Latest news with #CollectiveShout
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
How an anti-porn lobby on payment processors censored thousands of video games
Video game developers are speaking out after two popular PC games stores made it harder — even impossible — to purchase thousands of games and other digital artworks, as a result of pressure exerted by an Australian anti-porn advocacy group. The takedown came after Collective Shout successfully lobbied payment networks and processors to stop facilitating financial transactions from storefronts Steam and until games with certain content were removed. But developers say the range of affected works goes well beyond games with explicit sex scenes. Also caught in the sweep are a teen-rated romantic comedy game (new window) , some LGBT-themed games by award-winning developer Robert Yang, and a 1920s alternate-history art book that has no sexual content (new window) . This is incredibly worrying, said Adrienne Bazir, a Toronto-based game developer and artist who makes LGBT games. Even just queer people holding hands is seen as not safe for work. CBC spoke to over a dozen Canadian games developers, creators and industry watchers who say the situation highlights the power held by international financial institutions in determining what kinds of art is deemed acceptable for others to consume, and frequently forces LGBT content and narrative into the darkness. What's happened so far? In July, Collective Shout published an open letter (new window) saying Steam and Itch hosted games with rape, incest and child sexual abuse content. About a week later, Steam removed hundreds of games with adult or sexual content from sale. Steam, the world's largest storefront and management platform for PC games with a reported 132 million active monthly users, said in a statement that certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks. It has the effect of shrinking the space available for diverse sexual expression. Jean Ketterling, University of Saskatchewan Payment processors include credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard, and other companies that can facilitate purchases like PayPal and Stripe. Those games were removed from sale to ensure customers could purchase other titles and game content, the statement added. On July 28, Itch, a relatively smaller player, deindexed all games and other works on its site with the NSFW (not safe for work) tag. That means you can't find those works on the site unless you know the exact name of the creator or game. According to Game File reporter Nicole Carpenter, searching the NSFW tag on Itch before July 28 brought 7,167 results. Today, it surfaces five or fewer. Enlarge image (new window) Video game developers are speaking out against Visa, MasterCard and other payment companies for blocking the sale of certain adult content on gaming stores Steam and Photo: Maxim Zmeyev Itch's creator Leaf Corcoran said (new window) the site's staff is conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors. He later said (new window) Itch is seeking other payment processors that are willing to work with platforms hosting adult content. CBC reached out to several payment processors for comment. In a statement, Stripe said, We do not support adult content, while PayPal replied that it will take action on anything that violates the law, our policies, or the policies of our partner banks and card networks. Risky business? Collective Shout is an advocacy group that describes itself as a movement against the objectification of women and the sexualization of girls. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, told CBC that her group reached out to payment processors after receiving no reply to about 3,000 emails sent to the Valve Corporation, which owns Steam. Tankard Reist said the group was not seeking to have Itch deindex all its NSFW gaming content. However, developers, artists and other supporters say the campaign has affected works with sexual content that don't cross the line into abusive or illegal behaviour. Enlarge image (new window) Jean Ketterling is an assistant professor in political studies at the University of Saskatchewan's women's and gender studies program. Photo: Submitted by Jean Ketterling That statement doesn't ring true for Jean Ketterling, a University of Saskatchewan assistant professor who specializes in the study of sex and video games. This is a tried-and-true playbook. It has the effect of shrinking the space available for diverse sexual expression, she said. Ketterling pointed to a long history of anti-porn or anti-sex work organizations campaigning against content they deem to be obscene, immoral or illegal. Similar recent cases involved lobbyists targeting payment processors for OnlyFans and Pornhub. WATCH | When pressure from banks almost led to OnlyFans banning sexual content: We're seeing a lot of LGBTQ content come up. We're seeing a lot of stuff that's not even pornographic, but that is just exploring sexual violence or exploring the trans experience, she said. Val Webber, a postdoctoral researcher at the Sexual Health and Gender Research Lab (SHAG) at Halifax's Dalhousie University, says high-risk categories for payment processors typically include items with a potential for fraud or that contain potentially illegal content — such as adult content, firearms, gambling and some medications. But the processors' terms of service aren't always clear, leading to a wide interpretation of what kinds of content can be considered high-risk, she said. They're effectively in charge of creating de facto obscenity law without ever naming specific sexual acts or fantasies or content that is, in fact, not allowed on the platforms, she said. Several Canadian developers and artists are frustrated that an Australian lobby group and U.S.-based payment processors have impacted their income. What we have is a situation where American financial institutions are able to do de facto censorship on a global scale against content that isn't illegal, said Ash Krieder, an independent romance writer based in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., whose works were deindexed from Itch. This is hampering freedom of speech in our country. Enlarge image (new window) An image by Vancouver-based artist Aurahack. She says her profile was delisted from Itch search following pressure from payment processors. CBC has agreed not to print Aurahack's real name for reasons of safety. Photo: Aurahack Tankard Reist said location is irrelevant. 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. The counter-campaign Affected developers and their supporters have started phone campaigns and petitions to pressure payment processors to reverse their actions. One site lists several email addresses and phone numbers for people to lodge their complaints with Visa, MasterCard and other payment companies. "What we know about Collective Shout is that they managed to put pressure on those payments processors with only 1,000 calls (new window) or emails," said Bazir. And we're like, well, there's more than 1,000 of us, so we can beat that.
