We've posted an addendum FAQ to our original blog post about NSFW content. You can read it here: itch.io/updates/upda... Thank you for your patience as we navigate through this. We're upset too. We're doing what we can but there are still many unknowns at this point.
Would it be possible to create a separate store without visa/mastercard (but PayPal, crypto etc) with more lax rules similar to how it was before? Like a child company but basically same code? Or would it be too high of cost compared to expected return?
Hopefully people will pull their heads outside their asses and realize that they have to voice their anger to the payment processors and not you. But that's probably too much effort for them thus throwing stupid allegations at you. Don't let those shortsighted people bring you down.
And the more you look into it, It's not even them. those groups who spam called mastercard and visa, changed the law so that you can get arrested if they suspect you could may be involved in "sex crimes". That same movement made posts about the connection between mass murder and homsexuality....
You're right it's not itch, it's the payment companies! But it's not even really the payment companies, it's the spam groups! But it's not the groups, they're just doing what their parents told them, or what the church told them, or the news... We can hold all levels accountable for their failings.
you have the power to help promote this bsky.app/profile/chat...
don't kneel as if this is an unstoppable inevitability, stand up and lead the fight
such a shame tbh that a while back the site was unavailable because copyright protection AI sucks and now payment processors are censoring the internet so easily thanks to this stupid amount of power they have. These outside companies shouldn’t have this much power on the internet and it sucks
I'm still missing an explanation as to why e.g End of The Line is delisted - payments have never been enabled for this game. The addendum and ToS updates are confusing as it points towards "if you plan to collect payouts" - It never has, and is still affected. Can you elaborate on this?
Things like this make it obvious you delisted all games tagged eg 'Furry' paired with the 'has sensitive content' tag devs add, regardless if this supposedly shouldnt be affected by the payment processors ToS. This is what's makes it feel like a slippery slope towards attacking LGBTQ+ rights etc.
For reference, the game contains no sex. It contains 3 seconds of flaccid genitalia. The game is marked as sensitive mainly due to the fact that it discusses depression and processing it as it's main topic.
As a final note, while we can certainly guess and assume it's auditing if it's true - I doubt you'll be auditing everything past tags and descriptions. Just give us a 'block payments' button, or at the very least clarify further what your audit processes are - guesstimates on time etc.
This isn't what we want. Walk back your new content policies. Now.
You threw LGBTQ people under the bus and you don't even have the courage to address it properly. You act like this is just NSFW, but we all know it isn't. For shame.
Keep obeying in advance, bitch
While you guys aren't the primary offenders here and I fully get the situation you're in, you guys still don't deserve a free pass because given how sneaky you've been it seems like you simply underestimated how much pushback you'd be getting. It'll take a while to earn any trust back.
do not get distracted and waste precious time and energy getting mad at Itch. regardless of how well or not theyve handled the situation, fundamentally, the blame and ire NEEDS to be directed at the people holding the gun to Itch's head direct your anger in a PRODUCTIVE direction
Hi team, what are your plans to allow people in the UK to see content others can see after the Online Safety Act? Will you be putting in age assurance? Thank you
For what i read in the fact "age-gatekeepin" is one of the things that is going to get worked so i think is kind of implied.
So like, if someone made a game with themes similar to the TV show Law and Order SVU, would that be banned? Are the topics banned in all context?
Nobody is going to take you seriously until you firmly and publicly get on the side of creators and consumers here. Your hands may be tied, but you are doing just an unbelievably bad job getting anyone to believe that.
Itch has functionally zero power in this situation, if they firmly and publicly tell the payment processors to change their policy, what happens is Itch immediately gets their money cut off and ALL the games go down.
I don't believe that they have no ability to voice any disagreement whatsoever, and their vindictive actions like graying out pages that set themselves to 0% revenue sharing says otherwise anyway.
They are voicing disagreement. That’s what the post you’re replying to was doing.
How is updating their terms to capitulate to such threats a "disagreement"? Explain.
They updated their terms to reflect the ultimatum they were offered. To either remove the offending content or to stop existing. They’ve expressed their disagreement, they’ve attempted to argue the other side, and they’ve tried to limit the damage. Nothing works because itch is minuscule and weak.
Damn, are you a sorry yoga teacher? That's quite a reaching apologetics for Itch.
No it’s really not, I’m just making a very boring surface level read of what’s going on and you’re acting like it’s shocking and unbelievable
What's the point of having a company if they don't have control over it? If Itch is that powerless in this situation, then they have no business starting a platform in the first place. I don't play NSFW games. But I'll be damned if I don't get angry over obvious censorship of fucking conservatives.
The fact that it is impossible to run an internet-based storepage for indie games without being subject to the whims of payment processors is not within itch’s power to change. You’re saying that it would be better if itch had complied so far in advance that they never existed at all.
Sounds like Itch wants to be a website for payments rather than a page hosting indie games. A platform like Itch lives and dies by its content, not by its payment processors. Cross the devs and you run out of shit to monetize. But it's nice to know Itch's priorities are in check. ✔
If itch didn’t have payment then it wouldn’t be a page hosting indie games, because for the most part indie devs like to paid for their money, and the itch developers don’t have a big trust fund to spend on keeping their web servers running for free
Sounds like poor preparation on their part if they're being taken to town like a bitch by weird zealots and payment processors.
What exactly are you proposing they should have done different? The only way for a minuscule company like itch to “prepare” for something like this is to just not host NSFW content in the first place. Which is obviously worse.
But hey, you want to hear what I would've done? Sure. I would've notified the devs first before taking their content down, instead of the other way around. At least I would give them the courtesy of knowing why their games will be zapped rather than letting everyone know afterwards.
1: The payment processors wanted it taken down immediately. 2: You said itch should’ve known in advance they’d do this because of all the previous news stories. By that reasoning shouldn’t the devs have known too?
Censorship through finance is not new. And for a company with thriving NSFW games and devs, easily throwing them under the bus at the behest of loudmouths makes Itch look like they can be bullied easily. If they haven't seen it coming, then I have a bridge to sell to them. Again, piss-poor foresight
Again, what alternative preparation should they have done What is the actually doable alternate plan they should have made and carried out I’m not saying “ooooh nobody could see this coming,” I’m saying even if they weren’t caught off guard what is your proposed solution
No storefront has control over payment processing. It's simply a different line of business. They all use vendors for payment processing.
No one said anything about controlling external parties. They could've at least mass emailed people immediately before/after about this so no one's in the blind for A FEW DAYS. I hope they get out of this scenario. But leaving your community out of the dark for a bit is fucking inexcusable.
You said "what's the point of having a company if you don't have control over it?" Essentially no company has control over its payment processing. So by your logic, nobody should have a company.
It's unclear how much time they had to warn creators before deindexing stuff. It obviously would have been much, much better to give people notice.
Thank y’all for your rapid responses and patience online responding to misinformation. I really appreciate it as a creator and I wanted to express that
You see, I don't play NSFW games. But when your company's censorship list (let's not sugarcoat it) is a "non-exhaustive list", that's scary and frankly, I don't trust it. What's permitted right now can be censored later, depending on the next organization making you their new bitch.
I wanted to directly say I appreciate this updated statement, and I appreciate Itch's team on addressing concerns in the comments. It's not perfect but I want the team to know that for years Itch has supported NSFW indie devs and I hope we all get out of this okay.
Hey I'm really glad to see you're working towards other options instead of rolling over. Nothing more to add there. I'm sure shit sucks over there so I hope you find a solution.
Aren't they rolling over, though? If they're already making it impossible to get these things, the damage is already done. We all know now that they'll cave at the first inconvenience, how does that inspire confidence in the platform going forward?
I think having no more payment processor' isn't an 'inconvenience' it's a 'game over, shut your doors'. If they find an alternative, they might be able to say 'actually fuck you, Paypal/MC' Their alternative wasn't 'continue sell NSFW' their alternative was 'sell nothing'.
