tldr: Australian pressure group Collective Shout has claimed responsibility for the recent Itch.io and Steam developments that have seen the platforms change how they deal with - and in some cases remove - NSFW games and content from their respective platforms.
The group had already been closely linked with the situation, which has seen Itch.io and Steam scramble to appease payment providers like Visa as they suddenly took an interest in the kind of games available on the platforms, especially those which contravened rules and “standards” the payment providers apparently had. It led to Itch.io deindexing all NSFW content from its browse and search pages, and Steam introducing vague new rules about adult content, while removing a slew of games.
“In response to false claims and misinformation about our campaign, we’re setting the record straight,” wrote Collective Shout in a Facebook update. "Some have asked why we involved payment processors, and others have claimed we are responsible for Itch.io removing all NSFW content.
"We raised our objection to r*pe and incest games on Steam for months, and they ignored us for months. We approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.
“We called on Itch.io to remove rpe and incest games that we argued normalised violence and abuse of women. Itch.io made the decision to remove all NSFW content. Our objections were to content that involved sxualised violence and torture of women.”
Collective Shout shared a timeline of the campaign on its website, noting how it began with No Mercy, a game which involves extreme sexual violence, being brought to its in March. The group’s actions - a mixture of petitioning, emailing, and lobbying - began in early April and led to the game being removed from sale later that month.
We need to ignore them, they’re obfuscating from the real issue. Payment processors should not have the ability to police content, full stop, end of discussion.
The person who tattled is absolutely irrelevant and a distraction
Ahem, you may want to listen to this: https://pca.st/episode/007323a5-a2ba-4b4c-ab18-5307e0d31164
Steam ignored them, presumably, because they sell their products in accordance with the law, and that’s all that ought to matter.
hot take: people ought to start forming morals outside of legal morality. a Lotta freaks are gonna end up illegal otherwise and the freak factor certainly includes some thing you do that your prudish neighbor doesn’t like
In this context it’s definitely a hot take considering the prudish neighbor was able to make freaky shit “illegal” anyway, and in far greater capacity than any single government could. Rape and incest ain’t for me but I take serious offense when they get banned because a handful of people decide for the rest of us how the world is supposed to look like without anyone else getting a say in the matter. At least if they went the legal route the process would’ve a) been transparent and given an opportunity for others to make a case and b) not instantly affect the entire world.
This “scary government is going to take away your rights” just leads to private enterprises taking away your rights without any oversight. This entire thing is a case in point. The government can take away your rights but at least you have a way to fight for your rights, what are you going to do against oligopolistic payment processors taking away your rights?
i hate to inform you that these lobbying groups are acting exactly like a state would, actually. maybe don’t lecture to trans people and tell us how the state works, we interact with the state way more than you will ever have to 💋
what are you going to do against oligopolistic payment processors taking away your rights?
idk, what are YOU gonna do? are cis people gonna finally fight for trans autonomy or are they gonna act like us having autonomy is too insane?
are you gonna finally listen to us like when trans sex workers told you a decade ago that banks, the police and payment processors are policing our money or are you gonna let the issue fester because you don’t want your family to know you stand with trannies and whores?
Okay, the smug “you’re not one of us so don’t speak” argument… Alright, then we’re just not going to have a discussion. Just don’t forget that if one of these groups ever use payment providers to suppress trans rights you supported this.
not surprising at all that you chose to go the blue MAGA “enjoy your camps, then” route instead of taking a step back. the only smug person here was you not realizing you’re way out of your depth
‘Blue MAGA’? Oh shit, please don’t tell me you voted for trump!
yeah, you got me. not liking liberals makes me a trump supporter. the overton window always ends at being left of Ronald Reagan and anything beyond that is just the ice wall keeping us from finding out that the earth is flat
They are ok with murder and war simulation then? ROFL Smells like another religious pressure group tbh, haven’t looked into them yet.
They should go after all violence in games and media then; we’ll see how well they can fend of the pressure… Not sure if they have the ressources to survive that, so I would LOVE to see them try.
By all accounts they aren’t religious, we don’t have *gestures broadly to American Evangelicalism* going on here in Aus. They just seem to be TERFs and SWERFs.
