/LGBTQ content in any way. The recent drama has been over NSFW content specifically so I assumed OP was specifically taking about NSFW queer content.
Why don't all the companies tell the payment processors to pound sand? Do the processors not want to collect service fees? These dipshits have been going after adult content for ages, and it's fucking pathetic.
The payment processors are far, far bigger that a few online game stores. Even Steam isn't big enough to change their minds alone.
Payment processors are monopolies for online and electronic payments because there is no global infrastructure (outside Chinese offerings) for electronic payments that don't rely on Visa and Mastercard.
They mention deindexing from browse and search. I understand this to mean you can still visit and buy the products, and list the publisher's titles on their publisher's page.
That's far from "banning". And doesn't prevent the supporting creators and browsing their catalog - the use-case OP described.
Queer ≠ NSFW, especially a lot of trans themes. This is, in fact, a subatantial portion of the problem.
Do not equate the two if you want me to read any of the rest of what you have to say.
Have they said that queer stuff is inherently NSFW? I haven't seen that said anywhere and don't think it's the case.
I just checked and the "LGBT" and "LGBTQIA" flags are 100% functional right now.
https://itch.io/games/tag-lgbt/tag-lgbtqia
Obviously if they did say that queer stuff is inherently NSFW that would be a big problem.
F95zone.to but they only allow stuff that's either in English or at least has English subtitles/translation patches.
Seems like you know the creators and want to pay them, you can just ask them directly, doesn't seem like its about piracy
Nope. Hypothetical thing ive done a few times in the past.
And im saying i don't know all the people whose stuff i still wanted.
The group/category being 'tiny mostly queer indies on itch'.
First steam, now itch? What the fuck? Who hurt paypal, visa, mastercard to target game now?
What left for niche/nsfw game? GOG?
Edit: https://www.collectiveshout.org/open-letter-to-payment-processors
Want to treat fantasy of illegal thing as illegal... What next, murder?
List of karen and workplace from page:
Its not just fantasies of illegal stuff. This is about eventually coming after queers and our culture, as the fuckers behind it have said explicitly.
Edit: i cannot believe people still fall for this dhit entirepy in earnest, but: first they whip up anger about a group that's an acceptable target, then stretch the bpundaries of that group beyond all credibility, then when its totally normalized they just go after whatever targets they want.
Or, to put it another way: first they went after the dismemberment fetish porn, and i did not speak up, because i do not have a dismemberment fetishist...
For fucks sake it's 2025. Nobody fucking believes you honestly don't see this shit. You either want to look away, or you're getting off on it.
But fuck cryptocurrencies, right? They don't have any use case other than pump and dump schemes.
Use case transfer without restriction, regulation, censorship. Very good at that if not use centralized exchange. Pump and dump only for meme coin.
I'd say to anyone, please save this post and come back when you find any alternatives or to discuss existing alternatives.
Some of that stuff is on https://www.zoom-platform.com/
At the bottom, I see Visa and Mastercard. Not big enough yet, did not get contacted yet, or did not implement it yet?
Hm, I guess not big enough to matter.
I saw someone on an itch forum mention https://libre.games/
I don't mind these themes in my media but I don't understand why it's a genre? Straight isn't a genre and none of this should be treated any different.
Yeah, would be cool if it were just a thing that happened in x % of stories, but it's not. Our stories and experiences are culturally firewalled from the straights, to some extent.
Exposure.
So have a gay, bi or trans love story in a book, movie, TV show or video game the same as you would a straight one. Don’t announce it to the world as a genre because it’s not. Normalize it don’t separate it. Have people experience it the same as any other love store.
I think it would be super awesome if anyone had a list of all the deindexed content on Steam/Itch so people like myself can search for the devs' content or ways to donate to them.