We are not talking about an "inconvenience." We are talking about a complete inability to collect revenue, for themselves and for all the creators who use the platform. I don't know why you'd expect ANY business to just say, "Oh, well, we'd rather stop existing as a company than comply for now."
thieves and liars. never appear again.
You fucks are still robbing people of their income with no recompense.
Better response but it took 4 days to say anything assuring. 4 days of lost revenue for us and the issue still has no end date. Whoever's fault, devs are still getting screwed. Can not blame them for looking for alternatives. The users are leaving. The longer it lasts, the more unrepairable damage.
This shit has me speaking like a robot just to fit everything in. Anyways, after all this, how are we to know there won't be future situations where we will lose another revenue month due to outside forces. You need to plan and address these worries. For consumers and us devs alike.
This is exactly what they said they are doing in this post. Have you expressed a similar disappointment and concern to payment processors today by calling them?
Yes. Even if small, Our server is insensitivising calling every day, signing the petition, and checking all the links provided until this is fixed.
No sympathy. This is on you too.
Didn’t gamejolt do this years ago because of payment processors then itch thought it would never come up for some reason? I think it was when only fans did the same thing. I’ve no idea how they managed to get around it in the end
FAQ, but doesn't address the LGBTQ concerns that are flooding every comment section...
I apologize for the broken threads I just caused by blocking someone, but I can't have someone being an asshole in my replies pretending they aren't doing so.
As a very short form summary, the entire point of an FAQ is to address frequently asked questions. This did not do so, and instead ignored a large portion of the most frequently asked questions. If we as customers are wrong, or misguided about things, they can say that, but not answering the
Very common questions that we can all see casts more doubt on the honesty behind Itch's actions than clarity.
They are also replying to a handful of people with very common concerns in replies here rather than in the FAQ, which again, is the point of the FAQ. They can clear up these concerns in the article, but did not, so now the comments repeat these concerns again and again and again.
I want Itch to do better. I care about Itch. I am angry at how they are handling this from a communication standpoint. This should not be a controversial stance?
If you don't start pushing back on this, you're not going to have a business. Yeah, you can't have a business without a payment processor but you also can't have a business without creatives hosting things on your platform.
You're still lying on your website. ❗️The marketplace isn't open if you're delisting certain legal titles because of a 3rd party. ❗️You absolutely CANNOT sell any content you've created because you will delist legal content. Can't take that long to update some html text, surely? So why still lying?
www.youtube.com/shorts/ciG0F...
Quislings
You still bended the knee to them.
What other choice did they have other than to deny payouts until they found a solution
Use a different payment processor that doesn't give a fuck? They do exist for other adult and NSFW spaces. Itch just seems to want you to believe that other options don't exist for whatever reason. Go look up ccbill, they've been doing adult/porn payment processing for a long time without issues.
I literally said "until they found a solution" If they deny payouts at all even for a bit this situation probably just gets worse because people will complain I do not believe you can just switch payment processors as easily as you think (unless i'm wrong)
Issues like this are "old" by Internet standards. Take PayPal in 2012 telling smashwords "to modify is policy for erotic fiction to exclude works that contain bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and underage erotica, and to remove any works that contravene the new policy", sound familiar?
ok
Oh I don't think it's easy, but its been essential for a while now. ANY platform that hosts adult content should've never opted for direct billing. They should've chosen the most protective billing platform, not the fastest and or cheapest to them.
ok
Gonna explain the delisting of all LGBT content on your site? I don't see it in your FAQ
this did not happen
![A screenshot from Fallout 4 showing ruined buildings and green text that says [Everyone disliked that.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tvfkpwmifa54jmpusicffbgl/bafkreihsh3rgeba3s7m6zg5hctjfngof537oh7qat6shnamqgwhq6vswom@jpeg)
repost the call sheet. direct your followers to yell at the payment processors you have a platform. use it
A lot of people being distracted and not realising that this is itch.io tugging at their collar and sweating because they're in a fucked up situation. Payment processors are going after ANYONE with notoriety. This is just the first time itch.io has been hit. Direct your energy elsewhere.
They're tugging their collar and sweating because they fucked up. Even if this does get resolved through VISA or MC, what kind of message is this sending to creators on their platform? That the platform will pull their livelihood out from under them in a heartbeat if it suits them.
You think they could've done anything else? You think Visa is patient and plays nice? With all due respect, if itch.io didn't do this, they would be sued out of oblivion. Alternative payment processors are slow to find and that can take years. This is a struggle for everyone.
They can't sue itch for hosting games on their own platform.
They can and that's up to the user, but not relevant I'd argue.
Yeah, they really fucked up. www.theguardian.com/games/2025/j... More than 20K games have been delisted since July 16 from the NSFW category. No way in hell that was discreet or handled without innocent causalities.
love u guys thank you for doing your best, sorry you are dealing with this!!
It's over once Jerk and Slurp 2 is done
You could just do the same thing as thousands of other people have done: Called up processors directly and told them they done fucked up. They probably listen more to other companies than to individuals.
I know this would normally be naïve and an outright stupid idea, but we're past the point of multibillion international companies folding to a few hundred christofash somewhere in Australia, so any pretense of sensibility is already gone.
Do you know they didn't? Or are you just mad and lashing out at our allies because it makes you feel like you have power in this situation? Be a serious person mate.
This is very frustrating. A blanket ban on any works containing the themes in your creator FAQ would disallow the sale of A Game of Thrones/ASOIAF, Star Wars, and the Bible (among other religious texts), to name a few. Would Twilight count as "animal-related"? whatever the heck that even means.
My point is that even if banning porn was acceptable, there's so much collateral damage being done here. Art has to be able to depict things we find distasteful. How many creators use art as an outlet for some horrible stuff that's happened to them? And we're effectively telling them to shut up?...
..and how many consumers only ever hear about the experiences of victims of such things through such media? I believe we have a responsibility to pass on these kinds of stories. I know Itch didn't want to be in this situation but it's damned frustrating. Much love to you all
The fact that a few people can suddenly try and censor everything like this is disturbing. It's not Itch.io's fault, we know whose fault this is
I understand the necessity of steps being taken. That said, the brutal crackdown, lack of communication, and the cheeky salute emoji (which was extremely rude) was unnecessarily harsh. I'm not a dev but I was a user of the platform and trust has been severely shaken.
You still banned my nsfw games because of non con content without warning and now idk if I’ll have to pay back customers if refunds happened for “lost of x game “! Not cool at all. And now you not only targeted LGBTQ games but horror games too? FU! 😡
"Mouthwashing" AND "Fear & Hunger" too? NOPE NOPE NOPE! 😡📷 😡
Mouthwashing has been delisted for a year because they were only a link to Steam: bsky.app/profile/itch...
Thanks for the infos. Should had done some research instead of jumping the bandwagon.
some of y'all, please ... voicing your concerns here don't mean you not "directing your ire." nobody is organizing an itch boycott. ppl are angry and afraid frfr, so stop tryna silence them. we ALL know to call payment processors by now jfc. we've been Making Calls since 1/20/25. ppl are tired.
if itch wants to be seen as something the community can partner with, they gotta understand how serious this is AND respond like they understand as well. the initial response won't good. they know that NOW because ppl are voicing their concerns. imo if itch does right ppl will respond accordingly.
honestly theyre falling short even now too
I'm honestly completely on the fence with this one. On the one hand, Itch IS (at least partly) a victim, but on the other hand, I feel like what people really wanted was clarification about what constituted stuff like "animal content," and they haven't clarified that yet.
the problem is it's not something itch CAN clarify because it will be the payment processor who decides where that line is drawn, not itch.
Also, I admit there's a possibility that Itch can't clarify further even if they DO know more details because payment processors may see those extended clarifications as means of trying to bypass the restrictions. I just couldn't fit all that in my original post.
