Latest news with #horrorgame
The Independent
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
‘Financial companies shouldn't be in this position': How more than 20,000 NSFW video games fell under censorship
A critically lauded horror game about the consequences of rape was among more than 20,000 titles caught up in a sweeping purge of adult video games from online storefronts. The furor started in April when an Australian anti-porn group called Collective Shout asked the video game marketplaces Steam and to ban an incest-themed rape simulator game. The game No Mercy urged players to 'never take 'no' for an answer' and caused an international outcry, with just under 70,000 people signing an online petition to ban it. It was swiftly blocked from sale in Australia, the UK and Canada; banned by Itch; and removed from Steam by its creators. Yet the backlash to that one extreme game caused thousands of others with general themes of sex, gender and LGTBQ experiences to also be removed — but not by any governmental action. The censorship came from the marketplace itself, due to pressure from payment providers such as Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and Stripe — some of which allegedly threatened to stop processing transactions altogether if swift action wasn't taken. 'The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently,' wrote Itch founder Leaf Corcoran on July 28. "Unfortunately, this meant it was not realistic to provide creators with advance notice before making this change." And as a result, many video game users and creators saw the campaign as unfairly targeting anything that is beyond the mainstream, with gaming often a creative outlet for people to explore complicated topics. 'For many LGBTQ+ developers, Itch is one of the very few places left on the internet for us to express our gender and sexuality,' game developer and scholar Robert Yang, whose erotic triptych Radiator 2 was apparently deindexed, told The Independent. According to veteran digital rights activist Rainey Reitman, there is a longstanding pattern of financial censorship by payment providers — who have every reason to yield to such campaigns and little impetus to resist. "These are companies that specialize in securing payments and preventing fraud,' Reitman, author of the upcoming book Transaction Denied: Big Finance's Power to Punish Speech, told The Independent. 'They don't have the expertise or the incentives to consider the societal and ethical ramifications of silencing certain voices and certain types of content.' 'It was critical that we acted as fast as possible' The spark for this crackdown came in May, when Collective Shout — a relatively small anti-porn group little known outside Australia — turned its attention to payment companies after allegedly being ignored by Steam. Though No Mercy had been pulled, the group said it found 'hundreds' of other such games, many of which were "too distressing to make public". On July 10 the group wrote an open letter asking payment companies to suspend all transactions on Steam and Itch until things changed. It was ambiguous about what exactly should be censored, referring sometimes to games that "endorsed" sexual violence and sometimes to games that "featured" or were "themed" after it. "There is of course a big difference between merely depicting something, or exploring a topic for the purpose of social commentary or critique, and promoting or endorsing it," Collective Shout's campaign manager Caitlin Roper told The Independent. "Our objection is to content that promotes sexualized violence, primarily against women... the intention was never to target NSFW content generally, or LGBT+ artists and creators." But, speaking to the gaming news site Aftermath, Itch founder Corcoran said Visa had issued a "policy notice" against the marketplace — which focuses on indie and arthouse games — that made middlemen such as PayPal and Stripe question doing business with it. Paypal and Stripe wouldn't comment on individual companies, but Stripe noted that it does not support adult content. Visa did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, Steam's parent company, Valve, alleged that Mastercard had leaned on its (unnamed) payment middlemen to demand that Steam change its existing rules — although Mastercard gave a different account. Steam's purge was relatively small, according to the tracking service SteamDB. Most banned games were explicitly pornographic and incest-themed, with titles such as Interactive Sex: Mom Son Incest and Sex Adventures: Incest Family. But Itch is a more hands-off platform, with less ability to judge case by case, so its purge was far less discriminate. The industry newsletter Game File reported that more than 20,000 games were unable to be found. Among the casualties was Mouthwashing, a widely praised indie horror game about the aftermath of sexual abuse aboard a space freighter, and SABBAT, a 2013 text adventure in which the player can transform into a weird giant monster creature and destroy capitalism. By July 31, all free NSFW games had been re-indexed, but Itch said it was still in talks about reinstating paid games. 'If had been moderating its platform properly, then these games would never have been impacted," Roper said. Still, some gamers and creators are suspicious of Collective Shout's politics, given its reported conservative connections. 'The right wing already routinely bans us and chases us off all the other websites! So [this] really does feel personal and anti-LGBTQ,' game developer Yang said. 'Sexuality is complicated, but Collective Shout and their right-wing allies exploit that complexity in bad faith. Do not believe them.' Payment companies have every reason to censor — and scarce motive not to To those who follow these payment companies, the speed and scale of the situation was unusual but not unprecedented. "I have heard of other situations in which websites received a very short window to address the concerns of the payment company," said Reitman, In 2022, a nude yoga website called True Naked Yoga was suddenly given "mere days" by Stripe to find a new payment processor, after operating for years without any problems, says Reitman, who founded the Financial Censorship Project. Since 9/11, financial institutions have increasingly been held responsible for stopping illegal or objectionable activity. Though initially targeted at money laundering and terrorist financing, these efforts have gradually expanded, with payment processors claiming broad discretion to refuse any legal transaction that might damage their brand. "Financial companies don't get a lot of benefit out of any one account," Reitman says. "It's often cheaper to close an account that's garnering attention than to pay the staff time to resolve issues with it," Reitman said. This is exacerbated by the role of reputation management companies that scour headlines and online marketplaces to flag risky e content. But the great adult videogame purge of 2025 shows reputational damage goes both ways. Payment companies have been swamped by calls from angry gamers, reportedly leading to desperate tactics such as hanging up on callers immediately or putting them on hold for 17 hours. "Financial companies shouldn't be in the position of reviewing and censoring online speech,' Reitman says. 'They don't have the expertise to do it, there is no transparency or accountability around their decisions, and nobody elected them to be the arbiters of morality online."
