Itch.io is shadowbanning or deleting NSFW and LGBTQ content

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From their site: "Collective Shout is a grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls." So technically a good cause, but they're going about it in entirely the wrong way, because (as people described Itch's actions) they're using a sledgehammer. They seem to want to remove all porn, even that made by fully consenting, not-exploited adults, and don't seem to be trying to educate people in how to not objectify women.

In one of those oxymoron moments they were okay with the documentary Cuties on netflix because it was being "ethically" about the subject

it's a horror game about crew of a transport spaceship stranded on an asteroid after a crash. The name comes from the fact their ship was transporting mouthwash and the crew is using it as alcohol.

TIL

 

[SteveC]

I wanted to comment about this for a couple of different reasons. The first is that I wanted to show support for creators who've been caught up in this and had products taken down. I've helped a number of creators who have used itch.io as a platform, but none of them have said their stuff has been removed. Still, I definitely hope people find a safe home for their products. It's an incredibly stressful time to have a part of your life just pulled away from you.

I also wanted to say that, unfortunately, this is nothing new. I was, some time ago, on the board of a 501(c)(3) organization that has nothing to do with gaming. I sat through several presentations by lawyers concerned about this issue who also had suggestions for dealing with it. There was a group that was going to be an entirely new processing system made for non-profits, and they talked about how amazingly difficult it was to break into that field. I believe them because they had support, but ultimately failed to launch.

There are solutions to this problem that can come from lobbying, writing laws, or working with different payment processing systems. None of those are easy to do, however. I don't want to really get into a discussion on the specifics of my experiences because they're all in areas that we don't talk about here and aren't gaming related. I just wanted to express sympathy to all the creators and say there are resources out there about all of this because it has happened before.