This doesn't solve the problem, and you know it. This is a band-aid response to the backlash you've received that doesn't undo the catastrophic harm you've done by taking the worst possible option. "Oops, my bad" just doesn't cover it.
Paykings instead of paypal? Skrill maybe? Does Payoneer support sex-workers? Discover-card? AmEx?
Payoneer also has policies against adult content, and Itch already uses them
blech. How 'bout the others though?
To the plethora of infographic posts. I can and will be angry at both. Thank you.
Can you please elaborate on what "Animal related" means? If it means furries, then that's gonna be a massively bad look on your website.
I hope you have retained a legal team to combat the companies violations of consumer protection and rights. Because restricting legal content then claiming they're not doing that is pretty illegal.
this is the US, we don't have those here
They operate in Canada, they have cards through our banks, have Canadian branches. And through this, harm Canadian artists and small businesses. I'm no lawyer, but it would probably be worth investigating.
Here's what's going to happen: Much like prohibition people didn't stop consuming booze. They just found another way to get it. Instead if you just tax it you're looking to make more Bank. Instead you choose to just leave money on the table. In short y'all are bad at greed.
bsky.app/profile/dies... it really feels like this is a thing you guys just needed a push to do, and i hope WHEN we get payment processors to back down on this, you guys won't revert any of these changes do better, resist, and sue the shit out of these companies so they can never do this again
You don't deserve patience or money. You licked boot, and VERY eagerly too, so you deserve to be kicked. Enjoy your suffering.
This whole mess reminds me of the time when multiple flash drives for a middle school group project were lost. Tempers flared and everyone was hurling blame at each other. Eventually we managed to calm down and salvaged what we can. The end result leaves a lot to be desired but decent enough to pass
there's such a severe lack of understanding among these people, just regurgitating the same myopic nonsense over and over. they play up a big game of defending queer creators but gleefully stab at itch as if they're not also getting fucked over & trying to do what they can. absolutely fucked
Well of course, but we'd like a better response better than "we're getting fucked, so we're gonna fuck some of you in turn, also we're not going to tell you who is going to be fucked or why or what rules we're using to pick who gets fucked (because they clearly have some)"
damn, it's almost as if they had very short notice to act, right before the weekend! you'd be scrambling too if your entire website was at risk. have some faith in the tiny team of people who've given us a platform for over a decade instead of beating them while they're down w/ tied hands.
Good scrambling: draft a hurried statement saying NFSW games will be taken down until further notice and why. Then issue the takedown. Bad scrambling: abruptly taking down games *before* informing the devs about the ban. Itch lives and dies by its devs, the ones supplying the content for the site.
They've known since April that there was a campaign to make this happen. All it would take is a little transparency, but it's a lot of broad concessions with no specifics and it's affecting people's livelihoods.
Just Because The Campaign Existed In April, Does Not Mean They Knew About It In April.
But, I also think you're entirely misrepresenting something you've read or heard parroted from their statement. Back in April, they removed the game No Mercy from their platform, which Collective Shout was campaigning, at the time, to have removed.
Perhaps not even because of Collective Shout. The game is an incest rape simulator and is pretty objectionable by any standards. CS seemed to take it as a win, and then started a campaign, aimed at payment processors, to get other games they personally found objectionable removed from Steam & itch.
Which, whenever it started, so what?? That wasn't definitive proof their payment processors were going to do this, so why would they immediately try to react to something that might turn out to be nothing?
Anyone using the NAZI CARTELS of visa and mc to censor is in the wrong
I would like everyone in the comments having a fit that you're apparently still not doing good enough to remember that there's actually useful places to direct that energy bsky.app/profile/dies...
"Oh don't be angry at itch, they only did what they had to!" OK, they were told to remove the nsfw. But apparently they figured that included the queer sfw stuff as well, so, 🖕
AND, to add insult to injury, they decided that that meant they were entitled to keep the affected creators' money.
Where are either of your proof? Being genuine here. Misinformation being spread is not the way. bsky.app/profile/itch...
This post does not address the issue, because this complaint has nothing to do with processing payments, but withholding money that creators have already earned.
Yeah I'll believe that when I hear /from affected creators/ that they're actually getting their money and not a moment sooner. Itch lost the benefit of the doubt when they botched their initial handling of this situation. I could have handled this with more grace and I'm not even a business major.
I agree they needed to handle this all better. But again, I'd like to see the proof, not a "i heard x". They'd be liable of straight up lying as you're claiming.
Let me ask you; what affected creator have you heard from that has said they have not received a financial payout due to this change of policy? Genuinely asking.
This is what I'd like to see too, that way it can get taken directly to itch for further clarification.
Gosh, I didn't realize I had to Personally Know Someone in order to be suspicious of Itch's rapid-fire backpedaling after the initial high-profile botching. My bad! Or not. Show me one person verifying that Itch is being truthful here, JUST ONE, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this.
They have clarified this before, which is why I am asking to directly take either of your claims of proof to itch. In their FAQ, they state how currently, processing is not even an option as they navigate these changes. But yes, do keep an eye out for proof, please. bsky.app/profile/itch...
Or sit on your hands and just keep sneering, doesn't matter to me. I'll still be keeping my eyes peeled for information either way.
But I'm not sneering. I'm just asking for proof.
I mean... Yes. Yes you do. You're claiming they're withholding creators money, and then say you'll only not believe it when affected creators tell you otherwise. But you can't cite a creator telling you it happened to them. And you also don't appear to be an affected creator. See the problem?
- Itch says in their rules that rule-breaking creators will not get money from sales of their content - Itch effectively flips a switch and turns thousands of rule-abiding creators into rule-breaking creators overnight Gosh I wonder what the end result of THAT could POSSIBLY be.
If you're spreading information that Itch has done this thing, the onus is on you to prove that this thing has happened - not for anyone else to prove that it hasn't happened. I saw a ghost in your house. It's right behind you. You don't? Prove to me there's no ghost there. You can't. See?
Dude, it's right there IN THE RULES, that everyone can read, that they will withhold payments from accounts that are in violation of their ToS. The fact that they're suddenly pivoting to "well that only applies under THESE circumstances and THIS is a SPECIAL CASE because Reasons" is still suspect.
I reiterate: Show me ONE NSFW creator verifying that Itch is telling the truth. You made that claim, now you back it up. Until then, as far as I'm concerned, Itch is just trying to cover their asses after botching their little NSFW panic purge.
The payment processors are the least of your problems. By handling this situation as poorly as you have, you've damaged your public image, and you've damaged the trust with developers who may now be looking elsewhere to host their work.
The bulleted list of prohibited adult topics seems like it would prevent me from publishing games based on stories from the Christian bible. This includes 2 Samuel 13 (rape) and Exodus 21:7-11 (selling children as slaves). Is it fair to contact PayPal and ask them why they've banned the Bible?
Still not even close to acceptable.
Definitely, at minimum something about Animal related, like, if they are banning furry content that's pretty disappointing. It also seems like people are reporting a lot of queer novels are still being banned regardless of sexual content.
Then bring back mouthwash
Mouthwashing was not removed due to censorship, unfortunately there is a lot of misimformation being spread to fear monger.
Mouthwashing is still delisted.
This game hasn't been indexed Since October 2024 since it doesn't meet our indexing criteria: itch.io/docs/creator... They are using a "Download" button as a link to Steam. The developer took down any playable files form this page in 2024.
This first part of your FAQ says you don't review content. This part of your indexing criteria says you review sellers. So do you review content or not? Do you have a large swath of content creators that flip from G rated content to pass through your review to porn that you're somehow unaware of?
it says "may be placed in our review queue" which is usually a vaguer way of saying "you might trip our spam detection"
> So do you review content or not? Both. We use automated heuristics to flag some pages for review before indexing, but generally speaking pages can be published without any explicit approval. Too many pages are published per day to review everything, so we try to prioritize what we do look at
So I sell on Itch. I don’t remember a review process, but I’m being so honest I’m a little dense and probably missed it. What did you review about my account? What do you know about me?