The Verge
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Dead Take's best scares come from real-life performances
Dead Take, the second game from Tales of Kenzera: Zau developer Surgent Studios, is a quiet horror game where the monster is ambition and the lengths a person will go for stardom. Like a lot of horror games, Dead Take relies on jumpscares to get the heart pumping. But playing this game, my deepest, most upsetting scares didn't come from the startle of a sudden knock but from the performances of the game's actors. In Dead Take, you play as Chase Lowry (Neil Newbon), a struggling actor who has come to the creepy mansion of Hollywood producer and kingmaker Duke Cain (Abubakar Salim), to look for his friend, Vinnie Monroe (Ben Starr), another struggling actor. The game mixes the exploration and puzzle solving gameplay of a Resident Evil game with a narrative delivered almost entirely via full motion video cutscenes, or known to us Olds as FMVs. I know FMV games have been around for a while, but this is my first, it felt novel in a way video games hadn't made me feel in a long time. As you journey through the mansion, the main thrust of the game is piecing together what happened to your friend Vinny. You do that through finding snippets of videos — interviews, auditions, and video messages — and splicing them together to create wholly new videos through the use of a fancy schmancy AI editor. These new videos reveal plot elements and puzzle solutions which all sound rather like the normal course of a video game until you realize these performers are acting their asses off. Throughout Dead Take, you watch Vinnie try to secure a role in Duke Cain's next big picture, something he is hungry to the point of desperation for. When a concerned call from Chase interrupts an audition, and Duke questions Vinnie's commitment, Vinnie brutally insults Chase. I like to inhabit the characters I play in video games. After all, they're mostly blank slates on which you can project your own thoughts and feelings. The character you pilot becomes a proxy for you even when they have their own personalities. I can't do that in Dead Take. Watching real, flesh and blood people act is so much more engrossing than hearing them act with the action mapped onto polygonal bodies. I played both Baldur's Gate III and Final Fantasy XVI, in which Newbon and Starr gave excellent performances. But watching them act, they're on another level. This is only a sample of what to expect from Starr. Starr scared me in this game. A couple of jumpscares got me real good, and even the quiet, unsettling mansion created an atmosphere where I literally jumped at my own shadow, but Ben Starr is the scariest thing in this game. There's a moment when, during yet another audition take, he starts screaming at his costar like Christian Bale that one time. It was so well done, so reminiscent of all the times I've had run-ins with violent, abusive men, that I forgot he was acting. Not all the performances are bone-chilling depictions of what it's like selling your soul to become the next big thing. There's some humor in there too. Sam Lake, known for his work (and dance moves) on Remedy's Alan Wake series, gives a hilarious appearance playing a washed up director. Because of plot shenanigans, Ben Starr and Neil Newbon are two British men, playing American actors pretending to be southern, and it is quite funny when those three-layers-deep accents occasionally break. But don't get me wrong, this game is all about the scares. Without FMVs, Dead Take would be a perfectly fine but forgettable game. Through the use of technology that peaked in the days of the LaserDisc, it's become one of my favorite horror games ever. I don't mind horror games, but I don't seek them out. I'm glad I sought out Dead Take is out now on 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. See All Entertainment Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Games Review Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Gaming Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All PC Gaming
The Independent
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
‘No Mercy': An ultra-violent video game wound up getting more than 20,000 NSFW gamer favorites censored — but not by who you'd think
A critically lauded horror game about the consequences of rape was among more than 20,000 titles caught up in a sweeping purge of adult video games from online storefronts. The furor started in April when an Australian anti-porn group called Collective Shout asked the video game marketplaces Steam and to ban an incest-themed rape simulator game. The game No Mercy urged players to 'never take 'no' for an answer' and caused an international outcry, with just under 70,000 people signing an online petition to ban it. It was swiftly blocked from sale in Australia, the UK and Canada; banned by Itch; and removed from Steam by its creators. Yet the backlash to that one extreme game caused thousands of others with general themes of sex, gender and LGTBQ experiences to also be removed — but not by any governmental action. The censorship came from the marketplace itself, due to pressure from payment providers such as Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and Stripe — some of which allegedly threatened to stop processing transactions altogether if swift action wasn't taken. 'The situation developed rapidly, and we had to act urgently,' wrote Itch founder Leaf Corcoran on July 28. "Unfortunately, this meant it was not realistic to provide creators with advance notice before making this change." And as a result, many video game users and creators saw the campaign as unfairly targeting anything that is beyond the mainstream, with gaming often a creative outlet for people to explore complicated topics. 