discussion Itch.io is removing adult games

[Deleted member 112555]

Yeah i heard.

Even if goverments smack down the payment processors. (Which isnt even an guarante)
It will take years.
Enough time for hollywood rivals to go bankrupt.

So expect content drought of at least a year.

 

[kuraiken]

To be fair here - the issue is not that the platforms would be taken down; but that they would lose their currently biggest provider of payment services..

It's mostly a case of waiting for a new provider to show up, or for crypto to become more generally used as a stable payment option. Either way - The fact a payment provider wields enough power to make behemoths like Steam & Itch bend the knee is rather terrifying.

That's not going to work.
There won't be a new provider, because any new provider would face the same pressure and would be less able to push against it.
And crypto will never become a stable payment option.

There's just one way to stop that and it's to stand up now. Anything else, and things are going to get worse, not better. Waiting is the worst thing you can do.

 

[Deleted member 112555]

That's not going to work.
There won't be a new provider, because any new provider would face the same pressure and would be less able to push against it.
And crypto will never become a stable payment option.

There's just one way to stop that and it's to stand up now. Anything else, and things are going to get worse, not better. Waiting is the worst thing you can do.

The only thing we can do is pressure the goverments of the world into forcing payment processors to act like utility.

Good luck getting those old farts to defend porn.

 

[fthegovernment]

this will be hitting unifans & bluesky soon enough, no one is safe

 

[kuraiken]

The only thing we can do is pressure the goverments of the world into forcing payment processors to act like utility.

Good luck getting those old farts to defend porn.

Correct, and that's why it shouldn't be done from the vantage point of "save the porn games" but from "payment processors cannot restrict the sale of legal content".
If it's legal, payment processors must allow it. They cannot be the arbiter of ideology and morals. They're a utility, not the fucking emperor made manifest.

 

[el taco]

Whelp - I see an opportunity for a new startup company to swoop in and provide a payment method without additional rules or checks.
As long as it's not literaly illegal -> you can use us for payments.

Whether that is financially viable for this 'genre' of games, i'm not too sure. But maybe others would start using them for regular stuff too - as the annoyance/anger is felt by a much wider audience. (Quite a few big youtubers already raising concerns about this on Steam -> ''who the fuck is paypal to decide wht you want to buy or play'' type of idea

Europe has the structural capability to build alternative payment and creator platforms outside American dominance. Many Western European countries legally regulate and socially accept sex work and NSFW content. Prostitution is a fully regulated industry in places like Germany, with normal banking relationships.
The main challenges lie in regulatory complexity navigating AML, GDPR, and the fragmented EU legal landscape and in the conservative risk appetite of financial institutions that prioritize legal certainty and compliance over cultural factors. So, it’s less about reputational risk and more about cautious risk management and operational hurdles. It's frustating. European payment system for adult or niche content creators could exist in a cultural context that doesn't have the puritanical zeal of MC and Visa. But Euro bankers aren't visionary.

 

[User_88762]

Yeah i heard.

Even if goverments smack down the payment processors. (Which isnt even an guarante)
It will take years.
Enough time for hollywood rivals to go bankrupt.

So expect content drought of at least a year.

Rather a content drought, what we will most likely get is your typical workarounds.

You have heard of incest patches? Say welcome to non-con patches.

 

[kuraiken]

Rather a content drought, what we will most likely get is your typical workarounds.

You have heard of incest patches? Say welcome to non-con patches.

Unfortunately that's in many cases not doable - not if it's a basic part of the game. (e.g. any 3D Shooter where girls can end up being raped by monsters).
Incest patches are easy, just dialogue lines & names. Content patches would also require the content itself (monsters, animations, etc.) to be part of the patch.
That leads to massive game patches that would be externally hosted - which either is going to cost money or will just be waaay too slow.

Beyond that, this is just step 1. The organization behind this has tried a lot of other stuff. They're not gonna celebrate the victory and call it a day. They (or some other group) is going to pick another target. Once you can control content through payment processors, it's not a question of what gets censored, but when.
No one should be surprised if Nudity in Games (Mass Effect) and sexual content in general are next - or when games featuring gore (Ready or Not, Doom) get censored because of payment processor demands.

Once the precedent is established, that's it. Developers will not carry the risk of multimillion dollar productions that might not be sellable due to content that could be banned in the future. This will end in self-censoring, if it isn't stopped now.

 

[User_88762]

No one should be surprised if Nudity in Games (Mass Effect) and sexual content in general are next - or when games featuring gore (Ready or Not, Doom) get censored because of payment processor demands.

