It’s starting to pick up news wise
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“At this point, I’m going to mute this thread and leave it be as well”
ahh, didn’t say that, sorry, i deleted the quote pinging you.
me: im going to go to bed also me: drinks a coffee at 4am (don’t worry it’s decaf)
We’re talking about fiction not IRL stuff, ofc that shit irl should be illegal. But that there, that’s the kind of arguments that these companies are making.
If someone can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality then that’s on the person. Not the media. It’s the “video games cause violence” stuff all over again.
Don’t forget, so is violence, and stealing things, and i’m pretty sure there’s games out there where you commit literal war crimes. Heck, you have literally the game Hitman. Thief simulator, Baldur’s gate 3 lets you sleep with a (druid) bear. they WILL go after that stuff.
Funny little side tangent, I’ve seen people call dwraves, gnomes and halflings pedophilic because of their stature.
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Just walk into a Hearts of Iron forum to see people detailing how to most effectively carry out the actual literal Holocaust (in-game) and total German domination of the world (in-game). And at least half of them hang a bunch of suspiciously designed red white and black flags irl. Like there’s a hell of a lot worse shit people can fuck around with in games. And again, the running point is if a platform doesn’t want to host shit, good for them people will find another space that’ll take them in, whatever content their fiction covers. On a related note, I’m sure a lot of people here would love AO3 and their absolutist policies.
With Aura Clash, that’s what happened, CoG didn’t want to host a bunch of racist homophobic transphobic etc channers who were consistently a problem, and that’s totally chill as people controlling a forum so they were fairly kicked out. But this isn’t itch deciding to stop hosting whatever things you think are ontologically immoral and should be thought crimes, it’s them and other platforms getting strong armed into submission by the duopoly on money transferring, who were also strong armed into submission by a hate group on the grounds of what amounts to little more than obscenity. Something like a fucking payment processor should be completely unbiased and amoral, just running their service and only dropping it off if shit’s illegal (only since that would come back on them and it would be unreasonable to expect they wouldn’t stop then; even so it’s not like legality equals morality and many cases I would morally be against them cutting off illegal shit). They should have zero care or say on what the money is being used for (aforementioned exception being exception, as said). That’s opening such a fucking big ass can of worms if you let that happen, especially in this enormous resurgence of out and loud fascism.
blah blah kink and morality and shit
A point I was getting at in my other message is that, so long as you’re letting puritanical shit get a foot in the door with deciding X or Y is inherently immoral and should under no circumstances be depicted in fiction, especially not in any remotely positive light, you’re letting that thing be used against anyone. Havenstone made the point that he would rather surrender, giving them more and more ground, the “immoral” shit and try and focus on protecting LGBT people (as though they won’t push further now that you’ve relinquished), but yeah no not for me, I’m joining the war on “immorality” on the side of “immorality” here. I’m not scattering my defenses at the cost of my own damn people or whatever, I’m focused on defending all of us, including those into kinks. Firmly will defend any and all kink to the death. Does this mean I’m not gonna side-eye some white dude who’s into kinks like rape and raceplay and dykebreaking? Absolutely not I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but I’ll defend the right to be into that and make fiction of it (while thinking they’re scummy).
Just, beyond the “slippery slope” (that’s literally just their proven tactics), like once you let them say having one kink or another is bad and making fiction of it is even worse, you let that be weaponized against people and I’m not about that at all. I know how damn easily it is to unperson a transfem. You cut that ability off at the source and you don’t have to try and go “well actually they’re fine because they’re not into that disgusting thing”, because what if they are? Not gonna talk about the other part of what was used against her, not my place as a pasty white bitch, but like people were more focused on Ethel Cain’s incest shirt than the past racism the call-out shit was initially about because that’s so easy to cause a moral panic about a transfem with. Who cares if it doesn’t hurt anyone, and beyond that I’m not letting that shit be used against us as such an easy out to ruin someone’s life. This shit gets people killed.
Lots of edits, didn’t proofread as well as I thought
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Absolutely same. I think people forget how common noncon/dubcon–the rape fantasy–is, out there in the world. Just as an example. One of the best and most compelling pieces of erotica I’ve read in the past year was 100% noncon/dubcon. It was horrifying and scintillating and a wonderful and haunting bit of character and worldbuilding and my life is richer for the experience (not that I’d recommend to everyone, naturally, but I really would recommend it if you like a little horror with your porn).
