Itch.io is the latest marketplace to crack down on adult games

Marketplace ITCH.IO announced this week that “Deindexed” is from adults and insecurity for work, which removes it from the pages of browsing and searching.

The company said that this step was in response to a campaign by the Collective Shout group (a group of support criticized by video games, rap music and internal ads) targeting Itch.io and Steam to sell “No Mercy”, a game that depicts rape and planting.

In an open message addressed to PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and other payment treatments, Collection Shout said that games “support the abuse of men and torture for women and girls in the face of efforts against violence against women.”

The Foundation added: “We do not see how to facilitate payment transactions and extract financial benefit from these violent and immoral games, in line with your company’s values and task data.”

The campaign seems to have succeeded, as Steam said earlier this month that it would prohibit games that “may violate the rules and standards determined by Steam payment processors, card networks, related banks, or Internet providers.”

Likewise, ITCH.IO said, “To ensure that we can continue to work and provide a market for all developers, we must give priority to our relationship with our partners to pay and take immediate steps towards compliance.”

He also said that “no mercy” was “temporarily available on ITCH.IO before it was banned in April”, and that “the situation has evolved quickly”, forcing the company to “act urgently to protect the infrastructure for the basic payment of the platform, without providing an advanced notice to the creators.

The company said it is now “a comprehensive scrutiny” to ensure that the games available in the market meet “the requirements of our payment processors”, while the remaining adult content remains until the audit is complete. After checking, ITCH.IO said that creators in NSFW will be asked to confirm that their content is permitted under their payment policies associated with their account.

On social media, users who criticize the decision of Itch.io indicated that its current conditions announce that violations of the content of adults are “permanent without any opportunity to appeal” and that any money in a violating account “will not be qualified to pay” – or as one of the developers said, “If you violate the rules, we take all your money.

This is far from the first time that payment companies seemed to have pressed online platforms on adults content – for example, Gumroad pointed last year to restrictions of payment processors when strict rules are implemented around ART NSFW, and not only blamed “banking partners and payment providers” when banning an explicit content (a decision that explodes later).

A Change.org Seams with more than 137,000 verified signatures criticizing MasterCard and Visa for their role in these types of decisions. Among other things, the petition demands that “payment companies stop monitoring the legal fictional content that corresponds to the standards of law and platform” and “refusing to influence active groups that enhance moral or imaginative panic as harm.”