Payment companies such as Visa, Mastercard and Stripe are facing public backlash, including from billionaire Elon Musk, for pressuring online gaming platforms to remove hundreds of games in response to a campaign from an Australian anti-porn lobby group.
Itch.io, an independent gaming platform, last week removed all adult or not-safe-for-work (NSFW) games from appearing in its library in a hasty move to prevent payments for games being blocked across its entire service.
Itch.io said that it was bowing to demands from payment providers “to ensure we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers”.
The move came after an open letter organised by Collective Shout, an Australian-based group that fights the sexualisation of woman and girls. On 14 July, it called on payment providers to cease providing services to gaming platforms Steam and Itch.io, claiming that hundreds of their games contained content including rape, sexual violence and incest.
Itch.io’s swift compliance, however, meant removing not just the content in Collective Shout’s claim but all NSFW adult content from browsing and search – at least temporarily. Some games were also removed entirely.
“This is a time critical moment for itch.io. The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently to protect the platform’s core payment infrastructure,” they said.
“Unfortunately, this meant it was not realistic to provide creators with advance notice before making this change. We know this is not ideal, and we apologise for the abruptness of this change.”
Some users reported they were unable to play games removed from sale that they had already paid for, which Itch.io has denied.
Collective Shout, a small but vocal lobby group, has long called for a mandatory internet filter that would prevent access to adult content for everyone in Australia. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the government’s age assurance technology trial before the under-16s social media ban comes into effect in Australia in December.
Collective Shout routinely focuses its campaigns on underwear advertising and video games in Australia. It has recently campaigned for Elon Musk’s X to ban adult content, but the success of its recent campaign against gaming platforms has brought them the most international attention.
In the two weeks since announcing the letters sent to major payment providers including PayPal, Mastercard and Visa, video game marketplaces Itch.io and Steam have announced policy changes.
Steam, which has an estimated 132 million active monthly users, earlier this month removed an estimated hundreds of titles in response to pressure from payments processors.
Tankard Reist said she and her team had been bombarded with “abuse, harassment, rape and death threats” since the campaign launch, which the team was compiling to report to the eSafety commissioner and the police.
By Monday, a Change.org petition calling for payment processors to “stop controlling what we can watch, read, or play” has garnered more than 147,000 signatures.
“Nobody is forced to engage with content they find offensive – but they have no right to dictate what others are allowed to enjoy, especially when it’s within the bounds of the law,” it said.
Elon Musk posted “bravo” in response to an X user’s post about the petition, and – in another reply to criticism of a payments processor forcing the removal of content – said he wanted to get his own X payments platform “going soon”.
While Collective Shout solely targeted games it said violated policies held by payment platforms, Itch.io’s move to temporarily remove all NSFW videos resulted in games with LGBTQ+ content being removed.
One petition signer who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community said they were concerned that banning sexual-based games would be the start of cracking down on LGBTQ+ content.
“Banning sexual content never stops there, it always include non-sexual things. As such the fight to protect peoples’ right to sexual expression is vital for protecting my right to exist,” they wrote.
Tankard Reist said the blanket removal of NSFW games was not the objective of the campaign, noting that Itch.io has said it would introduce compliance measures for NSFW pages to allow games as long as they abided by the policies of the payment processor linked to their account.
“It is likely many games will be restored to the platform after Itch.io’s review,” she said. “Payment processors have a right to determine what services they will provide … according to their CSR [corporate social responsibility], mission and values.”
Asked whether the incoming Online Safety Act codes, which restrict access to content refused classification in Australia and bring in age verification for adult content, would have been a better place for the concerns raised by her group, Tankard Reist said the issue did not affect Australia alone.
“The internet has no borders. Women and girls everywhere are impacted by male violence against women and misogyny in general which we believed these games perpetuated,” she said. Collective Shout could not afford to wait to see if the codes and age verification would be effective, she added.
Mastercard and Visa were contacted for comment. Steam did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for PayPal said it could not comment on individual customers. “PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe platform for its customers. We have a zero-tolerance policy towards any illegal activity. Any accounts found to be associated with illegal activity will be closed.”