The review process doesn't involve you. Your page would have been put into a queue for someone to look at, they would see that it's not spam/scam/abuse, then click OK, and it would be eligible for indexing. I don't see any evidence of any of your pages being put in the review queue.
Mouthwashing literally didn't upload the game. That's a fair reason to decline a game to be indexed.
fwiw I have seen LOT of confusion about the "search bar" / search suggestions when quick searching - games don't appear, but they DO bring results when "See All" is clicked. Or, games that were here before are gone. Some clarity on how games get put into the Search Suggestions would help IMO.
Okay, but you still a bitch.
And you are nothing but a right ole arsehole
This doesn't help, you jackass.
I already did, but what is itch gonna do at the moment? Calling them a bitch isn't going to do anything
Does nothing to help jackass
Could you not
No. Everyone has a right to be mad at Itch.io for bending the knee to payment processors just because they carry a big monopoly powered stick. Steam too. Everyone should be getting mad at them and urge them to fight back.
I get where you're coming from, but we don't really have a lot of information on Itch's end of things. They might not have any better options on their own.
We certainly don't, but platforms like Itch, Steam, Patreon, Pixiv, Fansly, etc. need to fight back for us too instead of caving. They backed down off OnlyFans after backlash. So do this too. Spread the word.
They've always come after adult content first. Payment Processors have no legal right to define what people can spend their money on, that is overstepping their authority and using the power of their monopoly on a system to effect the masses.
Where did all these people come from
Somehow you summoned the bots.
Doesn't seem like that to me.
Nvm, it got screenshot and blurred out by a random post that garnered attention. It ended up back in my feed reposted by someone I follow who posted it about 50s after I made the comment, completely missing the later context. Anyways, fuck Visa and Mastercard.
Pretty much a summary of the situation. Itch might not have actually been in the wrong to delist Mouthwashing, but they are bitches for not defending the rights of devs to be able to sell their games.
Exactly.
This is incredibly immature and does nothing to help.
If this got your attention, then good. While I have it, go out and do something with it. I'm doing my part. Are you?
What about fear and hunger?
Okay cool now bring back all the LGBTQ+ fiction I had on my account that I now can't access.
We strongly urge you to reach out to support so we can understand what exactly you’re expecting to see as none of the changes we’ve made as part of this review should impact your access to paid products. itch.io/support
What about Oxenfree?
It was removed by the developers themselves. Here's the email I got about it last year
Although I think they might not have been so strict about that date - I think I remember seeing it still being available for download some time after that? Not sure when they actually ended up removing it.
Ah yes, I love platforms removing games I paid for after they get delisted. Steam would never.
You are supporting censorship of LGBT content, and art you can't be considered in the right in any world
They aren't supporting it. They're being forced to do it.
They could just block those payment services from being used on their site until the situation is fixed. They are complicit in this behavior. The fact people are defending homophobes is genuinely disgusting.
Okay and say they do this - nearly every payment processor is involved in this to some degree. How are they gonna sell anything with no payment processors operating on their site?
Doesn't matter. You're still complicit if you're ok with censoring LGBT works. Quit. Defending. This.
So... you want the platforms to just die and leave NO WHERE for this stuff to be hosted then? Because that's the alternative.
LOVE BEING PROVEN RIGHT www.rockpapershotgun.com/itchio-are-s...
They are, indeed, just following orders.
We all have choices and I'm only reacting to their choices. If you want to join the heralds of satanic panic 2.0 be my guest
Their choices are "kowtow" or "stop existing." Get angry at the correct people at least, you clown.
Would you rather they delist all games? Because that's the other option. No developer making money.
I just refuse to let them act as innocent. And will do continue to support creators find a middle men that at least has the gal to stand up to the creators they exist to support. Until then they are scum beneath my boots, and a parasite taking money from creators.
There is no middle man that can support these creators right now, not unless they own their own payment processing company.
I get your anger but the alternative is quite literally eventual bankruptcy in this case. Would you rather see the one mostly open storefront out there die? You could yell at Steam instead for not picking a different payment processor; though I'm not sure even their hands are any less tied
Do you understand that they do not control the payment processor policies
Correct, but they have also been known to have handled this situation incredibly poorly. They asked for this, if they do not stand for us than I refuse to stand for them. Money talks and their wallets shall hurt for their choices
How did they "ask for this", what is the alternative choice you would like them to have made
Jfc you're arguing that every dev should lose all revenue to make a grandstand that steam wasn't willing to make despite having far more money to swing about.
I mean yea that's group action innit. A lot easier to get people to fight back if everyone is impacted by the problem. Not that it would be easy, fun or necessarily a good option when it seems like a lot of people are fighting the good fight already thankfully
Tbf value's history is anything to go for if payment processors push to hard valve could pretty much make their own. I refuse to stand for those who support censorship plain and simple. I don't have the rights to stop people from making and playing games. And neither should they
I have no reason to stand on the side of oppression
Correct, so go call the people who are actually doing the oppression. The payment processing companies.
por que no los dos
Already has been done and I'm going to continue tomorrow. I will make my distain, and dissatisfactions well know and encourage other's to do the same. At least I'm not bootlickin
Cool, go contact and complain to the payment processors who are forcing these changes.
I'm holding all parties with blame in this responsible. If you wish to support a company over the people it fucked over, be my guest.
Their choices were to 1) Comply with payment processor demands, for now, while fighting to revert them and retain people's access to stuff they've already paid for, or 2) Die a sudden death and everyone loses everything. You really think the latter option is better?
It’s censorship of all content. Not just LGBTQ+
Correct
Genuine question, but I'm curious what you think Itch should've done? As I see it, Itch is between a rock and a hard place here—if they fuck up, they stop being able to be a storefront at all for *anyone.* Even more LGBTQ authors would be screwed if that happened.
Clearly the best outcome for creators is if itch can't take payments, don't see any issues with that
They are not supporting it, they are forced into it. Contact Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal and protest against them. itch had to do it to keep their platform in tact/preserve the ability to actually get payments and to pay people out. If Steam couldn't push back, how the hell would itch? THINK.
Then contact itch's support line.
I can't believe someone would lie on the internet. That's not what it's for!
Why doesn't it meet your indexing criteria?
From the page they linked: "Ensure you have files uploaded to the project page. Your page must be purchasable, downloadable, or playable in the browser to be indexed. Empty placeholder pages will not be indexed." You can't just use your page as an advert for another platform, as Mouthwashing did
So you're the guys who sold out to hypocritical corpos? What is the point of using Itch.io any more? Serious question. Give me a reason to continue using your site rather than supporting something new.
I just wanna say that despite how heated the situation has gotten, a lot of us appreciate you guys doing your best to cut through the noise and trying to get this solved despite your limited resources.
Dam liar caught lying
If you want to do something about proccesor check this site and try to send mail to your congress people, your relevant state protection, calls (try to be assertive but not rude, the employees are not at fault) and mails to the service providers: bsky.app/profile/void...
I have not given you my patience to thank me for. The loss of the vast majority of your userbase for being cowards will also affect people's payouts. Reverse these changes immediately. We don't need explanation. We know what's going on, and we're pissed at you for just going along with it.
Dude. Y’all did this badly. You ban hammered without discretion. I do get it… you’re small, etc. but there had To be ways to Handle this working with the creators first and the second and then third before pulling out “el guapo”’and smashing the whole catalogue
Given the current emergency situation, we must keep our comments brief and focused. We kindly request that you and anyone who sees this share our post on our page. We are struggling with fundraising and are now confronted with an urgent need to ensure the safety of trans women.
Hahahaha. Sure.
Why are free games with the NSFW tag also deindexed? Shouldn't payment processors have no impact on them?