The Guardian
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Why did thousands of adult titles just disappear from the biggest PC gaming marketplaces?
In the last two weeks, thousands of 'adult only' and 'not safe for work' games have disappeared from Steam and – two of the most prominent distribution platforms for PC video games – as they scrambled to comply with stricter rules mandated by payment processors such as MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal. These rules were established after a campaign by the organisation Collective Shout, which urged payment processors to stop facilitating payments to platforms hosting 'rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games'. But the new rules have affected a far broader range of games – including some award-winning titles. On 16 July, Valve, the developer of Steam, updated its rules and guidelines regarding the games and software that can be distributed on the platform. The rules, which already prohibited 'nude or sexually explicit images of real people' and 'adult content that isn't appropriately labelled or age gated' were expanded to include 'content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors' including 'certain kinds of adult content'. In a statement to PC Gamer on 18 July, Valve confirmed it was 'retiring' several games from the Steam store due to these new rules. It did not clarify which games were being removed, nor what 'kinds of adult content' are now deemed unsuitable. A week later, issued a statement explaining it had also come under 'scrutiny' from payment processors, and as such was 'deindexing' (removing from search results) all games labelled 'NFSW' as it undertook a 'comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors.' Unlike Valve, specifically referenced Collective Shout as the cause of the renewed scrutiny. Collective Shout is an Australian organisation that describes itself as 'a grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls'. In April, it successfully petitioned to have the game No Mercy – which featured depictions of 'incest', 'blackmail' and 'unavoidable non-consensual sex' – removed from Steam and After this, the group published an open letter to payment processors claiming to have 'discovered hundreds of other games featuring rape, incest and child sexual abuse on both Steam and and requesting payment processors 'demonstrate corporate social responsibility and immediately cease processing payments on Steam and After Steam altered its rules, Collective Shout claimed credit for the change, stating that more than 1,000 of its supporters had called or emailed payment processors to demand they 'stop facilitating payments and profiting from these games'. Like many online retailers, Steam and rely on payment processors to enable users to make purchases on their platforms. As such, these companies hold considerable power and can influence what products – regardless of their legality – are bought, sold or published. In recent years, payment processors have become increasingly strict about transactions relating to adult content. In 2021, the subscription-based video platform OnlyFans, widely used by adult content creators, announced it would ban adult material from the site after pressure from payment processors – though this plan was subsequently abandoned. Later that year, Mastercard imposed a new policy regulating adult content sellers – one criticised by the American Civil Liberties Union as being restrictive to free speech and potentially harmful to sex workers – and an example of what is known as financial censorship. It isn't clear how many games have been 'retired' from Steam due to the new rules, but multiple games that depicted incest fantasies have been removed. as mentioned, has deindexed most games labelled NSFW. According to the games industry newsletter Game File, more than 20,000 games have been removed from NSFW category since 16 July. But these include games that explore queer identity and sexuality, such as Radiator 2 by Robert Yang, a former teacher at New York University's Game Center. Update: Itch has released an addendum on its website stating that it is working to clarify new payment processing policies, and is seeking alternate payment partners for adult-rated content. Many developers have decried the power that payment processors wield over what games are bought and sold, and how that power can be exerted indirectly by campaign groups such as Collective Shout. In a Bluesky post, Yang described Collective Shout and payment processors as 'waging culture war against LGBTQ people and sexual expression', while Consume Me's developers told Wired that it is 'completely unacceptable that payment processors are conducting censorship-by-fiat and systematically locking adult content creators out of platforms'. A petition calling for payment processors and activist groups to 'stop controlling what we can watch, read, or play' was launched on 17 July. The petition claims 'MasterCard and Visa are interfering with legal entertainment', and demands 'the right to choose the stories we enjoy without moral policing'. So far it has accrued more than 150,000 signatures. Meanwhile, gamers and developers are sharing the phone numbers of major payment companies and encouraging people to call and complain. It is hard to know for sure. With sustained consumer pressure, payment processors may reconsider their position, but it may also be challenging for anti-censorship