Steam, Itch.io are pulling ‘porn’ games. Critics say it's a slippery slope

If a special interest group is acting in bad faith, then it is still incorrect and confusing to frame it as "they just don't like that thing". We should just be saying they are acting in bad faith, weaponizing arguments, etc. Why they are against something also is explainable, so ideally we could also state their real motivations (they are racist, fascist, reactionary, etc.)

That's not what they mean by "this is damaging to society".

They aren't talking about actual harm to individuals within that society. Porn is a useful lever to them, because it is documented to cause some harm to some individuals, and they can gather support from the general public on that basis. But it's not their primary concern.

Their primary concern is that consumption/tolerance of such media damages society as a whole, dragging it further from their puritan western-christian centric view of what society should be.

They don't give a shit about individuals, just society as a whole.

They may both be damaging, but currently we have a lot more porn than censorship, so it looks like it's causing more damage. If we flip to having a lot more censorship we'll feel that damage more clearly. Or we won't, depending how successful the censorship is.

I think the issue would be more that people don't accept this is censorship - the surface level here looks like companies negotiating who they will and won't do business with which is actually encouraged. If companies have a moral objection to something then they don't have to be involved. In theory stopping a flow of money takes a lot more than some crazy from Australia getting upset.

The real censorship here is that a system has been constructed where payments must be funnelled through a small number of blessed companies and it has been set up that way to ... promote censorship. Authoritarianism in general, really. If it wasn't for anticompetitive regulations one of these game devs could just branch into banking. We've actually seen that dynamic play out in most of our lifetimes - in the early phase of crypto it was mtgox.com [0] that triggered the transition from cool nerd curio in the internet backwaters to a billion dollar market. So we know the pipeline there would work fine in the absence of KYC regulation.

[0] Magic The Gathering Online eXchange

You can’t have a free market without censorship. It’s one or the other.

Or guns. Or payday loans. Or credit card debt. Or credit score. Etc.

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One can make a very strong argument that the manosphere stuff is rooted in poor sexual attitudes of men that only got worse with tons of porn.

You only need to type any random sexual thing and find any explicit subreddit you want, that’s how pervasive the porn is on even an allegedly non-porn platform. Every other game has basically stripper-level female characters now days. We’ve literally gone crazy.

Holistically, you’re talking about a hyper sexualized society where the content and ideology are available at high density and velocity from a pretty early age until the day you die.

It’s a problem. The truth is one side is not wrong forever. The Christian right is wrong about so much, but the progression of our society has finally made them mostly correct on this issue.

People need to take a deep hard look at what hip hop did to a generation of youth (both the violence and sexuality permeated deep into the culture). None of this shit is a joke, the kids end up fucked up.

Tbh I lost track of what people thought "censorship" is, especially as a pejorative, many years ago. Not only is censorship good, but information is more free than it has been at any point in history. Just pirate the games ffs.

In some ways, porn is more damaging, isn't it? For example, there's a lot of sex trafficking going on in the porn industry, but not so much in the censorship industry.

I strongly oppose censorship and believe that payment processors and banks should be prohibited from engaging in it. Still, I have to admit that porn can be extremely destructive.

> Unless we want a carve out for payment processors. Treat them as a utility of sorts?

Given that there are two payment processors that have about 90% global market share (excluding China) and your bank chooses the payment processor for the most part, yes we should regulate them and force them to process payment for any legal business.

They have the ability to effectively determine what we can spend our money on when we can’t get cash to the vendor in person, and almost every alternative processor has to deal with them and is also subject to their rules.

The only way around this is via informal networks. Cryptocurrency isn’t an option for many as it’s very hard to obtain, due to the duopoly coercing banks and governments to keep people on their systems.

I don’t live in the US, and where I live has a local electronic non-credit card payment system which has been around since the 80s. It’s less popular now because only the card networks support contactless payments instead of swipe/chip and pin. All the systems support contactless use, but banks won’t enable it because it has no interchange fees.

> they are optimizing but under differing constraints

Most often this doesn't happen because one side fails to understand the other, it happens because one side is dishonest about their motivations or goals.

In this case, the censors would like you to believe that they think pornography is harmful. The reality is that they're religious zealots who feel the need to prevent other people from making their own choices about something their religious leaders have told them is evil. They can't admit their real goal though, or people will realize it's just westernized Sharia law and stop taking them seriously.

yeah but that network benefits the rich and powerful people who orchestrate our society

Australia was a prison colony, after all.

The irony is that many if not most of the porn ARTISTS I have know or known of are women, in a subculture that skews male *heavily*.