... It's not that the processors will deny specific claims to nsfw games. They will shut off ALL TRANSACTIONS if itch doesnt remove EVERYTHING the processors tell them is unacceptable. You do get that right?
Did you miss the first line here? Giving free games a pass does not solve the problem, but roping them into the bans contradicts their own stance. No point in specifying that it only applies to paid games if they're banned anyway.
Contradicts WHOSE stance? The origin of this is a group that wants to get all porn (as a first step) banned, and badgered payment processors into it to use as their weapon. Pushing for a "blanket ban or we stop processing" statement is absolutely in line with their stance.
I suppose the problem here is, that if they won't remove all NSFW content, the payment processors just cut the platform at all. The speed, at which it all happening, doesn't give much time to check the limits.
You guys delisted mouthwashing. Are we no longer allowed to have stories about mature topics?
No they didn't. They explained it. That game hasn't been indexed since December since the game doesn't offer Itch downloads at all and only redirects to Steam. If it was downloadable on itch at one point and not any more, blame the devs who swapped platforms.
They have addressed this in another thread: bsky.app/profile/itch...
You should be calling payment processors and letting them know that you think it's bullshit they are forcing platforms like Itch to comply to their arcane, unfair practises. Itch is not the villain here.
The same patience you showed when you sprang this on people without any notice? That patience?
bsky.app/profile/dies...
You can be angry at Itch for mishandling the situation and angry at payment prpcessors for causing the situation. The two are not mutually exclusive.
very fair!!!
as in that's fair, very good point
You could just grow a spine, throwing that out there, homie.
"we are actively reaching out to other payment processors that are more willing to work with this kind of content" and you didn't do this four years ago when Stripe got NSFW removed from Onlyfans because...?
They did this to Patreon before that in 2014 but then gave nsfw creators a separate payment processor. Then changed the rules anyway in 2018 and mass banned creators. But maybe the people at Itchio were like "Oh, we're not like THOSE people. We'll be fine!" and now the goalposts have moved
This happened to Patreon, and then OnlyFans, and then Gumroad, and then Patreon again, and then Fansly (and this is discounting the whole Rapelay controversy that y'all are probably too young to remember). It just doesn't look like itch had a plan other than cause a lot of strife for customers.
Stripe didn't get anything removed, they anounced and rolled back the decision within 1 week. Payment processors also hold monopolies which means outside of the large ones like paypal, visa and mastercard a change might mean excluding people in non us regions from paying and being paid
a quote from itch; "In the long run, Corcoran plans to “start working with more financial partners that are equipped to handle the kind of content we have.” “It's our own fault for not having additional relationships with payment processors in place to avoid interruptions like this,” he said."
Thanks for acknowledging this issue. I feel like if I am to complain about bad behavior in public I should also praise good behavior in public. So I am happy to hear you are taking ownership of the problem and are working to correct it.
Probably because payment processors that works with porn are more expensives and since cc cost is passed to the creators... people wouldn't have liked it.
Because without paypal and VISA you would probably also have insulted Itch io and called it a non-sense place where games cannot be sold ?
None of my games cost any money. Porn websites have figured out how to sell porn to people. If itch doesn't want to sell porn, it shouldn't let porn be uploaded to its site. If it DOES want to sell porn, it should figure out how and not just break Stripe's terms of service for 12 years.
calling itch a porn website is ridiculous. you wouldnt call steam a porn website
Oh sorry, I thought you also played/paid games sometimes... FYI, itch is not a porn-website. It has/had an NSFW tag that made projects only visibles for adults, for games that needed it. It's not its prime focus. Right now, its prime focus seems to stay opened for gamedevs to upload their games.
Is it true that you’re seeking out a new payment processor that’s comfortable with adult games and materials?
Thank you for this, hope it's all resolved soon.
What about the list of “prohibited topics?” Some I get but others are just head-scratching. What do you mean by “animal-related?” What if a game has sex trafficking as a plot point (or they wanna talk about how it’s bad and they just wanna spread their message.) Some of these are too broad.
"Bestiality" & "animal-related" should NEVER be used in tandem with each other! Furries are not Zoophiles, how many times do we have to repeat this?! We even condemn, shame, and exile people like that from our spaces! The fact furries are once again being compared to rapists is absolutely vile!
Agreed. I really hope they arent pulling a Fansly (which also recently banned furry because of pressure from payment processors)
That list is probably compiled for the update of TOS of a lot of the procesors. And i know by the fact that the animal related stuff is worded like that. So not itchio fault here.
You built your platform off the work of queer creators and you sold them out. Fuck off forever.
this is marginally better. the clarity is appreciated. i’m sure things are hectic right now for all of you, i hope the pressure we’re putting on payment processors is helping
Clarifying all of this should have been your priority as soon as you got notice on the 11th, not over two weeks later.
As much as I can acknowledge you are a victim too, your attitude is way too dismissing of the fact. You should be more UPSET that content creators must have their works delisted because they feature LEGAL adult content just because some people with money are pissy prudes.
Honestly, Itch acted like a bitch here.
what are "sex-trafficking implications?" that's shockingly broad.
How does one go about such a large download spree,spreadsheets and hope?does itch have a feature that allows one to batch download a bundle,if not man those of us who buy a lot of bundles sure are screwed,on top of having to look on social media to download any artist work to ensure its archived.
Also, it feels like it's gonna take a class-action lawsuit from the creators on the site against Collective Shout (whose charity status doesn't seem to give them legal immunity...coughcough) and the payment processors, to force the latter to unquestionably work with you again.
You know, you could allow people the invitation to "push the boundaries" and allow some extra chances. Zero tolerance policies don't help anyone, and you're still able to steal people's money whenever you want. And you could have at least told the processors that Collective Shout tricked them.
Thank you for trying.
"Animal content" banned means a Metroidvania whose protaganist is an anthropomorphic cat would be banned. Go fuck a bible.
Good luck with everything. Being pressured on every side while being in the blur isn't fun at all... That's probably not a fun week for your teams either. Let's hope the community pressure on payment providers help you helping us!
Some of those policy changes are too vague, and you know this by stating how easily they can be argued over semantics. What is Psuedo-incest? Does animal-related content mean furry content in general? You can't just throw out a landmine-filled list like that and expect people not to complain.
And it's based on a "non-exhaustive list", meaning topics not yet covered by their censorship list can include things they or their overlords may not agree with. It's rife for abuse and further censorship.
Why was Mouthwashing, a game that does not feature any explicit pornographic content at all, but rather discusses sexual abuse and assault through the lens of horror, get delisted from Itch?
add my voice to drown out the folks misdirecting their anger in here. do not be upset at the people with a gun to their head, get vocal to the ones pointing the weapon.
According to Collective shout, they didn't ask for all nsfw games to be taken down, just a few tags. So idk. What I think I know is that Itch io didn't give any warning, still holds money from creators, and didn't have to get rid of everything nsfw.
Collective Shout is a religious organisation that is shielding themselves behind excuses. If you check the individual social pages of their their team you’ll see that they are against a lot more and generally horrible people.
Oh yeah, not denying they're bad, but even they came out and said Itch's decision was extreme.
The point is you shouldn't be giving them the good will to think they're doing anything except shielding themselves from backlash. They were celebrating this after it happened.
Also itchio released another update with an explanation on why they had to act this way compared to steam and they denied to have purposefully removed games from libraries, that’s probably a bug derived from the changes they had to make very fast.
The money was refused only to games that were against the original itchio terms of service (extreme illegal games)
Doesn't matter. If Itch has their money, they gotta give it. I also have no idea if any games were illegal. Doubt they were.
I’m on the side of itchio being a victim, not a perpetrator of the issue, they always supported nsfw and queer games, we shouldn’t be angry at them but at the source
I disagree, itchio tos always advocated against children in adult media, as they should, those are the games which payment stopped, because they were not legal to begin with (at least this is what they are saying, I’m not saying is necessarily true)
This changes nothing. Your addendum doesn't address whether furry and queer visual novels that aren't pornographic in nature will be protected; it sounds like no at the moment until you prove otherwise.