I doubt it will be for sale for much longer, if it’s not already pulled from itch. And that would be a loss if it were because that work is hot and it is queer and it is art.*
No one gets to moralize at us for how we engage with fiction, imo. A horror movie fan doesn’t want to live in a horror movie. Violent video games don’t make us violent.
A hosting site may decide what it wants to host. A person is free to decide what they do and don’t want to experience.
A credit card company cannot tell me what I spend my goddamn money on.
*editing to add that nsfw material doesn’t and shouldn’t need to be considered “art” to be recognized as having cultural or personal value; this is a highly subjective designation that conservative groups have historically liked to toss around to draw a line between what they do and–most importantly–do not consider to be culturally valuable.
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New update from itch.io
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Yep, this is where we most disagree. Defending the right of companies to ditch rape-glorifying (or child abuse-glorifying, genocide-glorifying, etc.) content isn’t a surrender. The kinky v puritanical frame is deeply familiar, but it’s not just Puritans and TERFs (or conservatives) who have moral issues with favorable depictions of rape and would like to decommoditize pro-rape media, and it isn’t just “people with a kink” who consume that commodity.
I disagree that defending company decisions to exclude rape-glorifying media should be tossed out on the grounds that some fascist puritans will agree. Standing up for unchecked free speech online is going to make a lot of fascists happy, too; but if that’s the principle you believe in, you should do it anyway, and fight the fascists where you think they’re wrong.
I’ve got more sympathy for the case that payment providers shouldn’t be allowed to have moral exceptions to anything. But a rape sim or genocide sim? At the end of the day, I’m not going to fight them there.
Stories shape what we want and how we act. Porn is part of the politics of sex, not harmless fiction; the commoditization of rape and underage content shapes what people expect from each other in the real world.
And noncon/dubcon can be demonetized, can cease to be a mass-market commodity for sale everywhere, without it disappearing from the internet.
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As a certified old guy I am sympathetic to this argument, but I can’t help but thinking when I was a teenager GTA caused a moral panic of a similar magnitude. And that was back when it was top down isometric…
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So a lot of people on bluesky and reddit are freaking out because the game Mouthwashing has been removed from itchio
For those who don’t know mouthwashing was a very popular indie game that came out last year and a major plot point if not the driving plot point is the sexual abuse of one of the characters.
So people are panicking because one the game’s developers has posted on Bluesky that his game is no longer on itchio and are spreading the word claiming it’s not just rape fantasy games getting banned but games that feature sexual abuse themes at all.
BUT the thing is mouthwashing was removed from itchio last year because the page’s download redirected to its steam page, you actually couldn’t get the game for itchio at all it was just being used as an advertisement which is against itchio’s TDS.
So the whole panic over this actually has nothing with the payment processor situation, you can still get the game on steam the only place you’re ever been able to get it.
To clarify I don’t think the developer did this to be intentionally malicious i think they weren’t told their game’s page was removed until last year and he didn’t check until now.
But itch.io are getting a lot of unfair flak already it’s really unfortunate that misinformation is making it worse.
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It is not a good time to be a creator or Enjoyer of adult content on the internet
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Hmm, let’s set the slippery slope aside for a moment and consider the update just shared (thanks for doing so, by the way):
That update then provides a further link to the portion of the FAQ about adult content.
Itch’s own policy is stated as this:
We don’t allow hosting content that includes sexualized images or videos of real-life humans. Fictional, illustrated, and rendered content is generally fine, assuming it’s legal. AI-generated imagery that is designed to resemble photographic content of real people is not allowed. Content glorifying sexual violence is not permitted. Depictions of minors, minor-presenting, or suggested minors in a sexual context are not allowed and will result in account suspension.
This sounds, at least to me, like a perfectly adequate set of boundaries when it comes to NSFW material, covering the sort of thing Havenstone has expressed concern about, while leaving room for everything else. And it’s the platform’s policy, not the payment providers’, so it also fits the bill for those saying payment providers who share a monopoly over these services should not step in. It was already covered. There was no need to bring in the payment processors in at all.
But it then notes that to get paid, it’s necessary to obey the policies of any payment processors being used, or no money. It summarizes their guidelines as such:
Let’s break this down.
Firstly, it says “containing these topics,” not “glorifying,” not “promoting,” just “containing.” So we’re already striking out nuanced depictions or references. That’s not a slippery slope if we take them at their word. That’s what it says.
- Non-consensual content (real or implied)
So if someone writes something about a survivor’s experiences in the aftermath of an assault, this is prohibited?
- Underage or “barely legal” themes
Is a story about teen pregnancy problematic even if sexual content wasn’t depicted? Would college students be “‘barely legal’ themes”? What counts as “containing”? Would a romance story about teenagers that indicates—without showing the scene at all—that they’ve had their first time count as containing underage themes? Because that’s a pretty normal topic for YA fiction to cover.
- Incest or pseudo-incest content
Okay, what’s incest? A lot of people classify cousin marriage as such, but it’d be par for the course in cultures throughout history and today.
And again, what’s “containing”? Are Oedipus and, heck, Star Wars banned?
- Bestiality or animal-related
Are werewolves animal-related? Anything with furries? Satyrs and centaurs? Merfolk?
- Rape, coercion, or force-related
(see above)
- Sex trafficking implications
Just implications? We going to have a problem with a game where someone’s a detective tracking down sex traffickers? Where a character’s escaping from them? A political game where that’s one of the issues the politicians are dealing with? A historical game involving war captives or the slave trade?
- Revenge porn / voyeur / hidden cam
So does something dealing with the fallout from such an incident count as “containing”?
Also, for that matter, while that might not be the intent behind it, “voyeur” is also vague here because it can be consensual 
- Fetish involving bodily waste or extreme harm (e.g., “scat,” “vomit”)
Despite being someone who, personally, is very squeamish, I have to say this inclusion—focusing on the “bodily waste” part here, not the “extreme harm” part—bothers me even more than anything else on the list. Everything else is at least related to something that is genuinely bad and which I would object to the glorification of (at least if we set reasonable definitions of them). Here… what’s the justification? That it’s icky? Okay, yeah, so what? Everything’s icky to somebody; that’s no basis for morality. If it’s consensual—and there’s nothing in that line to suggest that’s a consideration—that’s their business. And if it’s on a computer screen, it’s not even unsanitary. How on Earth does this fit in with the rest of the list?
I’m also well aware of the extent to which people weaponize disgust against, well, LGBT people or really anything they don’t like, so… yeah. Keep personal disgust out of politics please.
And for that matter, it now occurs to me that it really wouldn’t be much of a jump to apply that line to anal sex in general. So. Yeah.
And it says this is non-exhaustive, so that’s not even the full extent of it.
I doubt everything I raised here was intended to be proscribed, but it’s vague, which is a problem itself as it makes it possible to use the rules in a targeted way, say if another hate group wants to step in again.
So we don’t even need to invoke a slippery slope. This is already what it says. The slope has slipped.
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To a very large degree, I absolutely agree (morally) that content which glorifies extremely heinous things, shouldn’t be platformed or monetised.
The problem is very much that we know that different people can not agree on what ‘glorify’ means, in practice.
Is it only glorification when the PC is the one doing the acts, and being portrayed as powerful and cool for it?
Or is it also glorification when the things happen to the PC, and it is portrayed as dark and twisted (but maybe also titilating, if you’re into such things)?
Is it glorification if the story/game does not go out of it’s way to explicitly condem the things, every time they are mentioned?
Because I can’t be the only person here who remember all the many times when authors/creators get accused of condoning certain things, because they have the evil villain of their story do them.
There’s also many people (myself included) who enjoy dark romance, and seriously problematic ROs. I don’t personally see this as glorifying, because the whole point is that it is dark shit, that I would not want anyone in real to be involved with/subjected to.
But that is certainly not something everyone agrees with me on.
We’ve had discussions about it, right here on this forum, with some people thinking that problematic ROs are inherently bad, and shouldn’t be allowed.
