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Censorship of Adult Games at Itch and Steam
🕑 Added 2025-07-24 16:39:14 +0000 UTCThere’s been a lot of controversy over a recent Steam statement that they can no longer sell games that are against the rules with Visa and or Mastercard. This was the result of an Australian censorship group Collective Shout.
This morning itch-io posted their own statement that they are making changes too.
Why is an Australian group of nobodies pressuring Visa and Mastercard to pressure Steam and Itch? Because they can, because Visa and Mastercard lets them. This is not a government thing. The only kind of transactions credit cards are not allowed to make are transactions involving fraud and money laundering, there are no government rules otherwise.
But Mastercard has it’s own rules:
5.12.7 Illegal or Brand-damaging Transactions
A Merchant must not submit to its Acquirer, and a Customer must not submit to the Interchange System, any Transaction that is illegal, or in the sole discretion of the Corporation, may damage the goodwill of the Corporation or reflect negatively on the Marks.
The Corporation considers any of the following activities to be in violation of this Rule:
1. The sale or offer of sale of a product or service other than in full compliance with law then applicable to the Acquirer, Issuer, Merchant, Cardholder, Cards, or the Corporation.
2. The sale of a product or service, including an image, which is patently offensive and lacks serious artistic value (such as, by way of example and not limitation, images of nonconsensual sexual behavior, sexual exploitation of a minor, nonconsensual mutilation of a person or body part, and bestiality), or any other material that the Corporation deems unacceptable to sell in connection with a Mark.
Has this affected me?
Yes, itch.io delisted all their games that are NSFW from indexing, so you can't go to itch to search for any of my games. At some point they will let us self edit our games to make sure they fit the rules, but I don't know how long that will take.
Despite my games containing sex and nudity, there is NO non-consensual SA or mutilation, NO bestiality, NO incest, and NO under-aged characters in my games, regardless of the interpretation, I am not breaking the rules.
If the blog post is right, I should be back on itch soon, in the mean time go to https://datearianegames.com to purchase my games.
My games are not as popular because of my self censorship. Games with controversial “flavors” can be very popular. Steam and Itch both make money off my games and requests for take-downs will likely meet some resistance. Note that I also self identify the adult content of my games, and tell minors to go away.
Can it affect me?
Of course it can. Once the censorship starts, it can get worse and worse. That is why I am against censorship of this type no matter what it contains IF it is a fictional artistic work.
I absolutely don’t condone actual SA, especially CP, even for art. No one should.
Historically, censor campaigns always start in the fringe, and then eventually they go after GTA 6.
Games are a medium that are made by 2D and 3D artists. Even in explicit motion capture sex scenes, like the one in Cyberpunk 2077 between Johnny and Alt, it was made by actors wearing motion capture suits and no actual sex was happening.
I fully support adult gaming studios and their right to make money and sell the LEGAL games wherever they want. I also support full disclosure of content and the protection of minors from the content.
But adults have a right to adult games.
Porn is good for the soul
In the last 30 years, porn has gone from magazines and video tapes hidden under cashiers in stores to all over the internet largely accessible to all. Regardless of your opinion, one very positive outcome is that sexual assault cases are down overall world wide because of it.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201601/evidence-mounts-more-porn-less-sexual-assault
Just as violence in games has reduced violence in real life by quelling players violent instincts, sex in porn and games quells sexual violence and illegal acts. If a game does depict the stuff that Visa or Mastercard has banned, the game has value as a simulation of actions that people shouldn’t do.
A Very Old Debate
While video games have only been around about 50 years or so, forms of interactive entertainment are very old. The parallels between modern video games, and classic Greek tragic plays is very appropriate. Plato and Aristotle argued about their value to society especially how violent they get, and yes some of these classic Greek tragedies like Oedipus Rex included SA, incest, and bestiality.
To Aristotle “The tragic hero must be neither a villain nor a virtuous man but a “character between these two extremes,…a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty [hamartia].” (source Encyclopedia Brittanica) which is an apt description of every video game character from Mario to Lara Croft to Snake to V. They don’t start the tragedy, they just have to finish it.
Read the Encyclopedia Brittanica’s entry on Theory of tragedy for more. The debates between Plato and Aristotle were mirrored by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and by Steamworks and Collective Shout.
These debates come in cycles swinging between censorship and anti-censorship, and have for centuries. These attacks on artwork will eventually end.
How to have a voice
There are two petitions going around. One at the ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/petition/mastercard-sex-work-work-end-your-unjust-policy and one at change-org: https://chng.it/vShqmYg8hf
Sign them if you want to do something.