They must feel more pressure this is the way
man itch isnt going to change anything if you pressure them. They CAN'T change anything. stop wasting useless effort getting mad at a company with 0 bargaining power and start calling the credit card companies. anything else is WORSE than useless
They DO control how they classify transactions for payment processors. If they apply an egregious "NFSW" label to something that is *not* NSFW because of category labels like "furry" then thats a huge problem right now.
Honestly with enough people arguing about how I feel on this issue is invalid I'm just kinda tired. If they truly think it won't come for content to they enjoy and manipulated for further control then I hope the leopards enjoy their meal.
I really don't understand why you are quick to defend a cooperation. They are almost never reliable allies and not worth defending for thier deplorable choices
WHAT choices. They weren't given one! Choices are not a thing that exists in this situation. You're acting like Itch is some massive corporation when it's not - its a very small business. As someone else said, Village market vs the Concept of Money.
I'm not really defending them, so much is pointing out that you are throwing a whole lot of anger and frustration at a company that has very little agency and likely mere double digit employee count. The stuff like what youre doing is actively drawing attention away from anything that actually helps
And I'm not saying they haven't handled it pretty poorly. But it's far more likely than not that almost all of their actions this point have been dictated privately by the people holding them at gunpoint
I would argue expressing dissatisfaction, and having both me and my partner complain to card companies is not worthless. Expressing outrage and a desire to not let this be acceptable is more productive in my opinion. Or would you rather it fizzle in embers.
Not starting fires under the feet of people who had no choice doesn't mean letting it fizzle into embers. Its not just not helpful, it's counterproductive. The worst crime itch is guilty of is consistently poor wording. And even that was likely partially dictated by those who are actually guilty.
Trust is a currency that is difficulty to earn. If you truly think people will trust them after this I would say it's a foolish notion. We have seen this story before and it's conclusion for itch is grim
I'm not really going to lose any Trust over the circumstances that they had essentially zero control over. I think any reasonable person can realize that if they could have done anything about this situation, they would have. Any reasonable person.
This "coorperation" has less than 7 people in total. It's weird to adress them like they are on parr with steam and have any chance of taking on visa and mastercard.
Because: 1. It wasn't their choice, it was this or stoping existing. And 2. The people ACTUALLY responsible are jussttttt to the left but people choose to be angry with itch io for some reason.
you still smell like bitch for capitulating to a group of 10 TERFs on the other side of the world, and trust in your platform has been eroded. gg
You people are fucking thieves. Give your creators the money you fucking owe them.
I appreciate your transparency and communication. In the meantime, will there be clarity on what tags will get a game delisted, or how this vetting process happens? My wife had a game delisted but it wasn't marked 18+ or has erotic content.
Shuffling the verbiage from earlier isn't clarifying things.
I agree that folks should prioritize calling and messaging payment processes, and that itch is not "the enemy." However, it only takes a few minutes to an hour to do the calling and messaging. It's valid to still feels frustration, anger, or disappointment directed at itch after finishing that task.
It's never an either / or proposition. I appreciate that the admins are doing their best and may have been overwhelmed, but the platform means a lot of things to a lot of people, and stuff like this hurts in all sorts of ways. One can't turn off emotional pain like a switch, let alone financial pain
I wasn't happy with how you handled this initially, but let my voice be part of the pile that supports you. Let's do something about it together.
If you were that upset you wouldn't be doing it. Bore off.
What is the alternative? Shut down completely?
No, they could put more care into the process ie. not just blanket banning LGBTQ content
It seems to me that while their response hasn’t been very nuanced, they’ve had to act extremely quickly and have had to take less care than they otherwise would. I really do think the ire deserves to be aimed at the payment processors rather than itch.
Best wishes to the itch team. Hope you'll get through this and not burn out 🫂
You guys were just handed a bad hand. Shame it had to come to this but we don’t blame you we blame the other guys bsky.app/profile/dies...
You guys need to hire a PR firm STAT & start building actual canned responses into your business. In particular, that little highlighted block quote assuming bad faith about edge cases & firmly knuckle-slapping about "no second chances" was embarrassing grand-standing that only makes you look worse.
Right? "No second chances" when they won't even clearly say what violates the rules for their first chance.
I think the problem is that you have no way for authors to define what is and isn't 18+. You took the entire "sensitive content" tag and made the whole thing 18+. Believe it or not, there are some sensitive topics that are valuable to children. Games that educate on processing trauma, for example.
Oh you went above and beyond on the big censorship thing alright. Beyond that Steam did because... you're upset I guess.
'We're upset too.' Yeah bro, I'm going to say negative on that. Ya'll complied so rapidly with the demands people's heads are still spinning. You clearly have no intent to defend queer content or the people that aid your platform.
Years back pornhub deleted 80% of their catalogue to try and save their relationship with payment processors. Idk what you want itch to do that pornhub couldn't do.
But that's the problem, when companies are willing to steamroll their clientele without the slightest bit of pushback, everyone loses.
Divert your anger here ⬇️ bsky.app/profile/dies...
So, you've found yourself in a shitshow...
You didn’t have to do this. History will not remember you kindly.
If you want Itch to have that gun removed from their heads, support bill S.401! www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c... It REQUIRES payment processors to provide services for legal content. Don't let your stuff get de-banked! This isn't itch's fault. This will happen anywhere unless it is stopped!
Adding a voice to remind people that Itch isn’t and never was your enemy here. Anyone who thinks for half a second can see this is an exhausted, blindsided team who is handling extreme circumstances best as they can. PLEASE do not misdirect your anger at Itch, keep it on CollectiveShout and Visa/MC.
Sorry if the question seems stupid, but in my country there are literally dozens of payment options, but Visa and MC in the US monopolize the money there to have so much power? Here you have Pix, Boleto, a few dozen alternative cards and virtual gift cards,
Mostly Visa and Mastercard are in ties with banks. There are other cards like Discover and Amex, but they are not usually with a bank issued card very often; they must be a credit card which has a steep bank to get. Basicamente, eles nos têm em uma situação difícil e isso é péssimo. =/
Wait, do you have to pay to have a credit card there? Is there any chance of a future government abolishing such an abusive practice?
Some credit cards yes, have an annual fee. Ahahahhahahahahah. No.
This is the fundamental problem with not only this situation, but the internet in general: US dominance and hegemony. The Visa/MC duopoly for global payment processing, and that all major internet actors are US-based unfortunately fucks over the rest of us.
as well as third-party platforms to buy product codes, and do they really have the power to just block an entire platform without worrying? like, games sell BILLIONS
I work in software development - each of those is a separate implementation, and a unique path through finance, and a contract negotiation. So you're kind of left with the big 3 if you want to cover globally, especially a small company that doesn't havte resources
Dev here also; to corroborate: here in Brazil, it's common to implement at least 2 (sometimes more) payment paths (credit card and Pix). It's a clusterfuck every single time. And the accounting people don't love it either: having transactions arriving all rapzardly isn't fun for who keeps the books
In France, we just have visa and MC. When you ask a credit card to the bank, it's always a MC/Visa, nothing else, deal with it.
Not good enough, honestly. I won't be supporting a company that censors content in such vague terms and acquiesces to payment processors. You used to be one of the good ones. Shame.
Also? Steam hasn't been vetting their games for years. They basically let any game on as well. There is so much slop on Steam it's ridiculous you'd even claim this.
Steam vets games for both functionality and content, and many games have been rejected during this process, even mainstream games like CHAOS;HEAD NOAH. See partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/re... and partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettings...
I'm sorry I can't hear you over the fact that I'm not getting to play sister fucker 5. This is in actuality a war crime against me.