In regards to kinks, well, (cw: SA, CNC) I know from friends that the topic of consensual non-consent is wildly divisive, even in kink spaces, with both the pro and the anti side having a large number of SA survivors. I don’t really think this is the place to get into details about what the arguments are.
Even a topic as fairly non-divisive as underage content isn’t just black/white.
How often do people fail to recognise that Lolita does not condone the actions of the POV character?
Is it underage content, if the characters are technically adults, but look and behave like children?
Should a literary fiction bildungsroman be allowed to have a 16-17 years old have encounters of a romantic or sexual (non-explicit) nature with an older person? Or does that glorify such things happening?
I think that a lot of people just do not trust most corporations to actually ban individuel content on a good, justified one-on-one basis, instead of just doing broad content bans.
It’s more expensive, more risky, and also has a history of not being done very well, when you look around the internet.
And that’s if they actually hire human moderators, instead of just getting an ‘AI’ to do it.
So while I (maybe naively) think most people do agree that it would be best if we could keep the worst of the worst from monetising their horrifying stuff, I also absolutely understand that it would be hard to agree on where exactly the line should be, and possibly impossible to actually implement in reality, in a good way.
(The questions here are to illustrate my point that it is a difficult and nuanced topic. I do not actually want answers to individuel questions.)
(Other people have pointed out the slippery slopes, and the history of weaponisation against queer content, so I don’t feel the need to rehash those points)
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To add a bit more to this they said they are looking for alternative payment processor for the NSFW games that they aren’t getting rid of.
I can find that understandable if that was the goal but when patreon enforced there version of the new rules (That they set up during thier purge) for an game that I have my eyes on it wasn’t the dubcon scenes that they made them get rid of but all the furry scenes regardless if they were consensual or not and the game still has plenty of dubcon scenes in it. Now I don’t know if it was a pateron staff member who has a hate on for furry content using this opportunity to get rid of it or if that’s what the payment proceessors emphasizes as the biggest no no to them but either way I really don’t think it should be fully up to payment processors to determine all of this.
So this is pretty my opinion on it though I wouldn’t exactly trust my government either nowadays
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There’s a lot of nuance when it comes to balancing free speech, artistic expression and deciding where to draw the line. But when it comes to things like rape simulators, Nazi-glorification games or content that portrays harmful behavior in a positive light, I think applying free speech isn’t right in this case. The core issue here is straightforward: Visa and Mastercard, no matter how dominant they are, are still private companies and not public utilities. They have the legal right to refuse service to any merchant who violates their Terms of Service. Their size doesn’t change that.
Imagine this scenario. Your shop chooses to sell Nazi memorabilia or display racist propaganda and that’s your right under free speech. But if I’m the only printing company in town or the county, that doesn’t force me to print your Nazi flags or racist drawings. I’m not a government utility. I’m a private business with my own standards. You’re still free to exercise your right of expression, but I’m free to say no. If you don’t like it find another printing company, buy your own printer machine or change your content. Rights work both ways.
I think everyone agrees that Steam and Itchio can ban whatever content they like and that that they’re free to refuse to publish a dev game for any reason. But to me it also applies to payment processors. Visa and Mastercard cannot be expected to serve everyone regardless of the content they produce or allow.
These companies again are not public utilities no matter how big they are or how much they dominate the market. Why should they take the risk of being sued for potentially facilitating illegal or harmful content for Steam or Itchio? The law only restricts businesses from refusing to service based on protected characteristics like race, sex or religion. “NSFW content” is not a protected category.
Look Mastercard and Visa are doing just fine. In fact they’ve reported record profits this year. They don’t need Steam or Itchio to stay afloat. Meanwhile Steam and Itchio are still free to host whatever content they want including the most extreme or controversial games. But if they want their payments processed by these companies they have two options: either take content moderation seriously or find another processor willing to take on the legal and reputational risk.
That is not censorship to me. It’s just business.
I think the above post that walks through some of the “payment processors’” TOS demonstrates a little how much… overreach is happening here. There’s just too much volatility for creators–nsfw or otherwise–with TOS like these, unless you are heavily censoring yourself. This sort of heavy sanitization isn’t going to be good for anyone, in the end.
Ideally, we’d have a wealth of reliable payment processors out there, but realistically that doesn’t appear to be the case. The move here is to push back, not roll over and just take it from Mastercard and Visa because it’s “just business.”