And video games are just art.

So, women, drawing and writing stuff they like, being banned and losing an income stream.

I don’t think drawing or writing porn is exploitative at all.

> laims to be an Australian feminist organization

I'm genuinely curious to see how this plays out in the American partisan landscape.

"Protecting women" is an incoherent excuse for pressuring websites to pull romantic games that feature consensual, loving, respectful homosexual male-male relationships, with no women even present in the game.

The real motivations seemingly have nothing to do with protecting women, which appears to simply be a palatable facade for the true intention to suppress all depictions of sexuality, including the depictions that offer good-faith representation of historically marginalized groups.

They are however influenced by the American discourse soup of lies and talking points, in the same way that the NZ mosque shooter was.

Conservatives around the world talk to each other.

What aggravates me the most about stories like yours is that banks are effectively public utilities. They are regulated as such, are broadly considered too big to fail (especially in Canada - believe it or not at a domestic scale, their banks are far more important than any US bank is to the American economy) and thus receive an implicit tax payer underwriting, yet are able to act like this when you're not doing any illegal activities.

I understand the risk tolerance aspect from a bank, they wouldn't want to give a massive loan to a property developer or oil driller going under water. But when it comes to basic deposit services where nobody is asking them to risk their own money, they should be forced to allow any customer who isn't breaking any laws, such as in your case.

All this makes me think of war on drugs and other similar failed attempts at regulation, and of the article "the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero". The stronger the zeal to prevent porn the more expensive it gets to do so, and the more they cause legit companies like yours to close, the more profitable it gets to do it illegally. Just cranking on the symptoms without looking at the cause often has the opposite effect to the one desired, not that the people pushing for this probably care.

I'd suggest that foreign investors dictating domestic policy is a huge problem. For a core institution like banking there ought to be a law forbidding them from discriminating against otherwise legal activities except in the case that a different law permits or requires them to do so. That would also absolve them of any PR concerns because "everyone has to; legally speaking we don't have any choice".

> we fell outside of their "risk appetite."

If you take that statement at face value (not sure if you should), it's fascinating to think that your business was able to operate for two decades with what I assume are the standard problems people in the porn industry face (e.g. chargebacks from customers unwilling to admit they subscribed in their SO's presence and so pretending it was a scam, etc.)

And yet seemingly none of the bank's risk heuristics based on actual transaction profiling ever went off.

Wouldn't that mean that, in practice, being in the porn industry isn't as high-risk as banks / payment processors think it is?

And would this not then suggest a gap in the market, for an (ideally vertically-integrated) bank + payment processor + card issuer + KYC provider, who is willing to

1. evaluate risk on a customer-by-customer basis (through e.g. continuous dynamic network analysis of transaction flow, with txs annotated with their KYC info) rather than by actuarial categorization; and

2. avoid seeking any investment (at any remove) by parties who would insist they avoid these types of customers?

Thank you for your story. I like to try to imagine what conversations happened behind the scenes. The fact that the suddenly hauled you into the branch, and still decided that you were too "risky" (clearly a made-up excuse) says a lot. Whatever force is behind this is powerful and it's not even remotely explained by a coalition of angry activists.

I'm amazed that producing porn in Iceland can lead to gaol. Can you expand upon that further?

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Well not equivalent, they taught their women to read after all.

But let's be real here, they were a bunch of jerks. There's a reason it took no time flat for Rhode Island to exist.

Yes that’s exactly what they were and are today

Thing is, with things like these, they only need one or a handful of cases. With everything, there is always a handful of cases - porn addicts, gambling addicts, revenge porn victims, trans women in women's spaces and sports, etc. The fundamentalists and right-wing media will hyperfocus and signal boost these statistically insignificant cases to push their own agenda.

For them, n=1 is enough evidence. For their moral compass or larger scale goals, n=1 is one too many.

There will always be some people - teenagers or otherwise - that develop mental health issues from e.g. porn games. But there's people developing mental health issues from Farmville or ChatGPT supposedly turning sentient and sharing the infinite Truth of the universe too. Somehow those aren't an issue.

It's not about preventing mental health issues. It's not about protecting women.

This is not the correct way.

If cigarette was banned from the beginning, we would still see people getting mad without much evidence.

The truth is the evidence is coming half a century after when everyone got cancer.

Precautionary principle should always prevail.

That's why we just don't go full GMO, and you would still not wait for any proof that "it's harmless".

You also don't use a random pesticide, unless you have a full proof that's it's harmless.

Additionally, without cigarette, without GMO and without pesticide humanity would still be fine, and maybe better without (if we stick with the cigarette).