I understand your reasoning, though I disagree with how you handled this. I don't think one incident should ruin a platform, but you need to take action against the puritan payment processors, or they'll have you by the pokeballs forever.
This is better, but not a full, fix. Trust has still been eroded and won't come back until they fully pull back / we beat these credit card schmucks.
Patience is something you don't deserve for becoming the agents of the second satanic panic. Truly if you think this is adaquit your laughably delusional.
You know theres a Major flaw in this. Furries Are Not real or feral animals! Your restricting the furry community and Furry games from being in! You better Rephrase your guidelines abit.
Thank you to the itch team for trying their best in a shitty situation they aren't responsible for! I appreciate what you've done and what you're doing. It must be frustrating to support creators for years and then have those same creators turn on you en masse with misdirected anger
I hope you guys are taking care of yourselves -- and I hope that everyone who is angry will collectively organize in a more useful way and start calling up the credit card companies/payment processors, whose fault this actually is.
The fact that a charity was disrupted because of this is an awful occurrence and that, in fact, should be considered a war crime! I think that the charity should be extended for a few more days to make up for this fiasco.
Get. New. Payment. Processors. You're taking a financial hit by screwing over creators, or taking a hit looking for a new processor. If you cared about your users, you'd of chosen differently.
Are you under the impression that new payment processors will actually solve the underlying issue?
ccbill.com/industries/a...
In a world where an adult payment processor exists that doesn't care what you buy in terms of adult content. Sure, they ask for more money as NSFW is frequently refund requested, but they do exist. CCBill is 100% a viable payment processor that doesn't have the same bullshit TOS as visa and MC.
And this is even something I wasn't aware of! Shows there are plenty of other options <3
I'm actually hinting at something. But most people are too myopic and lazy to figure it out
Yea, should of been done before they started fuckin people over.
Choose what? And to WHAT payment processor? The ones behind this cover almost all western online transactions. I mean yeah, they could start using Russian versions that got yeeted off of western transaction systems due to the Invasion, but good luck convincing anyone to jump aboard that train.
Google is that-a-way *gestures vaguely*
Yes. There are providers. Most of them servicing a single country. You expect small operation like Itch to spend a fortune to contract every one separately? And what good does that even do when payment methods themselves - i.e. credit card companies and PayPal - are in on this BS?
You're not very good at this thinking thing eh? Google. Thataway >>>>
Cue all the 10k posts people getting mad it's not good enough and dreaming up a world where you walk back policies and magically sue payment providers
Incredibly based
No, I don't care what you have to say. Call the people responsible bsky.app/profile/dies...
About as good of a post as can be made. Anyone that isn't a developer that is complaining about Itch instead of Mastercard in the comments can't see the forest for the trees.
⚠️ @itchio.bsky.social ⚠️ Until you address having delisted LGBTQ creators even though it isn't "adult content," there is nothing you can say that will matter here. You have completely screwed yourself. You didn't just shoot your company in the foot, LT Dan, you blew off both legs. Bleeding out. RIP
Can you link us to a case where this happened?
While I obviously can't confirm my book was deindexed specifically for the LGBT/queer tags, I've yet to receive a response explaining why it was (and remains) unsearchable. Considering this has happened to other, largely queer content (the true targets of anti-porn campaigns), it's not a great look.
@seraphrdm.bsky.social is still delisted even being a YA book. Its not a great look and weird it even happened to begin with!
Furthermore, regarding your longstanding policy about not processing payouts for violations, people aren't complaining about bad actors not getting money. The issue people have is the "no chance of appeal" portion, i.e. no accessible recourse in the event y'all make a mistake.
Recent events have led to more people noticing this older section, and it's compounding people's anger and fear (with good reason) about the mess y'all made of this situation. But let's be perfectly clear: it's a crap, shady-looking policy regardless of recent events.
And doing that sounds like a scam to keep people's money on trumped-up and invented violations.
Can you send me your support ticket ID so I can look up your request and account? If it was already de-indexed then it's unrelated the recent event. We have a serious of automated heuristics that may affect any developer, independent tags like queer and LGBT: itch.io/docs/creator...
296890
And if you rely so heavily on automated heuristics, that just makes it all the more unconscionable that you wouldn't have an appeal process when it comes to content deemed in violation of policy. Art is far too nuanced to eliminate space for human-to-human communication.
You page was tagged for human review because you're a new publisher. This isn't something you need to appeal, it had nothing to do with the content of your page. We've cleared the queue and your page is eligible for indexing now. Thanks itch.io/docs/creator...
Thanks, but you’ve still failed to so much as acknowledge the concerns about your policy.
i know yall have been getting a lot of flak but the professionalism here is really commendable. i would be fuming.
they seem to have cogent and normal responses to people saying "hey my stuff is wrong" and then the person is like "hey thanks" when they fix it meanwhile everyone else in the thread is acting like only two things that can possibly exist, utopia or total fascism, therefore itch is fascism i guess
sorry this is off topic but fuck i need to defend my v-tetris records.
2 of my books are not indexed. I have 3 books published on knbrindle.itch.io When searching on my name, Common Accord appears in search results. A Memory of Blood and Magic and A Memory of War and Solace do not. Can you explain why this is the case? Neither of these books is "adult content"
It's worth noting that all of these books are available without any problems on Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, and Libby. Only itch seems to have a problem indexing them 🤷 I can't confirm these were de-indexed as part of this sweep (only itch can do that), but what other conclusion can I draw?
Thanks for sharing your account. I can confirm that your two pages were previously marked for human review from before we did a bulk deindexing last week. I've gone ahead and processed those pages and they should be appearing as normal.
We have a series of automated heuristics that can flag pages for review based on account behavior to help prevent abuse. The use of queer/LGBT related tags has no bearing on this, all content types are affected equally. I'm sorry your page got caught up in this.
Thank you for the clarity. Yes, some kind of indication on the dashboard listing would be immensely helpful.
As a side note you should really address this on your FAQ as well
This is mentioned on our getting indexed guide, "Why isn't my project showing up" section in the last bullet point but we understand that it may not be immediately obvious and we can do better about communicating a page's state to the owner. itch.io/docs/creator...
It's worth mentioning that they were not recent uploads... They've been on Itch for months. If I had known they were in a "temporary review" state, I might have raised this issue before now. It's only the recent controversy that made me think to check. Makes me wonder how long they've been unindexed
Dudes, the ACLU and the Guardian just called your asses out on this. www.theguardian.com/games/2025/j... and the pullquote "According to the games industry newsletter Game File, more than 20,000 games have been removed from itch.io’s NSFW category since 16 July."
We aren't denying that we deindexed NSFW adult content, we posted about that on our blog. We are denying the claim that non-NSFW content, specifically queer tags, were targeted. The reporter in the article you linked is spreading misinformation some games being removed: bsky.app/profile/leaf...
Y'all are back to contradicting yourselves. "We didn't deindex as much as that reporter said" vs "We have “deindexed” all adult NSFW content from our browse and search pages." So that reporter was clearly right and y'all are just trying to skin this.
@itch.io ok well go give an official statement to the guardian and the ACLU about this and be transparent about what got deindexed, why, and your new half-assed narrow but wide content guidelines. It's easy, go talk to the press, they're all over this. Be clear, be honest, be transparent. That's it.
@itch.io Cause here's the thing y'all, you haven't done that yet and it's making y'all look really bad. And then, coming here to the thread and saying "they're a bad faith reporter" sounds like you're blaming and deflecting, not addressing, which is what you need to be doing.
Our statement about the changes in here: itch.io/updates/upda...
We have a collection of platform guidelines that control if a page is indexed that have always been in effect. We believe that some developers saw the news, checked their game, maybe noticed their pages were deindexed for the first time, and assumed it was related. itch.io/docs/creator...