'For many LGBTQ+ developers, Itch is one of the very few places left on the internet for us to express our gender and sexuality,' game developer and scholar Robert Yang, whose erotic triptych Radiator 2 was apparently deindexed, told The Independent. According to veteran digital rights activist Rainey Reitman, there is a longstanding pattern of financial censorship by payment providers — who have every reason to yield to such campaigns and little impetus to resist. "These are companies that specialize in securing payments and preventing fraud,' Reitman, author of the upcoming book Transaction Denied: Big Finance's Power to Punish Speech, told The Independent. 'They don't have the expertise or the incentives to consider the societal and ethical ramifications of silencing certain voices and certain types of content.' 'It was critical that we acted as fast as possible' The spark for this crackdown came in May, when Collective Shout — a relatively small anti-porn group little known outside Australia — turned its attention to payment companies after allegedly being ignored by Steam. Though No Mercy had been pulled, the group said it found 'hundreds' of other such games, many of which were "too distressing to make public". On July 10 the group wrote an open letter asking payment companies to suspend all transactions on Steam and Itch until things changed. It was ambiguous about what exactly should be censored, referring sometimes to games that "endorsed" sexual violence and sometimes to games that "featured" or were "themed" after it. "There is of course a big difference between merely depicting something, or exploring a topic for the purpose of social commentary or critique, and promoting or endorsing it," Collective Shout's campaign manager Caitlin Roper told The Independent. "Our objection is to content that promotes sexualized violence, primarily against women... the intention was never to target NSFW content generally, or LGBT+ artists and creators." But, speaking to the gaming news site Aftermath, Itch founder Corcoran said Visa had issued a "policy notice" against the marketplace — which focuses on indie and arthouse games — that made middlemen such as PayPal and Stripe question doing business with it. Paypal and Stripe wouldn't comment on individual companies, but Stripe noted that it does not support adult content. Visa did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, Steam's parent company, Valve, alleged that Mastercard had leaned on its (unnamed) payment middlemen to demand that Steam change its existing rules — although Mastercard gave a different account. Steam's purge was relatively small, according to the tracking service SteamDB. Most banned games were explicitly pornographic and incest-themed, with titles such as Interactive Sex: Mom Son Incest and Sex Adventures: Incest Family. But Itch is a more hands-off platform, with less ability to judge case by case, so its purge was far less discriminate. The industry newsletter Game File reported that more than 20,000 games were unable to be found. Among the casualties was Mouthwashing, a widely praised indie horror game about the aftermath of sexual abuse aboard a space freighter, and SABBAT, a 2013 text adventure in which the player can transform into a weird giant monster creature and destroy capitalism. By July 31, all free NSFW games had been re-indexed, but Itch said it was still in talks about reinstating paid games. 'If had been moderating its platform properly, then these games would never have been impacted," Roper said. Still, some gamers and creators are suspicious of Collective Shout's politics, given its reported conservative connections. 'The right wing already routinely bans us and chases us off all the other websites! So [this] really does feel personal and anti-LGBTQ,' game developer Yang said. 'Sexuality is complicated, but Collective Shout and their right-wing allies exploit that complexity in bad faith. Do not believe them.' Payment companies have every reason to censor — and scarce motive not to To those who follow these payment companies, the speed and scale of the situation was unusual but not unprecedented. "I have heard of other situations in which websites received a very short window to address the concerns of the payment company," said Reitman, In 2022, a nude yoga website called True Naked Yoga was suddenly given "mere days" by Stripe to find a new payment processor, after operating for years without any problems, says Reitman, who founded the Financial Censorship Project. Since 9/11, financial institutions have increasingly been held responsible for stopping illegal or objectionable activity. Though initially targeted at money laundering and terrorist financing, these efforts have gradually expanded, with payment processors claiming broad discretion to refuse any legal transaction that might damage their brand. "Financial companies don't get a lot of benefit out of any one account," Reitman says. "It's often cheaper to close an account that's garnering attention than to pay the staff time to resolve issues with it," Reitman said. This is exacerbated by the role of reputation management companies that scour headlines and online marketplaces to flag risky e content. But the great adult videogame purge of 2025 shows reputational damage goes both ways. Payment companies have been swamped by calls from angry gamers, reportedly leading to desperate tactics such as hanging up on callers immediately or putting them on hold for 17 hours. "Financial companies shouldn't be in the position of reviewing and censoring online speech,' Reitman says. 'They don't have the expertise to do it, there is no transparency or accountability around their decisions, and nobody elected them to be the arbiters of morality online."
