Over the past week, gamers have heavily criticized Australian group Collective Shout. The radical feminist organization has taken responsibility for changes to Steam’s payment processors that resulted in the removal of various adult games with taboo themes. As Collective Shout wrote on its official website today, the group has targeted nearly 500 games for removal on Steam, with 81 titles that the group still wants delisted from Valve’s storefront. As concerned consumers have dug into Collective Shout’s history to better understand its future plans, many have missed a key aspect hiding in the public eye: Collective Shout has the backing of several prominent anti-porn groups.
On July 11th, Collective Shout published an open letter to the CEOs behind PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, Paysafe, Discover, and JCB. On the post, Collective Shout includes signatures from executives at such censorship-prone organizations as National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) and Exodus Cry. Other allies include the anti-porn groups Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and the U.K. org CEASE. Both NCOSE and Exodus Cry have previously encouraged the removal of certain online content they deem harmful, with NCOSE in particular taking a strong focus on Steam.
Videos by VICE
One organization wants ‘HuniePop’ banned. Another hates the dancing Ankha meme
In 2018, NCOSE previously targeted a series of visual novels on Steam, briefly threatening the removal of these titles on Valve’s digital storefront. Steam ultimately reversed its decision to ban these games, instead opening the door to adult content on the platform. Since 2018, NCOSE has repeatedly mentioned Steam in its various articles, almost as if the anti-porn organization has been waiting for an opportunity to go viral with a censorship campaign against the platform. Did the group play a pivotal role in pressuring American payment processors to change their policies toward Steam? It’s plausible. NCOSE, which originally began as the religious “Morality in Media” organization, is a conservative group based in the U.S.
“HuniePop is a game available on Steam, a popular gaming platform that sells and distributes thousands of video games for all sorts of systems, including the PC, Mac, mobile devices, and more,” NCOSE wrote on its website in 2020. “Steam must be held accountable for not only allowing this game to be on their platform but for not providing proficient parental controls and safety features to make sure games of this nature are found by especially vulnerable children.”
Meanwhile, Exodus Cry led a viral online crusade against PornHub in 2020, resulting in significant changes to the world’s most popular adult content platform. Free Speech Coalition’s Mike Stabile has previously described Exodus Cry as “a faith-based activist group that believes all pornography and sex work should be banned.”
In 2022, Exodus Cry argued in a news post that online searches for “video games,” “Fortnite,” and “Pokemon” lead children to graphic sexual content. The article proceeded to criticize the viral Animal Crossing: New Horizons-inspired Ankha Zone NSFW dancing meme for “using a character from a popular children’s video game.” The phrasing is misleading; New Horizons was actually most popular with adults in their 20s and 30s. The Nintendo title became a household name among millennials and young adult Zoomers stuck inside amid the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
VICE has reached out to both Exodus Cry and NCOSE to better understand the organizations’ involvement with Collective Shout’s campaign.
Collective Shout seems to be misinterpreting the games they target
Yesterday, VICE requested specific details from Collective Shout on Steam games that, per the organization, depict “child abuse.” As of yet, the group has not clarified which games portray this subject matter and how. As this reporter covered yesterday, it seems incredibly unlikely that any adult Steam games depict underage characters in sexual scenarios. Valve previously pulled a visual novel over a hidden, inaccessible file of an 18+ scene with a character that Valve considered underage, even though the game’s publisher denied the claim. The visual novel was only restored to Steam when the offending file was removed.
In other words, it seems virtually impossible for Steam to host any adult games depicting “child abuse.” Rather, Collective Shout may be targeting popular video games that depict children in scenarios where they face distress or harm — even if these depictions are intended to encourage concern and care in the player. From there, the organization may be describing these titles as featuring “child abuse.”
In 2018, Collective Shout encouraged its supporters to sign a petition to ban Quantic Dream’s Detroit: Become Human from sale in Australia, claiming the game features “child abuse and violence against women.” The petition focused on an abusive father’s violent behavior toward his housekeeper and daughter in the game. This dynamic, core to the character Kara’s story arc, is intended to encourage empathy for the abused woman and child. While it’s unclear whether Collective Shout is actively targeting Detroit: Become Human in 2025, the removal of such a game would be akin to artistic censorship of material discussing misogynistic abuse against female family members. Targeting the game, in other words, could be considered anti-feminist in intent.
This isn’t the first time Collective Shout has used misleading language to target a video game for censorship. In 2014, the organization called on Target to remove Grand Theft Auto 5 from store shelves, sharing a petition that claims the game “encourages players to commit sexual violence and kill women.” Collective Shout described GTA as if it was a misogynistic funhouse, stating the game lets players “enact their fantasies of committing extreme violence against women, including punching women to the point of unconsciousness, killing them with a bat, gun or machete, running them down with a car, and setting them on fire as they continue screaming.”
No, ‘GTA’ is not a misogynistic funhouse
It’s true that GTA has come under scrutiny for its depiction of sex workers. The series has long faced controversy for a common healing tactic, where players have sex with a full-service sex worker to restore their health — and then promptly attack the provider to keep their money. However, GTA is not specifically built to ensure players carry out “their fantasies of committing extreme violence against women.” The open-world mayhem seen throughout the game, where players run into pedestrians and blow up cars, is designed as an equal opportunity chaos creator without a particular gendered focus. If anything, male law enforcement officials are commonly the target of player violence.
Nor is GTA V built entirely around hitting people with your car. At the core of the game is a single-player crime narrative, complete with its own cast of female characters in the spotlight. Again, Collective Shout’s 2014 campaign against Grand Theft Auto drastically misrepresented the game’s open-world design, suggesting the organization has a larger history of misinterpreting content within a game in order to drum up support.
Adult content creators and gamers alike have focused intensely on Collective Shout, and for good reason. The group is proudly touting its work pressuring payment processors to get hundreds of Steam games banned. But Collective Shout is the beginning, not the end, of a far larger issue. The organization is clearly networked with some far bigger players in the world of online censorship. Whether that’s Exodus Cry or NCOSE, it’s likely that Collective Shout has some heavy-hitters working behind the scenes in order to accomplish its goals.
But unless Collective Shout directly publishes its list of so-called “child abuse” games on Steam, its public bluster on the topic appears to be manipulative in nature, akin to how it treated GTA and Detroit: Become Human in the past. In other words, concerned feminists worried about Collective Shout’s credibility may want to side with the gamers on this one: The so-called feminist organization pushing for Steam censorship isn’t telling you the full truth.