I remember the media outrage about the "extreme" nudity in the mASS Effect games. It

This will end in self-censoring, if it isn't stopped now.

I'd argue it was already the case. Plenty of games self-censor to avoid any controversy whatsoever, and to not get that 18+ rating.

 

[WhiteVanDaycare]

It's not just NSFW content, they also do the same for firearms related transactions. They want more $$$ is really what it comes down to. They claim it is due to being high risk, reality is they know no one is coming to defend pornographic material creators. Now you have 'evangalists' who are taking advantage of this greed to get what they feel is inappropriate content shut down. TLDR the real world sucks.

BTW - the OP mentions LC being next, we have already been targeted multiple times - this is why you can't donate via PayPal, Stripe, etc.

 

[ZZBB24]

This is what happens when you give these people an inch, this could have been nipped at the bud if Steam said no to the payment processor.

 

[Scalesyinyang]

so piracy is the answer yet again.

 

[User_88762]

This is what happens when you give these people an inch, this could have been nipped at the bud if Steam said no to the payment processor.

They cannot just say no. Visa/Mastercard transactions constintute 90%+ of their revenue. Steam would go bankrupt. The reason why people, even outside the NSFW community, are against payment processors playing the moral police, is because they could literally do this to pretty much any company for any reason they choose.

That is what you get when you let two payment processors get an unmoderated quasi-monopoly.

so piracy is the answer yet again.

Piracy of what? Where would you get your pirated games when the devs get no revenue because they are banned from every platform.

 

[ZZBB24]

It's not just NSFW content, they also do the same for firearms related transactions. They want more $$$ is really what it comes down to. They claim it is due to being high risk, reality is they know no one is coming to defend pornographic material creators. Now you have 'evangalists' who are taking advantage of this greed to get what they feel is inappropriate content shut down. TLDR the real world sucks.

BTW - the OP mentions LC being next, we have already been targeted multiple times - this is why you can't donate via PayPal, Stripe, etc.

In the western world we have a real safetyism problem, we're being censored and our rights are being curtailed in the name of public safety. I hate it here.

 

[ZZBB24]

They cannot just say no. Visa/Mastercard transactions constintute 90%+ of their revenue. Steam would go bankrupt. The reason why people, even outside the NSFW community, are against payment processors playing the moral police, is because they could literally do this to pretty much any company for any reason they choose.

That is what you get when you let two payment processors get an unmoderated quasi-monopoly.

Piracy of what? Where would you get your pirated games when the devs get no revenue because they are banned from every platform.

Duopoly is the term for Visa/Mastercards dominant marketshare.

 

[User_88762]

In the western world we have a real safetyism problem, we're being censored and our rights are being curtailed in the name of public safety. I hate it here.

Lets not pretend east is less censored than the west. Many Eastern countries have banned porn outright, not to mention their fascination with censoring fictional drawn genitals.

Duopoly is the term for Visa/Mastercards dominant marketshare.

I use monopoly as they are acting as a single entity in this particular issue. Either way. Doesn't change the point.

 

[ZZBB24]

I swear...we can't have anything without a certain segment of phallically challenged individuals ruining everything for everyone. And the cherry on top is that these people are raging Australians...rubbing the bridge of my nose...can't let sleeping dogs lie.

 

[ZZBB24]

Lets not pretend east is less censored than the west. Many Eastern countries have banned porn outright, not to mention their fascination with censoring fictional drawn genitals.

I use monopoly as they are acting as a single entity in this particular issue. Either way. Doesn't change the point.

Oh c'mon these cases have always been at the behest of western interests. Prime example Sony when they relocated to California. Suddenly they became incredibly censorious.

 

[User_88762]

Oh c'mon these cases have always been at the behest of western interests. Prime example Sony when they relocated to California. Suddenly they became incredibly censorious.

Eastern national porn bans and censorship are at the behest of western interests?

Even if we are talking recently, Stellar Blade was published by Sony with very limited censorship. Maybe you can single out some western countries for draconian censorship laws, like Germany, but saying that the west is worse than the east in terms of censorship is disingenuous.

 

[ZZBB24]

You can't have a hobby nowadays because some social-fucking-minder-karen is going to call up the company pencil pusher and complain, the pencil pusher ever worried about profit gets spooked and we lose everything. I lost interest in video games because of these very same people and I just got into AVNs a few months ago and now we get this man...maybe I'm being melodramatic but I feel like this is a concerted effort to make us more and more miserable. I can't be the only one who thinks this right?