Trade organizations across the games industry and gamers are speaking out against censorship campaigns taking place across Steam and Itch.io in an effort to help developers who have been unfairly impacted. The push against adult content is being driven by Australian conservative group Collective Shout, whose pressuring of payment processors has forced platforms to mass deindex NSFW content. In the wake of these delistings, which remove games from search, developers are scrambling to understand if their games have been impacted and why.

On platforms like Bluesky, users are compiling lists of “censored artists” with NSFW pieces and unsearchable Itch pages, whether it’s games or comics, many of whom identify their work as LGBTQ+ or kink friendly. WIRED was able to find several of these pages via Google, all of which were tagged by their creators in that document as LGBT and NSFW, but not with Itch’s search tools.

According to the International Game Developers Association, a nonprofit that supports game developers, this kind of censorship disproportionately affects developers who are queer, trans and people of color, on top affecting a creator’s income and reputation.

In a statement given to WIRED, executive director Jakin Vela says that the IGDA is “seriously alarmed” by the delistings and payment disruptions of adult-themed games on Steam and Itch. “Globally and politically, we are at a crossroads for developer rights, creative freedom, and platform accountability,” he says. “The right to make mature games with legal adult content is a creative right, just like the right to tell stories about war, death, or love.”

Over the past few months, Collective Shout has been campaigning to get “rape and incest” games removed from online platforms. The group began applying pressure to payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard; Valve removed hundreds titles, some of which included incest.

Other developers, however, such as the creators of horror game Vile: Exhumed, say their games did not violate these standards. “Vile: Exhumed was not banned for its use of gore in storytelling, or violent themes,” wrote developer Cara Cadaver in an update. “It was banned for ‘sexual content with depictions of real people,’ which, if you played it, you know is all implied, making this all feel even worse. I refuse to censor or make changes to the game, I will not retell a story about these topics in a way to make people who don’t understand feel more comfortable.” Valve did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Itch has deindexed all adult NSFW content. According to GameFile, that applies to over 20,000 games. “Our ability to process payments is critical for every creator on our platform,” founder Leaf Corcoran wrote at the time. “To ensure that we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers, we must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps towards compliance.”

In an email to WIRED, Corcoran said the company needed to finish conversations with payment processors “to understand where they stand so that we can make the right decisions going forward. We have been making good progress this week so hopefully we’ll have some updates to publish soon”.

The company has suspended its Stripe payments on 18+ content “for the foreseeable future” and is “actively reaching out to other payment processors that are more willing to work with this kind of content.”

Reached for comment, Stripe spokesperson Casey Becker said that the company does not comment on users. “Generally speaking, we take action when we conclude that users violate our terms of service,” Becker says. “We do not support adult content.” The company has a longstanding policy of not working with adult content services.

In a previous statement to WIRED, Collective Shout campaigns manager Caitlin Roper said the organization had had “no communication with payment processors” outside of an open letter. In a blog posted July 28, however, Collective Shout says it “approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.” Corcoran told WIRED that Collective Shout had not spoken to Itch.

According to experts, this is a powerful tactic known as financial censorship that weaponizes financial institutions’ aversion to anything controversial. It essentially sidesteps a platform’s own rules for what it will allow and puts that decision directly in the hands of payment processors, which impacts what companies are allowed to sell.

“Platforms have long had terms of service restricting content such as non-consensual acts, rape, incest, and material that violates payment processor guidelines,” says Vela. “The concern today is not the existence of these rules, but rather that their enforcement is adversely impacting games that do not actually violate these restrictions, often without warning or explanation.”

In response to one developer on Bluesky, Corcoran said the team is considering “adding an update to the dashboard to more explicitly show indexing status when the dust settles.”

Corcoran told WIRED that he believes the confusion stems from Itch not providing clear information on users’ dashboard about indexing eligibility of pages. “A handful of devs incorrectly assumed their pages were affected by our July 24th change and posted statements on social media,” he said. “Press publications picked up these posts without any further verification which led to an incorrect narrative being spread further.” Corcoran said that pages that were incorrectly assumed delisted were “due to our existing indexing eligibility rules outlined in our indexing guide, related to missing requirements like files uploaded, cover images, or in a few cases a ‘first time seller’ review process.”