Our objections were to content that involved sexualised violence and torture of women.
Okay so why did m/m smut games get delisted? Get fucked, puritans.
it’s really wild that payment processors have decided to be the arbiter of content on the Internet.
Don’t forget ad companies! Those ad companies love a squeaky clean, family fun internet.
How would I know? uBlock keeps the shit off the machine.
Hey Australia, we’ve got enough stupid moral crusader nut jobs here in America; please stop making yours our problem too.
As if the Yankee sycophants are staying in their own lane as is.
Don’t forget Ruport Murdoch who’s been pushing the right wing agenda across the country is an Australian export. This is not unusual from that country honestly.
He is from Australia originally, but he’s been a US naturalised citizen and lived there full-time since 1985, he gave up Australian citizenship 40 years ago.
No backsies.
Next they are banning sex toy purchases, r rated movies, tabacco, vape and alcohol.
next they’ll probably want to ban LGBT content since it’s “clearly pornographic”
Clearly you didn’t read the article
or i share similar concerns with the person from the quote in the final part of the article…
i’m not sure how bringing up something in the article makes it “clear” that i didn’t read said article
Time to put some pressure on the pressure group.
Theocratic dickheads and the proscription of sexual expression. Name a more classic pairing.
Yes, rape/abuse games are gross gooner bullshit but to paint all adult content with the same brush is just asinine. Huniepop is as much a rape/abuse simulator as it is a racing a game.
As they should have. Why should Steam or Itch.Io have to respond to every tiny cult of religious nutjibs making ridiculous requests?
sounds like it’s time to bring the 90s back. rotten.com here we go.
they want to stop the sale and purchase of adult content, so just give it away for free. shareware that shit and spread it like VD.
Unironically it will bring more people to dark corners of the net, foul content was always free. Now i’m not going for these games, but also comparing the entire nsfw genre to specific games is disingenuous. At the same time violence and shocking real life images are fine, right?
Nsfw involves adult themes that aren’t sexual.
That means censoring the self expression of consenting adults.
This creates a huge bottleneck that eventually just leads to this growing in the back of the visible. Porn addiction is a problem, sure. How did pre-teens gain access to this content? Didn’t parents give them a fully capable computer at all times?
Back when i used a computer, I only had access to research and office, also flash games. Other than that I had other devices and offline games, on cd.
Modern devices have better parental controls but nobody uses them, old computers had virtually none. Turns out you can do your parenting.
The dangers of this privacy invasive solution is the exposure of personal ID to questionable places, while bringing people towards bad places, that don’t ask for things.
Kinda like pirating a game as a kid, because you couldn’t buy it, but you only got viruses afterwards. Same deal.
This is the worst outcome. At least if those games are for sale you can track who’s buying them and have a list of potential offenders.
the Stasi are never gonna stop at the particular marginalized group you dislike. plus nobody’s offending shit, being a freak isn’t illegal (yet). acting like it is certainly helps move the overton window that way though
Their logo os a butthole - is this some sort of elaborate troll??
No no, it represents the crossroads of learning
Learning about anal, maybe
Why are you censoring words?
You know if we’re doing a numbers game Australia really exports a lot of shitty stuff. I mean the trade imbalance of fucking garbage Australian bullshit it’s pretty severe.
…whut? Are you American? Because if so that’s bloody rich. I’ll cop to Murdoch, that’s on us, I’m sorry for that. But what the hell else do we export that’s “fucking garbage”?
The biggest TERFs in the planet seem to be either Australian or British, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Also, Murdoch has caused untold damage to America that is gonna take decades or even a century to fix.
The biggest TERFs in the planet seem to be either Australian
What?? As a trans Australian that’s just completely rubbish. We aren’t having the same anti-trans rhetoric issue here that the US and UK are. In fact the biggest issue we had with TERFs was when Posie Parker came and did a speaking tour.
Seems like while Australia doesn’t export that much bad stuff, the stuff that does get exported somehow manages to be even worse than other places, for some reason. Collective Shout is a group of TERFs, and Murdoch… well we don’t need to talk about him. And also another bad thing Australia exported was videogame censorship, like the time they banned Hotline Miami 2.