Yahoo
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Palworld studio's publishing arm signs another "very exciting game" to add to its list of "bangers," not long after helping release a new horror game featuring Baldur's Gate 3 and Final Fantasy talent
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Palworld studio Pocketpair has published its first game after establishing the Pocketpair Publishing label back in January. Dead Take – a horror game developed by Tales of Kenzera: ZAU studio Surgent Studios, featuring Baldur's Gate 3's Neil Newbon and Final Fantasy 16's Ben Starr in lead roles – arrived last week, but the publisher is already teasing what's to come outside of its already-announced second title Truckful. In a tweet, Pocketpair Publishing celebrates the launch of its new game with a slightly threatening message, "We hope you've been enjoying Dead Take over the weekend! If not, then go enjoy it!" complete with an angry emoji. But rather than linger on its new game, the tweet continues: "In other news, we signed a very exciting new game! More info to come soon!" Pocketpair publishing manager John 'Bucky' Buckley adds a follow-up message, saying: "True BTW." He elaborates: "Signed a VERY exciting game a couple days ago. Really excited to share more info about it in future, but it needs to cook for a bit first!" That's not all, as Bucky confirms Pocketpair Publishing has "quite a few others in the wings that we'll start revealing soon though!" He assures fans that they are "all bangers of course." Considering we're mere weeks away from Gamescom, that probably fits into the criteria of "soon," but the publisher hasn't directly given a timeframe of when this could be, or any hints as to what the latest game is. Considering the publisher got 150 pitches within its first week, there's a world of possibilities for what type of game it could be. However, one thing you can cross off the list is Iron Galaxy's pro wrestling battle royale game Rumbleverse, which was shut down by publisher Epic Games after six months. When it was suggested by a fan, Pocketpair Publishing said "it's not." It is worth noting, however, that Bucky said earlier this month he "would love to hear more about" the FPS game that Romero Games was apparently working with Microsoft on before the publisher pulled funding amid its own massive round of layoffs. Considering that project was first announced back in 2022, it could be something that would be ready to announce "soon" if Pocketpair has in fact picked it up, but that's just speculation on my part. As Palworld update soars, IP expert says "weird" new moves from Nintendo in ongoing lawsuit read like a "desperate attempt to win by doing something odd."
Yahoo
08-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New Pocketpair-published horror game turns Balatro's live-action Jimbo actor into a jester again, devs insist it's "accidental," really: "No one will believe that we genuinely didn't mean to do this"
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Final Fantasy 16 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 actor Ben Starr has lent his talents to horror game Dead Take, and although one moment in it appears to be a direct nod to his other iconic role as Balatro's live-action Jimbo, the devs insist the apparent reference was "genuinely accidental." Dead Take – the latest game from Tales of Kenzera: ZAU studio Surgent Studios, and the first game to be published by the Palworld devs' publishing arm, Pocketpair Publishing – launched at the end of last month, and it didn't take long for players to spot the moment in question. The coincidence was highlighted in a video from streamer and content creator TadpoledRin, who shares a clip of them cautiously turning the handle of a jack-in-a-box, only to be jumpscared by a jester popping out of it, with a picture of Starr (or rather, his live-action character of Vinny Monroe) pinned to its face. "Balatro!" TadpoledRin declares, after recovering from the scare. Responding to this, the official Surgent Studios Twitter account says that "no one will believe that we genuinely didn't mean to do this," before digging up evidence from "the moment we realized" in late July. A series of messages from the studio's Slack chat shows one dev sharing a screenshot of the in-game jester alongside an image of Starr at this year's BAFTA Games Awards, dressed in full Jimbo attire. "This is the most incredible happy accident that just dawned on us," they wrote at the time, with their fellow devs responding "HOW HAVE WE NOT REALIZED THIS" and "if I had known I would have matched the colors and outfit." Back to the present day, and Dead Take creative director and founder of Surgent Studios Abubakar Salim reiterates that the whole thing was "genuinely accidental," which honestly makes the whole thing even funnier. What is it with games picturing Starr as a jester, all of a sudden? He really does rock the look, though, and to quote him from his aforementioned appearance at the BAFTA Game Awards: "This might be a rather confusing, and at first glance, suspiciously arousing moment. But don't worry, it's perfectly natural. Don't fight the feeling, Jokers have full sex now." I thought the scariest thing about Dead Take would be its Final Fantasy and Baldur's Gate 3 stars doing American accents, but no horror game has stunned me like this since 2022.