The German games industry association, game, has called developers’ artistic freedom “fundamental to games as a cultural medium.” Managing director Felix Falk said in a statement that restrictions from payment service providers and gaming platforms should not override what’s legally allowed, and that service providers like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal’s terms and conditions should not conflict with free expression. “Creative forms of expression or certain themes as games, such as diversity, must not be targeted by individual interests or campaigns from particularly vocal groups, as is currently being observed on Steam or Itch.io,” Falk said.

The Entertainment Software Association, which represents the game industry in the US, declined to comment. The UK’s trade organization for games and interactive entertainment, Ukie, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In response to the Collective Shout’s campaign and the subsequent fallout, the IGDA is gathering information from affected developers, which it says will guide its future actions. “Games that feature consensual adult content, including queer, kink-positive, or romantic narratives, are easily targeted under vague or overly cautious enforcement, often forcing developers into silence or self-censorship because platforms fear perceived risks associated with hosting legal adult content,” says Vela.

The IGDA is advocating for concerned parties to contact financial institutions like Mastercard and Visa directly, as well as support online petitions that ask these companies to stop interfering with entertainment and sex work. “Mastercard and Visa have increasingly used their financial control to pressure platforms into censoring legal fictional content,” reads the campaign for a Change.org petition with over 185,000 signatures. “Entire genres of books, games, films, and artwork are being demonetized or deplatformed—not because they’re illegal, but because they offend the personal values of executives or activist groups”

Mastercard and Visa did not respond to requests for comment.

Since the delistings, gamers have been organizing on Bluesky, X, and Reddit, encouraging people to call companies like Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe to protest. One artist who makes adult content, who asked to remain unnamed out of fear of their financial accounts being affected, tells WIRED that they were “hung up on twice by Visa” on Tuesday. “The first time I was left on hold for about 10 minutes only to have the call suddenly disconnect. The second time I was told by a clearly frustrated rep that he would not connect me to a supervisor, and that Visa is no longer answering questions about policy.”

The artist says that while they’re approaching these calls as a consumer, because they sell comics on Itch, they’re also directly impacted by the new policies. “My audience, my friends, and my colleagues are all LGBTQ+, and are being overwhelmingly affected by this kind of censorship, where merely existing as a queer person is seen as inherently pornographic and fetishistic,” they say. “I also want to stress that all of us are working and creating art well within the bounds of the law.”

The artist describes Collective Shout and Morality in Media as “puritanical groups using the very real and legitimate fears of child exploitation to push through their right-wing policies.”

In the adult entertainment industry, platforms have faced similar pressures involving anti-porn groups claiming to fight sexual exploitation by using payment processors to get content banned. Visa and Mastercard previously cut off payments to Pornhub; OnlyFans briefly banned, and then reversed a stance on sexually explicit content due to bank influence. Just this week, new child online safety laws in the UK kicked in that now require millions of adults to submit to ID document uploads, face scans, credit card checks, and more to access pornography; similar age-verification laws have been implemented in over 20 states. Critics say although these measures are aimed at protecting kids, they open the door for a mountain of privacy and surveillance problems.

On its website, Itch has added an additional FAQ to address complaints, including addressing the difference between Itch and Valve’s responses. Because Itch is not a closed platform like Steam, the post reads, it has minimal barriers to platform users publishing content. “We could not rely on user-provided tagging to be accurate enough for a targeted approach, so a broader review was necessary to be thorough” the post reads. “…If we lose our ability to accept payments from a partner like PayPal or Stripe, we impact the ability of all creators to do business. Losing PayPal, for instance, would prevent us from sending payouts to many people.”

The company says it is still waiting for final determinations from its payment processors. “Itch.io can definitely have more transparency here,” says Corcoran, “and we’re sorry for the stress we caused to any developers who were caught up in the confusion.”

Update: 7/30/2025, 3:39 PM EDT: WIRED has updated the article with a comment from Itch.io