TL;DR: You actually need a proof, but it's a proof that it's harmless and not the other way around.

That's your line, but others have other lines; violence in games was a big thing twenty years ago, and some pearl clutchers tried to have all violent video games banned.

Thing is though, if violent video games caused people to become violent, Columbine wouldn't have been a rare incident.

But it's a difficult one. People play video games but for most people it doesn't change their moral compass; it doesn't make them think ripping out people's spines is normal or acceptable. It desensitizes them to a point I suppose.

Does porn, porn games or simulated CSAM make people normalize objectification and violence towards people and children? I can't answer that, and I don't know if there's been any studies towards especially CSAM since it's such a taboo. N=1, but 20+ years of porn on occasion hasn't turned me into some rampant sex addict.

The problem with simulated CSAM is that there is a risk that the viewer develops a fetish for such repulsive practices. It has then destructive consequences for the viewer and, should he try to perform it, his victims.

Either way, I don't see the harm of forbidding it. The web doesn't lack regular pornography alternatives, free or paid.

The assumption they're making is "interactive incest and sexual exploitation games influence people's real life behavior".

In purely hypothetical terms, what would we if there was evidence for this? I can see some folks standing by their ideals and concluding that even if this was true, we shouldn't ban these games, while others would conclude that there is a moral obligation to future victims to ban them.

How would you behave if you shared the belief that incest and sexual exploitation games influence people's real life behavior?

The advocate group who do this believe they are exercising the will of God and do not need to mess with things like laws

> Nobody has any right to dictate other people's lives.

The pragmatics of activism prove contrary to this ideal. The reality is that this is a failed argument and it will continue to fail regardless of how often it's repeated. I hate to say it, but the only way to counter is to win at the activism game rather than complain about the rules.

Your propositions are contradictory. If "society" decides to harm itself, and I'm part of it, I'll have to suffer from the choices taken by others.

One of the example games that was banned was “daddy twins incest BDSM” and similar titles.

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Let’s take a step back from political knee jerk reactions and look at the nuance.

Say 50% of the queer content on itch is innocuous dating sim games much which may not have any pornographic images at all.

There is another chunk, idk the amount, that is clearly not nice and what dishonest groups bundle that 50% into.

There is seemingly little interest even acknowledging that other chunk of content as being a problem though. I dont want queer dating sims to be banned but they are gonna be if no one is honest about what shows up next to them in places where they exist.

I would not agree on this one. Both is detrimental on children’s health.

> But the problem isn't porn. That's the low hanging fruit for a massive power grab

I mostly agree with this. There are legitimate issues with even the biggest and most respected porn sites being very lax with taking down underage and nonconsensual content. The card companies AFAICT aren't being pressured to reform because of this kind of content, but more the LGBT content which is harming nobody.

Maybe this will end the crypto winter.

I do like bringing up the potential for dissolution. I would add just the general ways in which they profit off distorting the economy for massive private gains, often to the ruin of many individuals.

Credit has become ubiquitous, in a manner that belies its supposed purpose, at least as was originally practiced before consumers were offered and employed credit for absolutely everything.

Then again, governments and "regulated" entities are also capable of blackmail. I'm not sure these private companies would ever have an incentive to care about what you spend their money on unless governments gave them a reason to - which is why this is happening. At the end of the day you run into the same perpetual problem - you want x, some mob wants y. Good luck.

Adult content on steam is marked as such very clearly.

Under Community Content Preferences, you'll see an option for Mature Content and Adult-Only Sexual Content.

You'll also be preventing from accessing mature content depending on the filters in your account settings, and in the Family Management section of steam, for Family Shared Libraries.

If kids are on steam they're also on... ya know... the internet.

It's not complicated to realise that this achieves none of the stated objectives

And that’s a good thing. There are too many stories of unsafe insertion of household objects ending up in the ER.

Same. Some Targets.

They've also sold personal massagers that were used as (and sometimes quietly designed as) sex toys for many years, too.

Yes, at least back in 2019, from the link:

> However, worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains. At this point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced. As a result we have decided that newly purchased keys will not be tradeable or marketable.

Many users still suspect it happens, although it's hard to prove.

This is not the administration to ask for that.

It's hard for the big companies which want to stay big - and so feel that they can't live without credit cards. But indeed that's not an issue for newcomers.

The problem with alternatives to things like OnlyFans is that the performers who work through OnlyFans want to go where people can find them. They can dumb down their acts - and have lots of paying traffic, or they can do what they would prefer - and have hardly any paying traffic. That's tough.