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Wasn’t sure I wanted to weigh in on this or not. But people have brought up a key point in agreeing with the rape removal stance. With others are talking about the kink. There seems to be something that people are missing. That yes rape is bad, but if you’ve read any literature from SWERFs you’d know they consider ALL BDSM to be rape (I can provide sources as I’ve had this argument on other platforms before). All of it. No exceptions. So while the general idea the public has about rape is bad (and they are right, rape is bad) you aren’t understanding the full ideology of the people that are making the attack. Making the assumption their definition is the same as yours. It’s not. They 100% want to decimate the kink community.
And it’s SO dangerous to shove the kink community back into obscurity and shadow. Mainstream has allowed for more open communication and education. Which in turn protects people. Taking it off the table endangers people to predators who will take advantage of it.
Payment processors shouldn’t have anything to do with morality policing. They do not have the expertise to navigate social issues any more than a clown is with heart surgery. If host sites decide they don’t want content on their site, that is their right as host. With Leafo’s past commentary on the subject, I do think while Collective Shout and Visa/Mastercard opened the door, he was more than happy to go through it with little to no pressure because he doesn’t really want it there to begin with.
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The counterargument to that is that the Overtone Window is moving not only for the content you consider acceptable.
In other words, if you posit that bringing kink into mainstream helps normalize it, what follows is the conclusion that bringing stuff like “rape simulators” into mainstream also helps normalize the ideas contained inside them.
It’s not like these games are going to start a sudden rape epidemic, no. The effects are much more subtle. Ex. people who complain about someone choking or slapping them during intimacy without prior consent because they’ve seen it in adult videos.
There’s a difference between dark content as a part of worldbuilding/narrative or a topic to explore, and fetish fuel.
But, yes, censorship have been and will be used as a political weapon, and what guidelines I’ve seen are vague asf, so you just know this is not going to end well if allowed to slide.
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I mean, at a certain point they gotta take responsibility for their own actions. If they don’t understand consent/boundaries and/or can’t separate reality from fiction, they have more problems than just this one instance, and if they’re using it as an excuse/justification they’d just find another excuse. And like, frankly, allowing more positive explorations of kink would help with that if it’s truly just woeful ignorance, something to counteract the negative showings that are the current mainstream, to better show how to safely and with consent explore whatever ideas. Pushing all of it away really just has lead to the worse being louder.
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I agree. The TOS rules are vague. I’m not against people demanding Mastercard and Visa be more clear. I want these companies to be more transparent and detailed with their content rules when it comes adult games and fiction that deal with more mature themes.
Where I disagree is that Visa and Mastercard have no right to have any TOS rules around adult content or themes. They’re not public utilities therefore they’re not obligated to service everyone.
I’ve no trouble with people pushing back and voicing their concerns to Visa or Mastercard.
However Visa and Mastercard is well within its rights to enforce their vague Terms of Service. The willingness of Visa/Mastercard to crack the whip on Pornhub and OnlyFans, the fact that they charge the adult industry with higher fees and a “high risk” category and demand much greater scrutiny from this industry shows me that these two companies are not here to accommodate the adult industry or content creators.
Enforcing this TOS is such a low political risk compared to being sued for accepting payments from merchants who allow just about anything on their platform. No one in Congress is going to champion rape simulators or content that glorifies child abuse even if it’s fictional.
The reason Visa/Mastercard can squeeze companies around NSFW stuff is because they’re willing to walk away. They don’t need Steam and Itchio for their bottom line.
So I agree, criticize how the rules are vague and how they will be applied. But if you expect them to have no rules around adult content then that’s where I draw the line.
Cross-posting again with the Writer’s Support thread. Going through the instructions on this webpage, I tried calling Mastercard and the machine cut me off and then said I wasn’t a proper customer. However! Emailing, using the Contact Us page, and mailing a letter worked great. I’m doing my part!
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Also, that game contains no necrophiliac acts within it. It’s impossible to do anything even remotely in that area of action unless you somehow modded the game. So the game just happens to contain corpses and interacting with them because the title is literal in the sense of your in-game role.
Just putting this out, because I played that game and think your example is a somewhat poor one.