Oof. My question is: why is some gang of assholes in another country dictating company policy on the other side of the world? Why didn't payment processors tell them to get lost, & why didn't vendors like Itch (ostensibly the customers of Visa/MC, giving vendors the power) tell Visa/MC to get lost?
I will say though that Visa and MC will happily process payments still for bad dragon and other adult venues. And, alternative billing providers exist rather than direct billing. There are several "adult" payment processors out there that aren't in any kind of trouble with either CC.
That's a very valid question that needs answering. My guess is the payment processors felt that a smear campaign from CS was incoming? Alternatively, the CCs are on the side of CS moralistically. I don't think we'll get an answer though as to why a few thousand people have this much weight.
Start using bitcoin as your “payment processor” instead of the usual gang of idiots.
I haven’t been able to figure out why my book was delisted. Case number 294795 seraphrdm.itch.io/inaroras-exc...
We have replied to your support ticket, and are showing your project as indexed.
Ah so it was probably fixed this morning. Thank you
Ok I just want to add. I doubt Itch will read this. But it’s weird how suddenly within 2 hours of me asking, my book was re-listed. Like I checked at 5:50. She was de-indexed. I got to work at 7:30, it was indexed again.
Our regular indexing rules still apply to all projects. Just because a project happens to be deindexed does not mean it's because of the current NSFW audit. As long as you didn't explicitly mark you page as having adult content you were unaffected by July 24th's change. itch.io/docs/creator...
And yet you acted like it was never de-indexed for any reason when it clearly was. If it’s a glitch then say it was. Don’t tell us it wasn’t when it clearly was
It had LGBTQ, Trans, and Queer tags and I’ve checked everything:
Not queer content, but the first two books of my Hindu mythology based series were deindexed. None of my books have any nsfw content. @bjornlarssen.com books stay deindexed as well, and apart from queer tags, there's nothing that could have caused it
Were they always deindexed or you know the status changed on July 24th? I'm looking at the two pages you have tagged as NSFW but they don't have any other tags that would cause them to get deindexed. I don't see any current restrictions on your pages.
They were showing up in searches before and they aren't NSFW at all. None of my works are
Two of your pages have the "Has sensitive content" (aka NSFW) option checked on your metadata tab. This is what causes your page to only show up on browse and search when a user has opted into "NSFW" content: itch.io/docs/creator...
Speaking as an autistic creator, can you please use labels that literally mean what they say? I marked my book 'sensitive content' because it contains some explicit family violence and CPTSD. Its not for the faint hearted, so 'sensitive' seemed an entirely appropriate tag. Users seeking NSWF
content would be disappointed by it.
I don't know how that happened, but unchecked them now. I don't even open those tabs usually, lol. Thank you anyway
Even the ones that didn’t have the tags are deindexed. I am completely at loss as to why. Either the mention of Queer Indie Award or… or I don’t know, my hair is too shocking?
I got unbanned today!!! I just found out now, I was checking every day. I don’t know why I was shadowbanned and I also don’t know why I got unbanned. I also don’t know what will happen if I add the LGBT tags and the mention of Queer Indie Award in my bio back. Guess there’s one way to find out…
Hey @bjornlarssen.com you might have to say something on the matter, don't you.
My books got un-shadowbanned yesterday. I still don’t know why they got disappeared in the first place (one is historical fiction, one is a YA take on #NorseMythology) – or why they returned. Possibly thanks to @ormakal.bsky.social. Did the ‘Queer Indie Award winner’ bit trigger the ban, @itch.io?
No. Your pages were not affected by the deindexing last week. Also, I know it's semantics, but deindex ≠ ban. Learn more about our standard indexing process here: itch.io/docs/creator...
They were affected, though. Now they’re all visible again. Thanks for checking.
I don't see any evidence on your account of you tagging pages as having adult explicit content, so it was not affected by our NSFW content audit. Pages can be deindexed as part of our normal operations though: itch.io/docs/creator...
Fuck you, cowards.
This decision is dog shit.
dog shit? thats animal related
*situation
Hey @itch.io how about the viability of Brasilian Pix as a payment method?
i would like a more SPECIFIC guideline to what is and isnt allowed. the mouthwashing scandal may have been a misunderstanding, but according to the guidelines, because it contains IMPLIED non consentual content, it would have been banned. are we no longer at liberty to tell nuanced stories of abuse?
animal-related to this non-discription could also include anthropomorphic furry content where characters are fully able to consent as well as kemonomimi or petplay. these aren’t clear guidelines for adult content creators to follow
Is this due to Project 2025 and Trumps big beautiful bill which is basically Project 2025 as law?
You can roll the changes back. You just don't want to.
Sorry, this not an anime where a villain can be overthrown by power of friendship and believing in things really, really hard. No, this is real life. The villain destroys you without lifting a finger via financial ruination before you can utter your anime catchphrase.
If they rolled back the changes, they would be in violation of the terms being forced on them, have all payment options stripped from them overnight, and the entire site would shut down. What exactly are you asking for, here?
Sorry I just need to chime in and say thank you for being a voice of reason on this subject throughout the comments here. 🙏🏻 It’s difficult navigating so many uninformed opinions and misinformation right now. Literally this right now.
baby step in the correct direction, still some stuff that should be addressed in better detail like lgbt content being delisted, even when not nsfw
This hasn't actually been happening
Damn, my bad
And you didn't start accepting #crypto because...?
people are jumping up your ass but you are correct here, yes crypto has been badly abused by bad actors as a get-rich-quick scheme but avoiding this kind of censorship scenario is like the actual use case for it
Not "has been abused". It is "currently being abused".
not mutually exclusive statements
otoh the reason the reason itch doesn't deal in crypto is almost certainly because it's still very awkward to use compared to credit cards AND pretty volatile compared to other currencies AND they would have to set up a lot of new infrastructure that they didn't have any good reason to until now
I've also read that once someone tries to "cash out" into any other currencies the same questions get asked about what it was used for and where. Now I do not personally know that is true but it seems reasonable. And so it would just kick the football a little further down the road, if that's true
Yeah the problem with crypto is it's one of the clunkiest forms of payment processing right now, and significantly more volatile than just doing direct bank transfers.
i'd honestly rather mail a cheque than deal with it yeah
we're jumping up his ass because every single crypto leech piece of shit can go fuck themselves. Take your grift somewhere else, asshole.
i dont even use crypto mate
Then don't advocate for it, stupid
im sorry you cant understand nuance on the subject
Ah, there it is. Of course, it's just my fear, uncertainty, and doubt keeping me from believing in the scam. Fuck off lmao
this is a stupid decision but not as stupid as anybody who uses crypto
It's probably more than a couple of days work to get set up to accept crypto and work it into their finance model (do the creators accept crypto as a payment?) I hope they do look into it, but calling for it a couple of days after is a bit quick
Here's something I found. I also didn't know that Leaf is doing the site by himself!
I'm confused what the thing you found is meant to demonstrated considering it's just an AI output to a flawed prompt.
Check literally ANY of my recent posts I'm not an itch apologist, I'm just also a rational human being.
hash tag crypto fuck off, grifter
Not really grifting, it's just that we can't and shouldn't let payment processors have THAT much power! You think the government's gonna help? They'll make it worse! They always do!
lmao who said anything about the government
It is a grift. It is not a solution. It is a bunch of scammers competing with each other to be the scammer on top of the pile. The ONLY point we agree on is that payment processors should not be the singular make-or-break for the existence of LGBT+ content
Midnightman: The Voice of Midnight
Setting aside other issues: No online service at itch.io's scale can start accepting crypto in 2 weeks. Unlike many online POS setups, they have to change the storefront to intake it AND figure out how to (or pay someone to) convert crypto en masse for the sellers to get hard currency. 1/2
And even then, they have to convince all the people who currently use non-crypto payment services to buy on itch to convert, or lose that business. Either everyone does jumps, or you risk losing sales with friction around the crypto transition, or the payment processors maintain leverage. 2/2