voices to muster political support due to prevailing legislative winds surrounding online adult content. The UK this month enacted stricter regulations regarding age verification for internet users wanting to access adult content, while the EU has drafted guidelines for similar systems. Consequently, it is likely that the new rules will remain in place at Steam and at least for the immediate future. But the fallout has drawn attention to the power that payment processors wield, and the lack of clarity surrounding their rules. Because of this, they may tread more cautiously when responding to pressure from advocacy groups in the future. This article was amended on 30 July 2025. An earlier version stated that the games Last Call and Consume Me had been deindexed on the digital platform as a result of new payment processing rules; however, Last Call has not been affected and Consume Me was not previously indexed.
CBC
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
How an anti-porn lobby on payment processors censored thousands of video games
Social Sharing Video game developers are speaking out after two popular PC games stores made it harder — even impossible — to purchase thousands of games and other digital artworks, as a result of pressure exerted by an Australian anti-porn advocacy group. The takedown came after Collective Shout successfully lobbied payment networks and processors to stop facilitating financial transactions from storefronts Steam and until games with certain content were removed. But developers say the range of affected works goes well beyond games with explicit sex scenes. Also caught in the sweep are a teen-rated romantic comedy game, some LGBT-themed games by award-winning developer Robert Yang, and a 1920s alternate-history art book that has no sexual content. "This is incredibly worrying," said Adrienne Bazir, a Toronto-based game developer and artist who makes LGBT games. "Even just queer people holding hands is seen as not safe for work." CBC spoke to over a dozen Canadian games developers, creators and industry watchers who say the situation highlights the power held by international financial institutions in determining what kinds of art is deemed acceptable for others to consume, and frequently forces LGBT content and narrative into the darkness. What's happened so far? In July, Collective Shout published an open letter saying Steam and Itch hosted games with "rape, incest and child sexual abuse" content. About a week later, Steam removed hundreds of games with adult or sexual content from sale. Steam, the world's largest storefront and management platform for PC games with a reported 132 million active monthly users, said in a statement that "certain games on Steam may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks." It has the effect of shrinking the space available for diverse sexual expression. - Jean Ketterling, University of Saskatchewan Payment processors include credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard, and other companies that can facilitate purchases like PayPal and Stripe. Those games were removed from sale to ensure customers could purchase other titles and game content, the statement added. On July 28, Itch, a relatively smaller player, deindexed all games and other works on its site with the NSFW (not safe for work) tag. That means you can't find those works on the site unless you know the exact name of the creator or game. According to Game File reporter Nicole Carpenter, searching the NSFW tag on Itch before July 28 brought 7,167 results. Today, it surfaces five or fewer. Itch's creator Leaf Corcoran said the site's staff is "conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors." He later said Itch is seeking other payment processors that are willing to work with platforms hosting adult content. CBC reached out to several payment processors for comment. In a statement, Stripe said, "We do not support adult content," while PayPal replied that it will take action on anything "that violates the law, our policies, or the policies of our partner banks and card networks." Risky business? Collective Shout is an advocacy group that describes itself as a "movement against the objectification of women and the sexualization of girls." Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, told CBC that her group reached out to payment processors after receiving no reply to about 3,000 emails sent to the Valve Corporation, which owns Steam. Tankard Reist said the group was not seeking to have Itch deindex all its NSFW gaming content. However, developers, artists and other supporters say the campaign has affected works with sexual content that don't cross the line into abusive or illegal behaviour. That statement doesn't ring true for Jean Ketterling, a University of Saskatchewan assistant professor who specializes in the study of sex and video games. "This is a tried-and-true playbook. It has the effect of shrinking the space available for diverse sexual expression," she said. Ketterling pointed to a long history of anti-porn or anti-sex work organizations campaigning against content they deem to be obscene, immoral or illegal. Similar recent cases involved lobbyists targeting payment processors for OnlyFans and Pornhub. WATCH | When pressure from banks almost led to OnlyFans banning sexual content: OnlyFans to soon ban sexually explicit content after pressure from bankers 4 years ago "We're seeing a lot of LGBTQ content come up. We're seeing a lot of stuff that's not even pornographic, but that is just exploring sexual violence or exploring the trans experience," she said. Val Webber, a postdoctoral researcher at the Sexual Health and Gender Research Lab (SHAG) at Halifax's Dalhousie University, says "high-risk" categories for payment processors typically include items with a potential for fraud or that contain potentially illegal content — such as adult content, firearms, gambling and some medications. But the processors' terms of service aren't always clear, leading to a wide interpretation of what kinds of content can be considered high-risk, she said. "They're effectively in charge of creating de facto obscenity law without ever naming specific sexual acts or fantasies or content that is, in fact, not allowed on the platforms," she said. Several Canadian developers and artists are frustrated that an Australian lobby group and U.S.-based payment processors have impacted their income. "What we have is a situation where American financial institutions are able to do de facto censorship on a global scale against content that isn't illegal," said Ash Krieder, an independent romance writer based in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., whose works were deindexed from Itch. "This is hampering freedom of speech in our country." Tankard Reist said location is irrelevant. "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." The counter-campaign Affected developers and their supporters have started phone campaigns and petitions to pressure payment processors to reverse their actions. One site lists several email addresses and phone numbers for people to lodge their complaints with Visa, MasterCard and other payment companies. with only 1,000 calls or emails," said Bazir.
WIRED
a day ago
- Entertainment
- WIRED
Gamers Are Furious About the Censorship of NSFW Games—and They're Fighting Back
Jul 30, 2025 2:51 PM As industry groups decry censorship, players are flooding Visa and Mastercard with complaints and sharing the titles of delisted NSFW games to support developers. The logo of Steam, a video game digital distribution service and storefront developed by Valve Corporation, shown on a smartphone. Photograph:Trade organizations across the games industry and gamers are speaking out against censorship campaigns taking place across Steam and 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. '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.' 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.' Itch did not respond to a request for comment. 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.' 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 did not respond to a request for comment. 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 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 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.
The Verge
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
The chaos and confusion of Itch and Steam's abrupt adult game ban
Two of the biggest digital games stores have stopped selling thousands of titles following pressure from a coalition of anti-porn advocates and the world's biggest payment processing companies. It's happened before, will likely happen again, and is suppressing art, free expression, and marginalized creators. Last week, the indie gaming storefront sent out a sudden notice to the creators that use the site to sell their games, books, art, and other media; it had 'deindexed' all content with the NSFW (not safe for work) tag, meaning works with that tag would no longer turn up in searches, effectively making it impossible to discover or purchase them. Last week, Steam did similarly, removing a swath of games from its platform after implementing stricter policies related to adult content. In its announcement, founder Leaf Corcoran explained that the reason for this drastic action was pressure applied to the company's payment processors by Collective Shout — an Australian nonprofit organization that describes itself as 'a grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls.' 'Due to a game titled No Mercy, which was temporarily available on before being banned back in April, the organization Collective Shout launched a campaign against Steam and directing concerns to our payment processors about the nature of certain content found on both platforms,' Corcoran said. Released in March before being delisted by both Steam and in April, No Mercy was described by Collective Shout as a 'rape simulator.' Its developer, Zerat Games, denied this, describing it as a '3D choice-driven adult visual novel with a huge focus on blackmail and male domination.' As a result of Collective Shout's actions, in tandem with the payment processors, over 20,000 games, books, comics, and other creative works — confirmed via the Internet Archive — functionally ceased to exist on the site (though purchased content remains in users' libraries so long as it doesn't violate new guidelines), imperiling the creators who depend on sales from In addition to NSFW content, notable projects that didn't have the tag were caught up in the purge as well. One example is Consume Me, a game about disordered eating and the recent recipient of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2025 Independent Games Festival, which was delisted. There's also concern that this deindexing event will have a disproportionate impact on queer creators, and in the immediate aftermath there has been confusion about the distinction between 'NSFW' and 'adult' content, with a lot of LGBTQ+ stories and games falling under the umbrella of the former. 