And as soon as people find out you exist, they get the payment processors to shut you down too as part of their crusade.

Now what?

If you’re visible, you’re a target. If you’re not, you don’t matter.

being discoverable on the existing markets is extremely valuable.

What you need for running a site that people might not like: 1. Your own servers 2. Your own network 3. Your own CDN 4. Your own payment processor

Step 4 gets you thrown in jail for violating AML.

The impression I get is allowing them to be purchased at all is grounds for the payment processor to suspend their account. So this solution is a no-go.

Probably the only way around it is to spin up a completely different corporate entity which only allows for payments via wire transfer, ACH, or perhaps some of the various payment apps available.

> Just get people to mail you cash.

> (For anyone thinking crypto: we have a different idea of what it means to be either "realistically viable" or to "compete with Steam")

Wow, not crypto, but GP fucking nailed it.

You can't realistically target anyone outside the US with this.

> Payment processors have to deal with significantly more problems due to the nature of porn games and chargebacks.

This is commonly repeated, but doesn't hold up. Chargeback fees (especially for card-not-present transactions) are paid by the merchant and are simply increased (with reserves required) for high-risk accounts. It also wouldn't make sense to target hyper-specific niches if it were really about chargebacks, they would go after all of it, and go after things like the CS marketplace.

But the biggest giveaway IMO is that they do not allow, e.g., Steam selling these games crypto-only. It's either remove them entirely or remove credit cards entirely. If it was really about specific titles having high fraud/chargeback rates, selling them some other way would be fine.

Those problems are artificially created by regulation. There is nothing inherent to these topics that makes servicing them physically impossible.

Charge backs, etc... can be effectively solved by appropriately pricing in such risks (or not offering those services at all).

This isn't a payment processor issue, it's a political choice.

> if they aren’t being pressured directly to remove the content.

The problem is that they aren't being told "we won't let people buy this through us", they're told "this needs to go entirely or no more credit cards for you".

Most of the games that have been deindexed on itch.io and some of the ones that were banned/removed were free or Pay-What-You-Want/Donation-Ware (some even via Patreon or SubscribeStar rather than itch.io's own payment processing).

The problem isn't just "the Payment Processor doesn't want to support this game" but also "this game shows Guilt-By-Association that your platform's money might go to 'criminals' or 'sinners'."

Guilt-By-Association is real gross, but a large part of the current fight, too, especially looking at itch.io's payment processor-required actions, not just Steam's.

> Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits

That don't use Visa/Mastercard? The bans aren't coming from the platforms but from the payment processors.

>Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits.

All of those are still prone to censorship if the attacking group is motivated enough. Even crypto, which should be the ideal solution to this problem, is not ideal because most transactions are performed through centralized exchanges which can easily blacklist whatever transactions they want.

"Citizen's United" wasn't _wrong_ about money being a type of speech, that shouldn't be censored. Only wrong about who the first amendment is for.

F2P games are very different in design from regular games(and far worse imo)

You can't even realistically have a F2P game that requires a high spec machine because of how the market works.

when you start talking about a business for serving “the few”, you’ve already removed the incentive for most entrepreneurs (unless those “few” are the extremely wealthy and you can charge them exorbitantly).

After the third sentence, I was like, what's wrong with this guy? After the fourth, I was like, Oh. Lol.

I wrongly assumed this was a D bill, and would die in committee. Turns out it's actually an R bill, with exclusively R sponsors, and now I'm wondering what awful shit is hiding in it.

Though almost all of the sponsors are from almost 6 months ago, so it might die in committee anyway.

In theory, if you went "full crypto", there's probably options like Filecoin and web3 domains (I'm not in that space enough to know what the current versions of these are) that could make something "uncensorable" by Visa/MC, but it also would limit its reach heavily.

Cryptocurrency is a nice idea but there are and have always been too many gas fees for anyone to sensibly use it. I want to buy something not support everyone that get their hands in my transaction chain.

The US government can break up the duopoly and open up payments processing federally. That’s worth the investment than that pipe dream of a global, frictionless cryptocurrency.

Adding a broken, inefficient system to a problem just makes 2 problems.

So, you don't see it working at all.

It already works; it's how people in China purchase adult content online, which is illegal there. Usually with USDT (which is also illegal there).

Itch hasn't lost its marbles, they're forced to remove this content by payment processors. They're critical infrastructure, they shouldn't be allowed to arbitrate on behalf of an entire society. We need laws to require them to carry payments for any legal transaction. Paying for porn games is legal.

> If we think about it, liberalism came to existence partly as antithesis to medieval church ideologies.

Sounds news to me. Do you have any origin for this?