GTA ‘at risk’ of being removed from stores in adult game crackdown

A video game retailer has warned titles like GTA and Saints Row could be pulled from stores, as payment providers continue to take action against adult content.

A number of gaming stores, including Steam and Itch.io, have recently taken action to remove certain types of adult games from their storefronts.

This has been instigated by payment providers such as Mastercard, PayPal, and Visa, which have been cracking down on purchases related to adult content. While this has gone some way to removing so-called ‘eSlop’ from stores, it has sparked wider concerns around censorship at large – with legal adult-themed content being potentially impacted as well.

Now, a retro games retailer named ZOOM Platform has echoed these concerns, and named titles like GTA, Saints Row, and Duke Nukem as being ‘potentially at risk’.

In a post from earlier this month, the team behind ZOOM Platform said one of their payment processors made them aware that a ‘fellow member of the industry’ was ‘concerned about our content’.

‘After we heard from the payment processor, we immediately engaged in lengthy discussions with both PayPal and Stripe,’ the statement, titled Preserving and Protecting Artistic Freedom, reads.

‘We worked with our contacts at the aforementioned payment processors to develop a tripartite solution to ensure the right to free speech and freedom of expression as well as protect the safety of our valued customers and partners.’

As a result of these negotiations, ZOOM Platform have implemented two-factor authentication to ‘safeguard’ accounts, along with a ‘wallet system’ so users can add funds to their account without needing external payment providers.

‘We have no plans to remove any titles, and will do absolutely everything in our power to prevent such de-listings,’ the platform added. ‘We are fervent supporters of artistic freedom and always will be.’

Following this announcement, games website GamingOnLinux received an email from the ZOOM Platform team stating that they expect these de-listings to expand further. From their discussions with payment providers, the company claims titles like ‘Grand Theft Auto, Duke Nukem, and Saints Row were described as potentially at risk’.

At time of writing, ZOOM Platform only has Duke Nukem titles listed, so the company is likely referring to how these rules could impact other stores too.

Rather than this being the idea of payment providers, it’s believed they’re acting under pressure from Australian organisation Collective Shout, which is ‘against the objectification of women’ and ‘the pornification of culture’.

However, after the actions of Steam and Itch.io, the organisation has since clarified that it only wanted to remove ‘content that involved sexualised violence and torture of women’, and not ‘all NSFW’ content.

Mastercard has similarly distanced itself from the censorship controversy, at least in regards to Steam, claiming it had ‘not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites’, but Valve has disputed this.

GTA and Saints Row have both been targeted for their sexually explicit nature over the years, and while they’re certainly not suitable for minors, they’re both a huge leap from some of the overtly explicit titles these measures are designed to take down.

Both franchises are, hopefully, too popular to ever be removed from stores, especially when you consider the kind of backlash that would occur, but it is a worrying sign if these titles are being mentioned during talks with payment companies.

GTA: San Andreas did come close to being effectively removed from sale in the US, during the Hot Coffee scandal in the mid-2000s, but since then it’s never faced any serious legal opposition.

The potential impact of these regulations has sparked a petition on Change.org, which has accumulated over 230,000 signatures.

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