'My SFW sci-fi comic that's no worse than a standard Marvel movie also got deindexed... but it had the LGBT tag,' wrote Yuki Clarke, a comic artist, on Bluesky. Whenever a platform announces a blanket ban on adult content, LGBTQ+ creators are almost always disproportionately affected, harming queer artists and invariably queer people. In 2021, eBay's removal of its 'Adult Only' section eliminated a popular storefront for LGBTQ+ erotica artists and collectors. In 2022, Tumblr settled with the New York City Commission on Human Rights because its 2018 ban of 'adult content' had a discriminatory impact on queer creators. Several creators have said that their SFW content with the LGBT tag have been deindexed. has responded to some of these claims on social media, saying, 'The deindexing was determined by how creators classified their pages: specifically if the page was tagged as NSFW and as having adult content.' However, there have also been reports that content with the LGBT tag but not the NSFW or Adult tags were still getting delisted, creating confusion about just what kind of works was pulling from its store and why. The Verge has reached out to for clarification. On Bluesky, in response to a creator claiming their LGBT books were delisted despite not having any adult or NSFW tags, the account answered, 'We have a series of automated heuristics that can flag pages for review based on account behavior to help prevent abuse.' It further explained that the LGBT or queer tags wouldn't affect that system. acknowledged that the blanket delisting of all its adult content wasn't ideal and has created concern among its users. But the threat of losing its payment processors required emergency action. 'The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently to protect the platform's core payment infrastructure,' Corcoran wrote. Typically, payment processors take actions like this to ensure their products aren't being used to purchase illegal content. In Steam's case, it updated its guidelines to include a rule that prohibits publishing material that 'may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors.' In an email, Casey Becker, spokesperson for Stripe, responded that it does not comment on users directly but, 'generally speaking, we take action when we conclude that users violate our terms of service. We do not support adult content.' Payoneer, one of other payment processors, declined to comment. The Verge has also reached out to PayPal, the last of listed payment processors, for comment. Payment processors have frequently been the reason behind content bans. Though Collective Shout was the inciting agent, it's companies like Visa, Stripe, and others that are responsible for these kinds of acts of mass censorship. In 2014, PayPal threatened to remove all its services from Patreon because the site hosted adult content creators. (PayPal would reverse this decision two years later, but Patreon still makes it difficult for sex workers and porn creators to do business on the website.) In 2021, OnlyFans, a website synonymous with porn, announced that it would ban all sexually explicit content to 'comply with the requests of [the platform's] banking partners and payout provider.' Six days later, OnlyFans would reverse the decision, citing assurances from its banking partners. Scratch a porn ban, and you'll find a PayPal. These processors have enormous power over their clients, and that influence can be used to achieve goals that have nothing to do with consumer choice or safety. is forced to comply with their demands or risk being unable to function entirely. '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,' Corcoran wrote in announcement. says that it is in the process of reviewing and removing NSFW and adult-tagged content that violates its terms of service, while also updating those terms. 'For NSFW pages, this will include a new step where creators must confirm that their content is allowable under the policies of the respective payment processors linked to their account,' the announcement read. It has also updated its July 24th announcement to include answers to commonly asked questions that had been circulating social media, debunking rumors surrounding whether was withholding payments and addressing why such drastic action had to be taken so disruptively. The company also says it's working on finding new payment processors. Players and users are fighting back, flooding Visa and Mastercard customer service lines with complaints. A database has been created where creators can list their deindexed work for people to browse and purchase on alternative sites. Some creators are also removing their work from and are threatening to leave it altogether, as updated NSFW policy makes bans permanent and irreversible while explicitly threatening subversive art. 'Our policy is not an invitation to push the boundaries of what is acceptable. Violations that result in administrative action are permanent with no chance of appeal,' the creator FAQ reads. 'Any funds on the account will not be eligible for payout. There is no second chance.' Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Ash Parrish Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. 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