The indie game store says it is about compliance. Critics say it is about censorship. Payment processors may be the final boss here. If you recently tried to browse for spicy indie games on Itch.io and came up short, it is not your imagination. The platform quietly “deindexed” adult and NSFW games this week, meaning you can’t find them through browsing or search, even though some are still technically live. The reason? A now-viral pressure campaign that once again puts a spotlight on who controls online content: not platforms, but payment processors.
This latest crackdown started with Collective Shout, an advocacy group from Australia known for targeting what it deems harmful content in media, from video games to lingerie ads. Their current beef? A game called “No Mercy”, which depicts rape and incest, was briefly listed on Itch.io (and Steam) earlier this year.
In an open letter to executives at PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, and other financial giants, Collective Shout called out the platforms for facilitating payments on games they say promote “men’s sexualized abuse and torture of women and girls.” The implication: if your company is helping people buy this kind of game, you’re complicit.
And just like that, both Steam and Itch.io snapped into action. Steam updated its policy earlier this month, saying it will now ban games that “may violate the rules and standards” of its payment processors. Shortly after, Itch.io followed suit, citing the need to “prioritise [its] relationship with payment partners.” Translation: they do not want to get dropped by Visa.
Related: Hackers Are Quietly Breaking Into Hundreds Of Sharepoint Servers.
What did Itch.io do?
In a statement that tried very hard to sound neutral (but was damage control), Itch.io said that “No Mercy” had only been temporarily available on the platform and was banned back in April. But in response to the “rapidly developing” situation, the company said it had to act fast to protect its core payment infrastructure.
So now, adult content is deindexed sitewide, out of sight, out of search, until Itch.io finishes a “comprehensive audit” to ensure all NSFW games comply with the policies of payment processors. Once that’s done, creators will need to confirm their content is allowed by whatever service they use to get paid.
No confirmation, no visibility. Maybe no payouts. On social media, indie devs are already calling foul, not just over the content restrictions, but the terms of enforcement. One particularly harsh clause in Itch.io’s updated rules says that if your account violates their content policy, your entire payout can be frozen. Not just the money tied to the offending game, but all the money you have ever made on the platform.
A developer summed it up:
“If you violate the rules, we take all your money. Not just the money from that work — ALL your money.”
Sounds more like a digital guillotine than a policy update. Itch.io is just the latest platform caught in the crossfire between creative freedom and payment company policies.
In 2021, OnlyFans famously banned sexually explicit content, blaming “banking partners and payment providers”, only to reverse the decision days later after backlash. The same goes for Gumroad, which cracked down on NSFW art, again pointing fingers at payment companies. A Change.org petition targeting Mastercard and Visa now has over 137,000 signatures, demanding that these companies “stop censoring legal fictional content” that abides by platform rules and the law.
The big argument? Fiction isn’t the same as harm. And conflating the two creates a dangerous precedent, especially when financial giants get to decide what art gets made and who gets paid.
This is not just about one disturbing game. It is about who gets to decide what art is allowed online, and more often than not, it is not the platforms, creators, or users. It is the companies that handle the money. So, the next time your favorite platform “updates its policy,” ask yourself:
Was it a choice? Or was it a transaction?
